Whispers Across Time

By Stuart Coates

The first time Tiffany Abernathy travels through time is in 1898, right before her parents are killed. An automobile runs their carriage off the road. Tiffany is thrown into a nearby tree, while her parents plunge to their deaths at the bottom of a ravine. As Tiffany hangs from its limbs, the tree is struck by lightning; strangely, Tiffany finds herself transported decades into the future.

It wont be the last time. Although Tiffany eventually returns to 1898, in 1910, an even bigger shock comes her way. Directly following her wedding, an electric shock sends her to the year 2011. Tiffany understands what has occurred, but her great-granddaughter, Kate Dixon, does not. Suddenly, Kate finds herself transported to the year 1910. Not only that, but she is inhabiting the body of Mrs. Tiffany Abernathy Nichols.

A modern science experiment has created a black hole deep beneath the surface of Portland, Maine. Time travel occurs through this black hole, but the ramifications are much more severe than body-swapping. Because of the black hole, the trajectory of Earth in 1910 has been thrown into the path of Halleys Comet and certain destruction. Will Tiffany and Kate be able to fix what has been done, or will they also die, each trapped in the body of the other?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475911435

Stuart Coates

Stuart Coates is a former software engineer with twenty years of experience in software development. He is now a full-time science fiction novelist. He currently lives in Quebec, Canada.

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Contents

On the outskirts of Poland Springs, Maine, June 12, 1898

Tiffany Abernathy Nichols

The Eastlake

The little missing passenger liner

once known as… Titanic

An Experiment Runs Amuck

New York City

Portland

Suite #916

Journey to the Past

The Destroyer of Worlds

The Roof

It’s the End of the World

The Weather

The Poland Springs Conference, Day One:

Dr. Rutherford

The Poland Springs Conference, Day Two:

The Titanic Clue

The Mistaken Messiah

The London Floods

The Future is… ?

A Possible Solution

The Second Staff

The Sanctuary Chamber

The Geneva Conference

Captain Dmitri Vladimirovich

The Caspergenium Factor

St. Petersburg

The Vladimirovich

The Seamstress

The Arctic

The Antarctic

Earth Shifts Orbit

The Destroyer Approaches

The Wave

Aftermath

Trek through Nowhere

The Casualties

Beginnings

January 24, 1911

For my very dear friends, Heather and Paige, both of whom are the inspirations for this fictional novel and my closest lifetime friends. Your true friendships transcend time. Both of you have brought out the very best in me. That is what the very best friends do.

Stuart, May 15, 2011

Isaiah 24:1

American King James Version

Behold, the LORD makes the Earth empty, and makes it waste, and turns it upside down, and scatters abroad the inhabitants thereof.

ProloguE

On the outskirts of Poland Springs, Maine, June 12, 1898

A massive electrical storm had been brewing in the evening sky. Chain lightning was striking the ground about the back roads now traveled by Peter and Jennifer Abernathy, the world’s richest couple. They had with them their only daughter of 12, Tiffany, in their horse-drawn carriage.

The Abernathys and driver of the carriage found themselves on a narrow, winding road. They had missed the turnoff. They were in the process of reversing their course, taking up the entire path to make the full turn back in the opposite direction when an internal combustion powered Oldsmobile, rarely seen this far out of town on these back roads, rounded the bend where the Abernathys’ carriage was performing its turn.

Peter Abernathy had been becoming more and more ill for the past seven months from diabetes. Insulin was still undiscovered as a means of controlling his condition in 1898. He was suffering from excessive thirst, had definitely lost weight in the last three months and his vision was blurred.

Although it was getting noticeably dark, he, nevertheless, could see the faint headlamps of the Oldsmobile and he heard the sound of its noisy, internal-combustion engine becoming visible around the bend in the pothole-filled road.

He had only seconds to react. Both his wife and his only daughter were inside the carriage with him. The carriage was exactly perpendicular to the road. The gasoline powered Oldsmobile would strike the carriage broadside in scant seconds.

There was a deep ravine to the right-hand side of the road and from the angle of approach of the Oldsmobile, it became immediately apparent to Peter Abernathy that when the collision took place, the carriage, the driver, the horses and all three occupants inside the carriage would be sent hurling into the ravine.

