Hotel Charlevoix aka The Charlevoix Building.
Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Winter, 2007.
The Charlevoix Building as seen in 1922.
Built in 1905 & originally a hotel, the Charlevoix Building's 12 stories changed to hold apartments, then union offices before closing in the 80's.
That is the sum of the knowledge I could acquire through every internet source and even a visit to the Detroit Public Library.
Really disappointing.
On left - Charlevoix in 1953; on right - Charlevoix nearly 54 years later.
The Charlevoix from West Elizabeth Street.
If you look at the building closely you can see the faded remnants of the old painted facade.
The basement was as dark as my dream woman & this was the last building we went into without a flashlight.
Lesson learned.
What the?!?
Quite the surprise as we continued into the building; someone had removed the central staircase!
(This is a picture looking upwards from the ground floor through the central hole created by gutting the staircase.)
Thankfully, there was a ladder that aided us in getting to the next floor.
It was quite shady; but it did the job.
Looking around; the building was quite empty.
...but not entirely; some office furniture was left over from its last days.
With the only interior staircase missing; we needed to sweep the building and weigh our options for reaching other floors.
This was the fire escape; which looked as if it were the original from 1905. Completely unsafe and shady as could be. I walked about half of a floor of this fire escape and said "fuck this" and headed back into the building.
(I later learned that 2 of the Survival Crackas and the DetroitBlog guy both roofed the building by going up these outdoor fire escapes. I can't state the credit I give them for that. Damn.)
This is what we decided to do instead. We used the ladder from the first part to go through a hole in the ceiling and get to the top of the light court.
The view upwards from said light court.
The third floor was quite similar to the second floor.
We again took a look at the fire escape and decided against it. (Actually, this is where I tried half of the floor and decided against it.)
Evaluating our options; we propped the ladder atop the light court up to a 4th floor window.
It was shadier than that sounds. We weighed the worth of the whole expedition and we concluded that my friend would head up the ladder and take a look around the fourth floor.
My friend came back stating the 4th floor was pretty much the same...nothing worth seeing. I gave him my camera so he could take a few pictures.
The fact that there was some event occurring on this day didn't help our persuasion to take the staircase; but in all actuality, I doubt my friend or I would have roofed the hotel.
We settled for our personal bests of the 3rd and 4th floors and decided to move along.
To culminate our whole Charlevoix experience; we started to hear yelling as we made our way down the maze of floor entrances.
It ends up the owner was parking cars (?) or just around the property and heard us inside. We got a lecture about how exploring abandoned buildings is unsafe and how Detroit Police are cracking down on urban explorers and arresting them.
We listened and pondered asking him to let us see the Park Avenue Building (the next door building he was entering), but decided against it and went on our way.
Navi.
Sources: 1. Forum Member Allan's Account on UrbanPlanet.org
2. DetroitBlog
4. Detroit Public Library Burton Collection