|
Preliminaries About Everything Necessitous News Offsite Links Comical Characters Tresspass Act (Ont.) Peregrination Buildings Ontario Barrie City Hall Bell's Grist Mill Brick Works Rantech Station Canadian Malting Champlain Hotel Colony Hotel »Hilton Hotel Mayfield S.S. Ontario Place Thane Smelter Royal York Skydome St. Joseph's Union Station Whitby Psych Montreal O'Keefe Brewery U.S. Of A. MCS Ramada Inn U of M Storm Drains Transit & Utility Construction Expeditions Palavering Sign Guestbook View Guestbook |
|
|
|
Year: Nineteen-something to today. Location: 145 Richmond St. W., Toronto Status: Open and too expensive for our modest means. Accessibility: Walk right on in. We didn't have any trouble snooping all around the building without talking to any employees (and I even got a room key). Hazards: While the Hilton no doubt has some areas that are off-limits to the public solely for reasons of liability, we made it to very few of them during our short-lived infiltration of it, so it's hard to say how hazardous the building is overall. Probably not very. Interesting features: While we haven't yet accessed any of the machine rooms, the employee areas are their own little world and are quite difficult to find one's way back out of... Recommendation: Why not? It's as interesting as any, even if they seem good about keeping the machine rooms locked. August 23rd, 2001 Asher, Krall, Dain Bramaged, NFF and I visited the Hilton Hotel in the same infiltration-oriented weekend as the Colony and Lower Bay. At the time, we were in Toronto without anywhere to stay and decided to price a few hotels in the area. One of the first we went to was the Hilton, where we decided we couldn't afford a room, but got an elevator anyway. We took it to the top floor, which was rather opulent and conventionesque. We wandered about and came across a reception desk, with a hallway conveniently located nearby running through the wall behind it. We took this hall to get past reception, but it soon became clear that this wasn't simply an easy way around, but the entrance to a completely different part of the hotel. We ended up in a small, cramped staircase with several exits scattered around, and wound our way through some more small hallways for a while before deciding to head upwards at one staircase to see what we could find. What we found was several locked doors clearly marked as machine rooms on floors higher than the one the elevator stops at, and at the top, a hatch to the roof. A quick inspection of this showed that it was lifted mechanically, by some kind of hydraulic device, to which the power was disconnected by means of a small box on the wall with a tiny, rather insignificant keyhole. Not having any street-cleaner bristles on hand at the time, we pushed ineffectually at the hatch for a while before despondently turning back. We boarded an employee elevator and had it drop us off on the lowest floor it would access. This turned out to be the one the laundry chutes emptied into, and I believe there was a kitchen and other such mundane facilities to be found. Our journey through this magical land was cut short, though, by a stern woman behind a desk who questioned us loudly as the five of us tried to march past her desk as if we belonged there more than anywhere else in the world. She kindly explained that we would have to take the elevator back up to some floor or another. We did so, and did not, in fact, find ourselves back in the standard visitor areas. Instead, we were in some odd white hallway near a large kitchen and with closed doors into several other rooms. We didn't look around here for long, as an odd-looking Chinese man with a moustache carrying a single glass of milk began eyeing us so we requested directions. He hurriedly (and with some confusion) directed us back to the elevator, to another mysterious floor. When we reached this floor, the elevator doors opened to what appeared to be an unattended security desk. We stepped out and took a turn to the right, where two men were talking to each other across a counter and paying us no heed whatsoever. Only when we conspicuously failed to busy ourselves with ordinary, day-to-day teenage custodial staff affairs did the one man ask us if he could help us. We explained our predicament, and he expressed complete bafflement as to how we managed to get there at all. "You're not even supposed to see this place," he told us, before directing us to a door conveniently located a few feet to his left which let us out into a dark alley outside of the hotel and locked behind us. And that, friends, was the Hilton. -Flame0ut . |