On the opposite side of the carriage, the windows had been left open. Peter Abernathy, although extremely weak from his debilitating condition, grabbed his daughter from behind and twisted her through the window. He threw her clear of the carriage which was struck three seconds later by the curved dashboard and gasoline tank of the Oldsmobile that was swerving to the right trying to avoid the collision. The rear of the automobile slid directly into the carriage, the vehicles striking broadside to each other.

Tiffany had landed in a tree overhanging the ravine from her father’s throw. Lightning struck the tree with Tiffany clinging to it. Tiffany Abernathy did not seem harmed in any way as the electricity of the lightning pulsated through the tree she was clutching, trillions upon trillions of volts passing through her body.

Exposure to such a massive shock had altered her biochemistry forever, activating a recessive gene deep down at the smallest level inside each of her DNA. Her eyes closed. She seemed to drift temporarily away from living.

She thought to herself she must have died upon impact and that her soul had left her body. In fact, her entire body and soul had transformed into purest electricity through the massive shock to her body. It had lost all of its physical form.

The storm clouds above extended all the way up through the Earth’s atmosphere to its outer limits. She passed up through all layers of this storm and continued upward beyond the storm clouds, in purest electrical form, and completely off the face of the Earth.

Rapidly accelerating to anything beyond which she had ever experienced, her speed would soon reach the speed of light, transmitted as pure electricity.

Strangely enough, even though she was in an airless void, in this purest electrical form, she did not need to breathe. She no longer had a physical body and yet she still existed.

She could feel herself being rotated in a clockwise direction as she spun upward into outer space, becoming smaller and smaller with each passing instant as she continued to accelerate upward above the Earth.

She temporarily lost consciousness as she approached a location beyond the planet. Tiffany Abernathy was entering a vortex between two periods in Earth’s history. At one opening, where she had entered, it was the present time of 1898. Where she would emerge at the other opening of the vortex was a far different, distant era.

She could see ahead of her, below, what she perceived to be the entire Earth, the place where she had been only moments ago—or so she thought. She had no idea how much time had passed when she became conscious once again.

She could now see there were strange looking motorized vehicles, horseless carriages of all sizes and shapes, all of which she had never before seen, approaching a building with a long driveway. The building was a futuristic-looking hotel of some kind. A roadside sign with curly flourishes advertising the hotel at the edge of the long driveway where it intersected with the paved road read, ~Eastlake Park Hotel ~ Come Spend a Grand Time with us ~.

Some sort of gray matter—a harder looking substance—had replaced the dirt road and the traffic had certainly multiplied perhaps 500 fold from what she had ever known. There were no buggies, nor horses, nor stables for which to bed any animal.

It was then that she realized something was missing. She completely lacked a physical form. She drifted over the traffic below, still several hundred feet off the ground, westward, beyond the bustling congestion and the noise, and into the countryside on the outskirts of this, to her, completely foreign looking city.

She continued to descend and found herself a little more than 7 feet above the ground, hovering over her very own body that had materialized below her. A dirt path had replaced the hardened roadway surface and she could now feel beneath her feet. Yet, she not only existed in her own body, but she also saw everything from the perspective of a disembodied spirit, hovering over her younger self, as she saw herself begin to slowly walk up the dirt path.

At the far end of the pathway, there was a farmhouse. The pathway ended. She looked to her left and viewed a mailbox. The mailbox had an address and a name she did not recognize—a Mrs. Grace Dixon.

She approached the porch of the farmhouse, climbed its two short steps onto the small porch, raised her right hand in a closed, loosely clenched fist, but then saw a golden, metallic doorknocker. She unclenched her fist, lifted the knocker, but before the knocker struck the front door, the door opened.

It was the house’s owner, Mrs. Dixon. She was an older woman, in her early to mid-60s, slightly graying hair, but had hardly a wrinkle on her face. She had held her age well. Time had been kind to her. Grace had always had an almost sixth sense, premonitions, and an awareness of the immediate future, as well as an awareness of the past. She transcended time itself, as if somehow removed partially from it, as an observer.

