31: Murphy & Johnson Saloon – 1894, 551 North Market Boulevard

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This building was constructed after the Washington Hotel. The beams to the second floor were built into the north wall of the Hotel which meant that the two buildings shared a common wall. After the 1998 fire that destroyed the building, it was gutted and rebuilt with its own walls so the second floor and roof no longer would depend on the Hotel wall for support. When the north wall was torn down, ground floor windows were discovered facing northwest toward the west side of Chehalis. In other words, when the building was constructed, there were no other buildings located north.

Vincent Paniczko (Polish spelling later changed to Panesko) purchased the building in 1912 and the Panesko family owned it until 1998. From 1895 until 1956, the upstairs contained one-room apartments that could be rented by the night. There were two bathrooms upstairs. One was for common use by the renters and only contained a sink and toilet. The up front apartment facing Market Street was a luxury suite with a bathtub, sink and toilet.

Vince Panesko, grandson of Vincent, remembers spending the summer of 1956 tearing out the inner walls to open up the upstairs into one big room. The room was used for storage by Leo Waldock’s hardware store which occupied the building in the late 1940s into the 1960s until the hardware store was moved to the Elks Club Building further south on Market Street (see #40)

The elder Panesko recalled the building during the 1895-1912 time frame. Mr. Panesko lived on a homestead in central Lewis County and sustained himself by farming. Like all homesteaders in central Lewis County, he would make a couple trips a year to Chehalis to purchase sacks of sugar and flour, and other basic provisions for cooking. He would also sell honey and other products he raised on his farm. Because the only mode of transportation was horses, and travel was on puncheon (plank) roads, a trip from central Lewis County to Chehalis took one day. Homesteaders would make the trip to Chehalis on their horses or with a horse and buggy, rent a room in the upstairs of the building, purchase supplies and return home the following day.

Mr. Panesko moved to Chehalis in 1912, and purchased the building. At some point, he opened the Busy Bee Variety Store and operated it into the late 1930s. In the 1930s and 1940s, Mr. Panesko rented the upstairs to a madam who operated a bordello. The madam and ladies occupied the front apartment with the bathtub. At the time, there were three bordellos in Chehalis. During World War II, troops from Fort Lewis would stop at the Chehalis train depot to load up with water and fuel - the trains were steam engines which needed to stop periodically to reload with water. The Chehalis stop lasted about an hour. At the age of five or six, young Vince remembers observing a line of soldiers on the back stairs of the building. At the time he never thought anything about it, but eventually came to understand that most likely, all three bordellos thrived on the business that troop trains provided to the Chehalis economy. It is believed those bordellos ceased operations in the early 1950s. The bordello in this building closed in the late 1940s and the upstairs has been used for storage since that time.