Est. 1928 · National Register of Historic Places · Fox River Valley Architecture · Big Band Era Entertainment History
Colonel Edward J. Baker inherited wealth from John Gates, founder of Texaco Oil, and channeled it toward an ambitious vision for his hometown of St. Charles, Illinois. In 1926, construction began on a site that had served as a municipal garbage dump at the Main Street bridge over the Fox River. The construction cost is reported as approximately $1.25 million in some sources; the St. Charles History Museum instead describes the project as a $600,000 hotel.
The building opened June 2, 1928, hosting a dinner for 301 guests. Initial room rates were $2.50 per night. The Spanish-Moroccan architectural design was distinctive for the Fox River Valley region, and the hotel's amenities were genuinely innovative: an on-site hydroelectric facility powered the building, a parking garage with Hudson dealership and Texaco station opened in 1930, a radio station operated from the tower, and a pipe organ with two consoles was installed.
The Rainbow Room on the hotel's upper floor hosted the era's leading performers — Louis Armstrong, Lawrence Welk, Tommy Dorsey, Guy Lombardo, and Eddie Duchin among them — on what its operators promoted as the first lighted dance floor of its kind: 2,620 individual lights in red, green, blue, and amber patterns, 63,000 watts total.
After Colonel Baker's death in 1959, his niece Dellora Norris operated the property until 1970, when it was donated to Lutheran Social Services and repurposed as assisted living. Local businessmen Craig Frank and Neil Johnson purchased the hotel in 1996 for $9 million in restoration investment. Following foreclosure, Rowena and Joe Salas acquired the property in 2003 and continue operating it as a hotel and event venue. The Hotel Baker maintains its National Register of Historic Places listing.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Baker
- https://www.stcmuseum.org/history-news/2023/3/6/hotel-baker
- https://www.shawlocal.com/kane-county-chronicle/2023/10/20/inside-st-charles-haunted-history/
ApparitionsPhantom soundsPhantom voicesTouching/pushingResidual haunting
The sixth floor of Hotel Baker carries a consistent reputation. When it functioned as the employee dormitory, chambermaids lived and worked out of this space. According to the account that has circulated in St. Charles paranormal tradition for decades, one chambermaid drowned herself in the adjacent Fox River after being jilted by a lover on their wedding day. A variant of the story places the jilting not at the altar but at a poker table — the lover was a hotel employee who abandoned the relationship after a gambling loss.
No documentary evidence of a chambermaid's drowning in the Fox River has been produced, and investigators who attempted to trace the account in the 1970s — the period the legend places the death — found no records. The Shaw Local Kane County Chronicle's 2023 retrospective on St. Charles haunted history noted the unresolved status of the search.
What has been documented are guest accounts. A user comment on a paranormal-directory page describes a group of friends who stayed on the sixth floor hearing moaning near the storage room at 3:37 a.m.; it is an individual visitor report, not an independently documented account. Other guests have reported voices and felt their bedding pulled by unseen forces in the penthouse suite.
Harriet Rockwell Baker, wife of the founder, died of a heart attack in 1940. A user comment on a paranormal-directory page says she is believed to haunt the hotel's top-floor balcony; this is an individual visitor report, not an independently documented account.
The hotel itself has acknowledged its paranormal reputation and the chambermaid legend has been featured in regional media.
Notable Entities
The ChambermaidHarriet Rockwell Baker
