Old Town Pizza & Brewing

A legendary Portland pizza restaurant founded in 1974, housed in the 1880 Merchant Hotel lobby directly above the Shanghai Tunnels. The exclusive tour provider for 14,000 square feet of Portland Underground.

Old Town Pizza and Brewing occupies the former lobby of the Merchant Hotel, a building constructed in 1880 by three Portland lumber barons on the edge of the city's Old Town-Chinatown district. The hotel catered to Portland's elite clientele, but like many establishments in the neighborhood during the late nineteenth century, it also operated as a brothel. The building featured one of Portland's first hydraulic elevators, a technological novelty at a time when businesses were transitioning away from steam-powered lifts. Beneath the hotel ran passages connected to Portland's infamous Shanghai Tunnels, the underground network that linked basements along the waterfront and was allegedly used to kidnap men into forced labor on ships bound for the Pacific. In 1974, the Accuardi family transformed the hotel's ground floor into a pizza restaurant, with the original reception desk becoming the pizza order window, flanked by the Merchant Hotel's original decorative cast-iron posts.

The restaurant's resident ghost is Nina, a young woman whose story has become one of Portland's most enduring legends. According to the traditional account, Nina was a sex worker forced into the trade through the white slavery operations that ran through Old Town in the late 1800s. She made contact with traveling Christian missionaries working to clean up the neighborhood and agreed to share information about the trafficking ring in exchange for her freedom. Before she could provide enough evidence to secure her escape, Nina's body was found at the bottom of the Merchant Hotel's elevator shaft. The prevailing belief is that someone who ran the brothel discovered her cooperation and pushed her to her death. Some researchers have suggested that Nina may have been Ni Mu, a Chinook woman's name in the Sahaptin language, though definitive historical documentation of her identity has not been established.

During renovations to the building, construction workers discovered the name "Nina" etched into a brick at the bottom of the old elevator shaft. That brick is still visible today in a booth at the back of the restaurant, and the elevator shaft itself has been converted into a seating area. Staff and visitors report a range of phenomena near the shaft and throughout the building. The scent of perfume drifts through the dining room with no apparent source. A figure dressed in black has been seen ascending and descending the stairs and wandering through the dining area, always appearing sad and mournful. Employees working in the basement have reported hearing breathing sounds, and one described encountering a body of smoke that floated past the basement stairs. A second unidentified female spirit, dressed in white rather than black, has also been reported, though her identity is unknown. Near the old elevator shaft, a whisk has been seen flying across the room on its own. Patrons sitting in the booths report feeling someone tap them on the shoulder or brush a hand against them when no one is nearby.

Old Town Pizza is a popular stop on Portland ghost tours, and the Shanghai Tunnel entrance beneath the building can be viewed during private tours. The combination of the Merchant Hotel's documented history, the elevator shaft discovery, and the steady accumulation of witness reports over five decades of restaurant operation has made Nina one of Portland's best-known and most frequently encountered ghosts.