St. Charles Hotel

1913 -

History

I walked to the stairs which were laden with a grimy 70's style carpet and virtually no lighting and anticipated all the goodies that lay beyond the stairs on the third floor. Opening the door to the third floor I was immediately hit with the foul stench of urine and rotting foods along with various kinds of graffiti marking the wall. The hallway and rooms were essentially in a square and as I walked through the hall past the syringes and rotting garbage every room was piled with crap. Every room was different both in its content and structure; some contained a bathroom, some rooms shared a bathroom with another room and some had to share a communal bathroom. Often the bathrooms were cramped into a narrow room with all the fixtures being crammed into a narrow line. The size of the rooms varied from about 20 x 20 feet to maybe 10 by 10 feet  with the larger rooms facing the street while the smaller faced inward toward building. In a large majority of rooms there seemed to be an absence of ash trays and a large cache of pornography either plastered over the wall or in a magazine on the floor.

After examining every room but not being able to take all their pictures due to the absence of my tri-pod I proceeded up to the fourth floor. Unfortunately the door had no handle and had warped shut at the top so I proceeded to wedge my fingers between the bottom of the door and the grungy carpet underneath it. Continual yanks on the door moved the door only slightly so I dug my feet into the bizarre coloured carpet and pulled as hard as I could. The door came open but unfortunately too easily as it flung me down the stairs and into the graffiti covered wall. Walking past the rooms through the hallway resulting in similar findings as below concerning the room structure and condition so I walked up the stairs to the fifth floor. The fifth floor was a small maze with interesting corners and angles holding various pieces of equipment for storage but not much else so I went into the basement.

As darkness enveloped me there arose a beacon of light streaming from above, provided by the gaping holes in the sidewalk access doors. There were various objects such as kegs and doors as well as the original chute used to load things from the surface to the basement. Right beside the chute was a built in vault but other than that there was nothing else that I could see. After walking through a series of hallways I ended up in Wellington's, a dirty pub that had a lot of things remaining including a pool table and all the taps. In the north west corner of the pub was a dark area whose content I could not figure out. However as the flash from my camera briefly lit the room up the dirty neon image of nude women appeared on the wall. Could this be the fabled nudie bar I heard a lot of the low-life's around here talk about? My time was up so I found a worker and asked him if I could come back tomorrow. With his approval I told him when I would be coming back and we each said good bye.

I expected to see nothing new on my second trip but that assumption was quickly falsified with a the brightness of a flashlight and a slew of open doors that had previously been closed. After making my rounds on the third and fourth floors I went down to the first floor and found the door to the restaurant wide open, its locks pried open. It was a basic setup with booths being along the window and a bar along the kitchen wall but behind the restaurant in a different room was a grungy bar with low lighting. On the west wall was an inconspicuous closed door that normally most people would have ignored. However in my past experiences I have found that often the most unassuming things have the potential for a great deal of interest. As I opened the black door there it stood before me on an elevated stage, the golden pole. Everything in the strip club remained from the pool table to the stools to the taps. Though the club was better renovated it still had a run down feel to it with a large portion of its woodworking missing paint and showing general wear and tear. While walking in the vacant strip club I could continually hear the alarm tripping by its annoying screech. After awhile this became far too much for me and I decided to head into the basement.

Going back to the coal chute I noticed a doorway and upon opening it found myself staring at a dormant steam boiler. It was quite dark as the fluorescent light was partially burnt out but after taking my photo I went to the coal chute and took pictures. The basement held yet more interesting surprises as I went into Wellington's and noticed a door that I had not seen the previous day. Upon entering it a large hum of electricity filled my ears the sight of hot water tanks registered in my brain. There were two sets of water tanks, each from a completely different time era with the newer ones being not as interesting as the older. While inspecting all the piping and wiring a glimmer of light entered my left eye. Proceeding towards the light brought me into another small room with quite a bit of assorted junk. The source of the light was a man-hole in the sidewalk that was chained down to a pipe.

I would have relished this moment even more but I had an appointment and time was running out rapidly so I said goodbye to the property manager (whom invited me to come back next month) and went back to the university.