Grace softly spoke to the young child before her, almost in a pleasant whisper, Hello, Tiffany. Are you lost?

Tiffany responded to Grace, Yes, I’m Tiffany. How did you know who I am?

Grace smiled, releasing an elf-like laugh and said to her, I’ve always known who you are.

Tiffany responded to her laugh by saying, You laugh like I do. Who taught you to laugh like me?

Grace replied, You did. You got your laugh from your mother, Jennifer, didn’t you, Tiffany?

Yes! How do you know my mother?

We’re all family. You taught me how to laugh, Tiffany—years ago, for me, but years from now, for you.

Tiffany gave Grace the strangest look. She did not understand Grace’s almost-riddle.

Tiffany asked her, "What do you mean by that? Who are you?"

Grace answered, You may call me Grace. You always did. Our past always catches up with us, doesn’t it, Tiffany?

"Your name is Grace? Where am I?" she asked, almost in a whisper.

"Welcome to the future, Grandma. I am your granddaughter. Won’t you please come in? Today brings a rather interesting twist in time for you and me, wouldn’t you say, Miss Tiffany Abernathy? I’ve been expecting you for some time. Yes, indeed, for quite some time it appears."

Mrs. Grace Dixon, a recent widow, emphasized the word quite in such a way that she knew that the girl before her was a stranger to this time.

Tiffany’s non-corporeal presence above her began to drift away and upward once more as she saw herself entering the home of a Mrs. Grace Dixon on the outskirts of what most certainly was a futuristic time to the young girl.

She continued upward, as if drawn away from the Earth by an unseen force, back into outer space, in spirit form and then she began to fall once more.

Continuing to fall—she recognized she was now falling—as whatever force had been exerted from outer space was no longer present. She shut her eyes (not that she had eyes anymore, but she certainly felt as if she still had them) and if she had had arms, she would have raised them in front of her to protect herself from the collision with the tree overhanging the ravine, which she was rapidly approaching as she fell from the sky. She felt no impact, feeling no pain or discomfort whatsoever.

She was not injured. She was not hurt in any way. This was all so strange to her and yet, she was indeed back on the Earth.

Tiffany appeared to have absorbed the electrical current flowing through her with no ill effects to her person whatsoever. There was something very different about this child.

Her eyelids began to flutter, in a dream-like state, and she opened her eyes once more, unharmed, as if she were only reawakening.

Tiffany Abernathy had been thrown clear of the accident and she witnessed all four remaining people in the vehicles (two of which were her parents) the horse-drawn carriage and the horseless carriage.

Smashing into each other, they became locked together, and driven by their momentum, were sent hurtling down the ravine, some 830 feet below the narrow roadway, flipping over many times on their descent onto the large rocks below on the shoreline.

The gas tank ruptured on the Oldsmobile wreckage at the bottom of the ravine, igniting after becoming interlocked with the carriage. The now dead drivers of each vehicle, Tiffany’s parents, and a now dead horse, still attached to the carriage, impaled on the rocks below.

This is what Tiffany Abernathy witnessed, as she clung to a tree jutting out over the top of the ravine, where her forward motion had finally stopped.

In those scant instants, Tiffany Abernathy became the youngest multi-multi-billionairess, having a net worth of over $360 billion. She would now inherit the combined family fortunes of Peter and Jennifer Abernathy as their empire’s sole surviving heir. The richest child in the world now felt like the poorest having just become orphaned.

Chapter 1

Tiffany Abernathy Nichols

Thursday, July 7, 1910, Portland, Maine

It was snowing—snowing—on July 7, 1910, in Portland, Maine. The President of the United States, William Howard Taft, visited the Eastlake Hotel. Brought by horse-drawn carriage into Old Orchard Beach, he spoke to crowds at Deering Oaks Park. After, he returned to the Eastlake to rest and that evening he was honored at a banquet attended by 700 people.

Tiffany Abernathy was now 24, brown-haired, dark-eyed, of medium build, 5 feet 5 and one-half inches in height.

Tiffany had married Albert Nichols on July 3, 1910 at St. Mark’s Chapel in Poland Springs, Maine. Albert Nichols was someone of modest means, but a true and honest man she fell in love with after having met him three years earlier. The newly wedded Albert and Tiffany Nichols were on their honeymoon at the Eastlake Hotel.

