An Obituary
The Waikiki Room opened in February 1953 inside the Hotel Nicollet at 235 Hennepin Avenue South in downtown Minneapolis — a hotel that had stood on that block since 1924, descended in spirit from a smaller Nicollet House built on the same corner in 1858.
It was the only serious Beachcomber-lineage Polynesian room in the upper Midwest, and the Nicollet committed to it: a Hawaiian architect, a Hawaiian chef, seven thousand lengths of bamboo, giant clamshells, Formosan bamboo, Philippine coral, Tahitian flowers, Samoan decorations. The chairs came from Hong Kong, the tables from Hawaii. The menu ran from Mandarin Duck to ribs to cocktails called the Waikiki Downfall, the Hilo Diver, and the Zombie. A postcard from 1954 promised it would be “as Hawaiian as the glowing splendor of Diamond Head.”
In February 1976 the entire Waikiki Room — bamboo, clamshells, velvet paintings — was dismantled and moved across town to the Hotel Leamington at 1014 Third Avenue South. The Nicollet was demolished a few years later. The Leamington closed in 1986 and came down between 1990 and 1992.
Both hotels are gone. Two demolitions, one room. There is now a surface parking lot where the Nicollet stood, and the Minneapolis Convention Center where the Leamington stood.
The upper Midwest never built another serious Polynesian room after the Waikiki Room came down.