The St. Helens Hotel, also known as the St. Helens Inn, is located in Chehalis, Washington and has been registered on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) since 1991. The historic hotel is situated on the south end of the Chehalis Downtown Historic District, an NRHP-listed district.
The first St. Helens Hotel was a wooden inn built in the late 19th century and owned by William West, a prominent Chehalis pioneer. Due to a growing, modern city and an increase in travelers through the region, the hotel was rebuilt of brick and expanded between 1917 and 1921. The West family continued full or partial ownership of the hotel since its inception until 1976, when the St. Helens underwent a full conversion as an apartment house.
Named after Mt. St. Helens, the hotel was a center for civic activity in the city during its peak and hosted numerous events and guests during its run as a hotel. The St. Helens is the tallest building in Chehalis and is the core marker of the downtown district.
History
The first St. Helens Hotel, named after Mt. St. Helens, a landmark for the city located approximately to the southeast, was a three-story wood building located in the new downtown district of Chehalis. It was constructed between 1890 and 1894 by the Chehalis Land & Timber Company (CL&T) and an investment group noted for the construction boom of the Market Street downtown area, the Chehalis Improvement Company. The first portion of the hotel to be built was its turret. A bar, known as the St. Helens Tavern, opened at the site in 1891 and the hotel opened for business on May 12, 1891 after a grand ball and banquet. The downtown district was decorated with lights and over 1,000 invitations were sent to prominent people in the state. Another opening was held on May 1, 1894, at the completion of the hotel. The extravagance of the ceremonies was such that waiters and staff were hired from Chicago.
One of the purposes of the hotel was to entice an intentional shift of the commercial and downtown core to Market Boulevard. Also known as Market Street, the thoroughfare was a dirt road in the city's early beginnings, becoming a plank road after 1906. By as early as 1912, the street was paved with brick. Market Street, beginning at the hotel, was converted into a northbound one-way thoroughfare in 1960.
An addition was added in 1904 and with an increase in travelers to the city, a brick annex was constructed and completed in 1910. The $20,000 annex was connected by a hallway to the wooden inn and contained a larger basement and store front, with an added veranda on Market Street. A total of 26 rooms, decorated in Flemish green, were built and six were private, family-oriented suites. Modern amenities of the time, including private bathrooms, hot and cold water, steam heat, and telephones, were installed. The first fire escape was installed in 1909. Further remodeling was completed in 1914 and by the next year, the hotel listed 70 rooms.
By the mid-1910s, it was determined by St. Helens ownership and other businessmen in Chehalis that it was necessary to replace the wooden inn with a brick version due to a variety of factors, including the growth of the downtown area with its newer, more modern buildings, the build of the Burlington Northern Depot, and heavier use of the automobile on the Pacific Highway (eventually known as Highway 99) that traveled past the hotel. The original structure was sold and moved in mid-1917, minus the front porch and tower, three blocks to the north on Washington Avenue. It became the Sticklin Apartments, named after Louis J. Sticklin, a noted undertaker in the Twin Cities who purchased and converted the old inn. The apartment building was condemned after suffering a large fire in 1978; it was ultimately razed in 1982.
The St. Helens Hotel was constructed in several phases by one of the architects of the Lumber Exchange Building in South Bend, Washington, Charles E. Troutman, and owner, William F. West, namesake of W.F. West High School. Announcements and initial details, beginning with the first phase known as the "annex", were released throughout 1916. Initial plans included an elevator and mezzanine. The build was of such expectation that the Twin City Automobile Company signed a lease for showroom space on the bottom floor before construction began. The work on the annex began in early 1917 and the hotel was fully complete by 1921. The annex, a four-story structure located behind the hotel, was constructed before the original wooden inn was removed. The second stage involved the building of the four-story front section of the hotel. Estimated to cost $35,000, it was begun by the spring of 1918 and finished later that year, containing 100 rooms. By June 1919, West realized that the hotel needed another expansion due to continuing demand for accommodations, announcing the build of two additional floors which were to include sleeping porches and 35 additional rooms; construction began in April 1920. The final facet of the St. Helens expansion was completed in 1920, adding two stories and increasing the room total to 150.
The new St. Helens Hotel opened on January 3, 1919, with a banquet sponsored by the Chehalis Citizen's Club. Another banquet was held on the premises that day to celebrate the formation of a Lewis County congress to address construction needs and concerns. When the hotel was fully completed, an official opening was held on May 12, 1921. The hotel's ground floor was home to the St. Helens Coffee Shop and by 1924, was neighbor to the St. Helens Theater to the north. For a time, the radio station KITI-FM broadcast out of the St. Helens.