The family fortune had almost doubled in the last 12 years since that fateful accident claimed the lives of her father and mother. Tiffany Abernethy, now Tiffany Nichols, was the richest woman in the world.

The term miser was synonymous with the name Tiffany. Webster’s Dictionary defined a Tiffany-Miser as  . . . the real life, female counterpart representative of a Scrooge-like character only Charles Dickens, himself, could have invented in his most mean-spirited moment.

Her signature arrogantly bore only her first name and her name became almost infamous throughout all parts of the globe.

Her maiden name being Abernathy, and the only offspring, she was the sole heir to the Abernathy Fortune. Twelve years earlier, she inherited an amount then estimated at 360 billion, 435 million American dollars at 12 years of age, after the sudden deaths of both of her parents in a freak accident involving their overturned horse-drawn carriage.

Among the more notable, Mrs. Tiffany Nichols attended at the banquet.

On this night, she had in her possession a million dollar necklace. She was returning from the banquet with her husband, Albert, within the confines of the hotel. The President had detained her husband in conversation. Tiffany awaited Albert in the corridor outside the Spanish Baronial Dining Room, later known as the Eastlake Ballroom in 2011.

Her footsteps hastened down the corridor to a dead run as she ran around a corner and deliberately tore off the bottom half of her garment to keep from tripping. She was being pursued by two barrel-chested, heavyset men.

As she rounded the corner in the hallway, tearing off the last of her evening gown with the lower portion of her undergarments, she heavily collided with a man in his early 50s. He was over 6 feet in height, bearded, and had been wearing a top hat that had been knocked off his head resulting from their collision.

She exclaimed breathlessly to him, Try to detain them, while I—

She glanced quickly over her shoulder frantically trying to catch a glimpse of how far behind the two men who had been pursuing her were.

I beg your pardon, Madam.

A note of recognition struck him, as she was the richest woman in the world. He asked her while looking down at her bare legs, Aren’t you Tiffany Nichols? They said you were—

She interrupted him, Yes! Yes, I am. Here, hold these!

She passed him the torn undergarments and the shreds of the lower part of her evening gown, placing the torn remnants in his arms, pushed him aside and once more began running down the hallway.

He looked back at her, whispering under his breath, Astonishing! That young newlywed is simply astonishing!

The man was placing his top hat back on his head after draping the torn clothing over his right forearm when he was again knocked completely sideways off his feet and he stumbled, the upper half of his body striking against the corridor wall after being shoved by the two barrel-chested men pursuing Tiffany.

What the devil? he responded, trying to regain his composure to try to attempt to get back on his feet.

She had made her way to the far end of the corridor, where six elevator shafts were located. Hastily, she pressed the DOWN button. An empty elevator arrived at the third shaft on the right and its doors opened. She quickly rushed in and believed herself to be safe when the doors closed, but her two pursuers forced the elevator doors open and began assaulting Mrs. Nichols.

The elevator began to malfunction halfway through its descent and it started to plummet through the shaft.

The malfunction was deliberate sabotage as a planned assassination of President Taft, but the would-be thieves end up trapped inside the remains of the elevator. The trap door was sealed off. The counterweight went through the pulley system, crashing into the roof of the elevator at the very bottom of the shaft. The seal was airtight and the thieves suffocate inside, unable to escape.

Although Tiffany Nichols had entered the elevator with the thieves, her body would not be found later in the remains of the elevator wreckage with the other two bodies of her assailants.

Deep down within each of her DNA, lay a dormant, recessive gene that would only become active upon receiving a severe electrical shock, due to the accident she had been in 12 years earlier. Ever since that time, if Tiffany were to receive a massive charge of electricity, her body would transform into pure electrical current, matching the electrical current flowing through her body while receiving such a shock. The electrical shock indeed had to be massive.

By pure random chance, there was an enormous electrical storm occurring high over the Eastlake Hotel at that very moment. Lightning bolts were flashing all around the vicinity of the 12-storey hotel.

The steel girders used to construct the framework of the hotel made the entire structure act as a huge lightning rod, drawing the electrical flashes to it from the storm overhead.

