Thanks to Pirate Coast Magazine/Becky Paterson and David
Futch, we are able to bring you this article as it was written in
the May, 2004 edition. It was written only as David Futch could
write it, and we wouldn’t change a thing. Futch is currently a
writer in Los Angeles.
Reprinted from Pirate Coast Magazine
Written by David Futch • Copyright David Futch
HISTORY
The night Hell caught fi re, people were running
naked in the streets. Firefi ghters were stunned
at the site of nude Hotel Hell tenants pulling
burning mattresses from a downstairs apartment,
willing to risk their skins to save their East Railroad
Avenue home in the early morning blaze.
One fi refi ghter turned to then-owner Mark
Wyman, who had at least found a towel to wrap
around himself, and asked if Wyman really wanted
the blaze put out. After all, hell had seen better days.
70 years of wear and tear gave the boardinghouse a
certain ghetto charm.
The fi refi ghters didn’t wait for Wyman to think
about the offer. Hotel Hell was saved that night in
1983, and downtown Boca Grande may have been
saved in the process.
The cypress and pine building next to the
Barnichol Hardware Store was called the Quick
Hotel in the 1920s. Whether or not that was the
original name when it was built circa 1917 is unknown.
So is the name of the fi rst owner/builder.
The Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railroad
could have built it to house workers. Others say
the giant chemical company responsible for building
The Gasparilla Inn had a hand in Hell. Former owner
of the hotel Hank Browne, a restoration architect
who was schooled at the University of Virginia, and
his wife, Susie, believed that the hotel was built by
the railroad, basing his theory mostly on the building
layout.
“They were small rooms with a kitchen in the
back to feed a host of people,” Brown said.
Mack Mickle and his wife Blonnie owned and ran
the place during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. They
rented rooms and had a kitchen large enough to
feed tenants and outsiders looking for a hot meal,
which qualifi es as the island’s fi rst restaurant.
Blonnie and Dora Dishong, who became the wife
of Temptation builder/owner Homer Addison, ran
Blonnie’s Beauty Salon out of the Quick Hotel.
Ruby and Pete Scott owned the place in the mid-
1970s when Mark Wyman, a Chicago native,
decided he wanted to buy it. After the closing,
Wyman tried his best to manage Hotel Hell from
the Windy City. He found the task “nothing but hell
trying to get rent from people living there or keep
the building from collapsing. It was hell and I named
it so.
“When I bought the place, it was written in the
contract that I couldn’t raise the rent or kick out the
old people who lived there. Ruby Scott was holding
paper on the building and made sure I was taking
care of them. I had to get them on federal-subsidized
rent. They were only paying $100 a month. I was
back-and-forth between Boca Grande and Chicago,
and was having to deal with this. I had two or three
deaths in there over a two-year period. It was hell.
That’s why I named it Hotel Hell. It WAS hell.“
Downtown Boca Grande had reached a state of
decay in the 1970s. Children used the train station
windows for target practice, and there was talk of
tearing the depot down. The same went for the old
school house, now the Boca Grande Community
Center. Children used to play hide and seek there, or
use it for more target practice.
Most of the rooms in Hotel Hell were well
ventilated (i.e. there were holes in the walls, allowing
visitors to look into the apartments). Roaches so
heavily populated the interior that the bugs had no
fear, their sheer numbers bolstering their courage.
Windy City Wyman offi cially renamed the place
Hotel Hell on the tax rolls. He started a Laundromat
that the tenants named “Wy Man Chings,” as in kaching.
Ching’s was open 24 hours a day and
Wyman gave tenants free reign of the 50 cent a
load machines.
Wy Man Ching’s motto was “We doze, but never
close.” It never made Wyman any money because
tenants would break into the machines boxes and
take the quarters to buy booze at The Temptation.
44 GASPARILLA MAGAZINE March/April 2020