King Edward Hotel

Teaming up with T-Bone on Doors during Doors Open, we went to have a look at the King Edward. Eager to discover the hotel's secrets, we were sad to see Doors Open had actually made our intended explorations slightly more difficult. But, despite the numberous 'helpful' volunteers, we got into a back stairwell and climbed up to the third floor. Surprisingly, it was dim, dirty, and obviously unused- most of the rooms had been permanently locked up. The fourth floor was nearly identical to the third- winding, dimly lit, confusing hallways stuffy with old carpet and unused rooms.
We went up some more stairs, to the occupied hotel levels. These were laid out in a seemingly random and confusing fashion, compared to boring, symmetrical, modern hotel floors. One of the many stairwells we found took us up to a door, which went to some steep metal stairs into a small elevator mech room. This contained an unlocked roof door, so we went out for a quick look. It turned out to be one of the lower rooftops, so we went back inside to search for a different stairwell.
The one we chose turned out to be a winner, as it led us all the way up to the ballroom level. Emerging into a back area on the level, voices could be heard nearby. We were both eager to see the disused Crystal Ballroom, but peeking around a corner, we could see a Doors open tour group inside. We contented ourselves by roaming around the upper back service areas, out of sight. The rooms here were partially wrecked, as if a renovation had started but never moved past ripping out the old; and now miscellaneous junk items had begun to take up residence. After searching through some awesome stairwells filled with peeling paint for doors onto the highest roof, we were stopped by a couple of promising, but locked doors. With nothing left to explore but the basement, we took the stairs down, down, down.
On the ground floor of the hotel, we searched for a way into the basement. Soon we found a route that lead through a kitchen service area, and we stopped for a break in the employee locker room. On a whim, we took an odd back door out of the locker room, which led to a wonderful series of dirty passages & winding metal stairs that went even further down. We descended hopefully down a set of stairs which led, to our delight, right into the basement boiler room! It was large, with a high ceiling, and crammed with big, roaring machines. Two massive old furnaces occupied half the room, but sat silent and unused. Their shiny, newer replacements roared and emitted heat around them. There were many individual boilers, furnaces, a big electrical box, and a huge compressor. We didn't want to linger too long, so I grabbed some photos and we scurried out.
Back up on the basement employee level, we passed by the kitchen, laundry, shops, & employees-only cafeteria. We emerged into a conference room where a couple cooks were setting out a buffet lunch. I mistakenly opened a setof doors into the room next door, and very nearly walked right into a seminar in progress- some people turned and stared as I quickly backed up and shut the door.
After that, we figured we'd seen most of the King Eddy, and with time ticking down on Doors Open, we left to hit some more buildings.