As the elevator jerked sideways in its descent, Tiffany fell heavily against the electrical panel just as lightning struck the Eastlake from the massive storm, which was now at its peak intensity directly over the hotel.

Trillions upon trillions of volts were pulsated through the electrical system of the building and into Tiffany’s grounded body as her feet struck the floor from the elevator impact in the sub-sub-basement at the bottom of the shaft.

However, the instant before the elevator struck, Tiffany felt herself being raised up from the floor, through the elevator roof, up through the entire shaft and through the roof of the hotel.

She thought to herself she must have died upon impact and that her soul had left her body. In fact, it had been her entire body that had been converted into pure electricity through the massive shock to her body and had made it lose all of its physical form.

The storm clouds ahead and above the hotel extended all the way up through the Earth’s atmosphere to its outer limits. She passed up through all layers of this storm and continued upward beyond the clouds, in purest electrical form, and completely off the face of the Earth.

Rapidly accelerating to a speed that she had experienced only once before, some 12 years earlier, her speed reached the speed of light as a formless being transmitted as pure electricity.

Ahead of her, in this endless void, she could feel herself still in motion accelerating towards what she perceived to be a small hole in space. Appearing to be completely black and growing larger to her perception, she was being pulled towards what could only be described as a black hole penetrating space and piercing through time itself. It was exerting its own form of gravity, a very powerful field of gravity unlike she had ever experienced in her lifetime. She was drawn into and began to fall through this miniature black hole in outer space.

Strangely enough, even though she was in an airless void, in this purest electrical form, she did not need to breathe. She no longer had a physical body and yet she still existed.

The miniature black hole she was falling into was forming a vortex between two periods in Earth’s history, exactly and precisely identical to the one Mrs. Tiffany Nichols had experienced 12 years earlier as a young girl.

She could feel herself being rotated in a clockwise direction as she spun down into the hole in space, becoming smaller and smaller with each passing instant as she continued to accelerate into its very core. She temporarily lost consciousness as she approached its center. She had no idea how much time had passed when she awoke. She could see ahead of her, below, what she perceived to be the Eastlake Hotel, the place where she had been only moments ago—or so she thought.

Continuing to fall—she recognized she was falling—as whatever gravity had been exerted from that object in space was no longer present. She shut her eyes (not that she had eyes anymore, but she certainly felt as if she still had them) and if she had had arms, she would have raised them in front of her to protect herself from the collision with the hotel roof, which she was rapidly approaching as she fell from the sky. She felt no impact, but felt herself pass through the roof, feeling no pain or discomfort whatsoever. She was not injured. She was not hurt in any way.

Mrs. Tiffany Nichols’ eyes fluttered as she awoke in a queen-size bed to Jazz music sounding through an old-fashioned cone loud speaker. This was a fully functioning ornament in her room still in place for nostalgic purposes, first installed in each hotel room, and in operation since the era of the 1920s. Her mere presence seemed to be causing a peculiar static that was emanating from the radio speaker.

The announcer spoke, This is Thursday, July 7. WCSH, Maine’s premiere commercial radio broadcasting company, is being broadcast to you, to all of New England, Live, from Portland’s Congress Square Hotel.

This strange looking cone-shaped funnel of some kind, attached to an even stranger looking box with dials, knobs and strangest of all the voice of the announcer emanating from it, was foreign.

She, of course, was a thoroughly modern woman—of 1910. She was a thoroughly modern woman of the past in a thoroughly all-too modern future. Radio had not been invented until 1927. This box with a voice coming from it, this strange-looking object initially scared the hell out of her!

However, she was curious. She reached out to timidly touch this very strange looking object, but saw her hand, her wrist and halfway up to her elbow pass through this talking box.

Her hand emerged through the radio’s back panel. She quickly retracted it, staring at her fingers. She turned her palm, now realizing that she had felt nothing while penetrating the device.

She glanced to her right and saw a card with the embossed letters inscribed on it saying, ~ Welcome to the Eastlake Park Hotel ~ Reserved in advance by cell phone for Ms. Kate P. Dixon ~Suite #916 ~ Complimentary champagne ~ Thursday, July 7, 2011 ~.

