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Year: Mid to Late 1900's. Tony Miller built the Lakeview House which burned to the ground in 1931. He went on to build the Champlain.
Location: Front St & Missisauga St. Orillia.
Status: Derelict, but supposedly under renovation.
Accessibility: Someone keeps boarding up the back door. If it's closed you can always climb the fire escape to look for possible entrances. There's also an open window hidden in an alcove on the south side.
Hazards: Broken glass, rat droppings, and attack pigeons (yes, they fly at you).
Interesting features: Old stuff mixed with new stuff.
Recommendation: It's interesting to compare this place to a modern hotel. If you can get in, it's a good 45 minute tour. I will be doing it again sometime for sure.
Behold the Photo Gallery
This place had beckoned to me pretty much every time I walked past it for as long as I can remember. After doing the Malt Plant, I'd mentioned to Deli that it would be neat to see inside the Champlain sometime. He agreed. As fate would have it, Deli was out with some buddies one night, one who decided to show them all something 'neat'. Lo and behold, he pulls into the parking lot behind the Champlain. Deli raved to me about it later that evening, and I agreed: He had to take me on a tour of the place.
We headed down to the hotel 2 cold nights later. Unlike
the first time
Deli was there, the back basement door was open.
So we simply waltzed across the parking lot and disappeared
inside. It was pitch black, due to the boarded up windows and
lack of electric lighting. I don't think it'd be much better
in the daytime either. Anyways...
We explored every room on every floor. The basement and ground
floor, which contain the (now derelict) heart of the building, are
much more highly interesting than the 2nd and 3rd, which contain
lots of small empty rooms with little in them. The toilets and
other fixtures
have all been removed - just a tub remains in each
bathroom. There is gaudy wallpaper everywhere, highlighted with some
sort of teak or oak (or is that stained pine?) skirting. It's like
an odd evolution from the 50's to the 80's all in one building.
Now, were there a route to the roof from the top floor, that would
have been excellent, instead, there was just a lot of dead ends. And
scary pigeons. So we returned to the basement to take another look
at the mechanical stuff; boilers, appliances, a furnace. It used to
be alive down here. And warm for that matter! We were standing in
the main boiler room freezing our butts off. And well, we'd seen a lot,
so we called it a night.
-sema4
[Sema4's original page on his Champlain Hotel expedition can be found here.
-Asher]
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