In 1975, ownership received permission to fully convert the hotel to apartments. Ongoing financial issues, along with severe building code violations, the hotel closed for a brief time in January 1976. A change in owners occurred a few months later and the site officially began to be reconstructed for use as an apartment complex. The conversion was undertaken in 1977 and the hotel was renamed as the St. Helens Inn, holding a grand opening on October 1, 1977.
Also known as the St. Helens Apartments or the Chateau St. Helens, the building's appeal began to wane after a lack of care and upgrades, reaching a low of 11 tenants by 2003. New owners that year led to a tenancy rebound by 2005, with apartment vacancies listed as only five or six. After another sale of the hotel in 2005, a years-long effort to upgrade the site was begun. At the time, the downtown district around the St. Helens was considered a "bad part of town" and the new owner evicted troublesome renters and authorized stricter tenant application requirements and conduct rules for tenants. The site was renamed by the new owners from Chateau St. Helens to the St. Helens Inn, the moniker originally used under the NRHP nomination.
Ownership and management
From the St. Helen's beginnings as a wooden building in the 1890s up until the 1970s apartment conversion, the hotel's ownership remained either fully or partially under the West family of Chehalis. William West, a respected civil servant and businessman, served as the owner from the beginning under management with his brother-in-law, John Dobson. Additional owners at the time included state senator and city mayor, Francis Donahoe. Full ownership and oversight was transferred to West's son, William Francis (W.F) on February 28, 1904, due in part to a significant loan from Dobson. In 1912, the hotel was under the new management of H.A. Kaufman who had rights to purchase the hotel outright by the end of that year. The sale did not materialize and under W.F. West's management, the hotel was converted into the brick St. Helens Hotel recognized by the NRHP. West retained a controlling stake after retiring in 1948, and he leased the building that year to a former bellhop at the hotel, Louis Pemerl, who oversaw the management of the facilities. West died on September 20, 1963, and the St. Helens was placed under the oversight of the William F. West Foundation, a scholarship program, until 1976.
Pemerl retired in 1973 and sold his ownership stake to John and Joy Bellour that year; John was a retired Seattle businessman and hotelier. Bellour's ownership lasted until early 1976, bought out for approximately $275,000 via bankruptcy proceedings in April by Lewis County Savings and Loan. The purchase officially ended the West's family ownership of the hotel. The savings and loan, under the Lewis Service Corporation, sold the hotel in 1984 to a Los Angeles-based partnership that included a Chehalis family, selling the inn four years later in 1988 to Ernie Pruett and Dee Reynolds, who reopened the hotel that March. The site was sold once again to Francelene Davidian before coming under ownership to Don Portnoy who purchased the historic inn for $950,000 in 1995. Partnering with his brother in 2000, the brothers owned the property until October 2003 when they sold the historic hotel to the Huntington brothers for approximately $667,000. Up until the sale, the hotel was in the process of foreclosure and was possibly slated to be put up for auction. Two years later in March 2005, the hotel was sold again. At a sale price of $1.4 million, the inn was purchased by Daylight Development, a Bellingham-based company.
Accidents and incidents In 1894, manager Charles C. Kramer was fired from the St. Helens Hotel under suspicion of forging checks and drug addiction. He killed himself soon afterwards.
In 1895, an inebriated Chehalis judge, W.W. Langhorne, threatened murder at the hotel. Langhorne, who brandished a pistol, stated he would "fill Edward K. Hunter with lead". The matter led to additional investigations of the judge, showing a record of abuses of his power and office.
In November 1900, a cook from Portland, recently hired and found not to be up to the task, pulled a revolver on the hotel manager and demanded enough money to pay for his return trip to Portland. The manager brushed the gun away and had the employee arrested under the intent to commit bodily harm. A masked man shot a St. Helens night watchman during a robbery of silverware in March 1902. The guard, armed with a revolver and not seriously injured, wounded the robber in return but the assailant left the premises and was not caught. During June 1908, a suspected arsonist attempted to burn the St. Helens. The attempt was one of several fires that spanned between the Twin Cities that month.
The hotel, along with the W.F. West High School, was part of a bomb threat in May 1972; no explosive was found and a member of the United States Navy who was on leave was suspected and charged.
Several fires occurred at the hotel. At the end of April 1907, a small blaze, which attracted a small crowd, started on the roof above the kitchen and was doused by the owner William West Sr.; damage was considered minimal. A grease fire from the hotel's kitchen spread to the second floor in October 1973. Suppressed in under an hour, damages were confined to several rooms and bathrooms in the annex. Losses were estimated as high as $50,000. Two fires involving the hotel's laundry room occurred in late February 1975, spreading to the second floor. Smoke reached the top floors but firefighters had the flames out within minutes; damages were confined to the laundry area and a meeting room.
Geography
The hotel is located at the south end of the Chehalis Downtown Historic District at a triangular junction of Cascade Avenue, Market Boulevard, and Park Street.