Tiffany whispered under her breath, Thursday, July 7, 2011?

She arose from the bed. She looked down at where she had awoken. There was no imprint on the sheets from where she had been lying. She began to drift about the room.

The Suite consisted of a luxuriously comfortable pillow top queen size bed, duvet filled pillows with a feather center, fresh linens, an Italian leather rest easy chair, a sofa, a working desk with high-speed Internet access, a high-definition 42 inch LCD TV with cable, a conversation area, complete with leather furniture, chair and coffee table, a kitchenette including dishes, fridge, a microwave, a coffee maker and a therapeutic bath.

This was all so strange to her. She was indeed back inside the Eastlake Hotel and yet a much different Eastlake than she had earlier known.

In fact, earlier was indeed a most accurate description when comparing where she had been to where she was now. It had been much earlier when she had been transported into outer space into that dark circular hole.

She passed in front of a full-length mirror. The soles of her feet were drifting 6 inches off the floor. She saw her reflection. Her entire body was a ghostly apparition, still in the form of a woman, but lacking any sort of physical substance. She was merely a shadow. Even less than a shadow—she was a phantom. She had no physical presence in this new world.

She floated across the room, reached out to grasp the doorknob. As had happened with the radio her hand had passed completely through it. She was now beginning to realize that her entire body now lacked any sort of solidity.

She stepped into the hallway by simply slipping through the wall with no ill effects to her or anything around her whatsoever. A man passing by her actually passed through her. Again, no ill effects.

She began to follow this stranger down the hallway. He briefly hesitated. He could somehow feel her presence near. Tiffany was aware of this as well and she focused her concentration all the harder. The man was definitely beginning to feel uncomfortable. This excited her in an impish way.

She focused her energies, concentrating harder, approaching from in behind him, focused harder still and passed through him. She began to become visible to this man, as she turned around to face him. He now had an expression of great fear upon his face.

She was gaining more and more control of herself and the environment. The man reached for the elevator button, hoping to escape the floor on which he discovered the ghost of Tiffany Nichols, but before his finger could press the DOWN button, Tiffany focused her energies further and the button depressed on its own.

She smiled at him, releasing an elf-like, light little laugh, and decided of her own power and newfound abilities to descend through the hotel without the use of the elevator. She simply disappeared by descending through the floor itself, en route to paying a visitation to the hotel’s lobby. If Tiffany had her way, the hotel’s management would be in for the fright of their lives; and as to the patron whom Tiffany had left behind on the ninth floor, he fainted—dead away.

Simultaneously, exactly 101 years earlier, in the city of Portland, Maine, inside the Eastlake Hotel, on the morning of Thursday, July 7, 1910, in Suite #916, the strangest of all scenes was beginning to play out, as the body of Mrs. Tiffany Nichols began to stir in her bed. An exchange of the strangest kind had taken place. The great-granddaughter of Tiffany Nichols, Kate Dixon, from a time 101 years into the future, was now occupying the body of her great-grandmother here on July 7, 1910.

As her eyes opened, Kate Dixon, in the body of her great-grandmother Tiffany Nichols, immediately sat upright, covered in heavy perspiration in her bed in Suite #916—screaming.

She lay in bed beside a man she had never seen before. He leaned over to kiss her and she pulled rapidly away from his attempted embrace.

Now, that’s a fine way to greet your husband in the morning, Tiffany!

Husband? I’m divorced!

Oh come on now, Tiffany, at least wait until our honeymoon ends before you decide to divorce me.

Tiffany? Who’s Tiffany?

The last time I looked, I believe you were.

Tiffany? My name is not Tiffany, my name is Kate!

The woman in the bed, claiming to be Kate, lying by this stranger who said he was her husband, was wearing a woman’s gold watch on her left wrist. There was nothing strange about that. Gold watches certainly existed in the year 1910, and certainly, someone as wealthy as Mrs. Tiffany Nichols could have afforded this gold watch this person claiming to be Kate was wearing.

But, and I say again, but there were four things about this gold watch that were definitely out of place and defying all laws of nature and physics:

First, the gold watch appeared to be very modern by early 20th century standards. It had a quartz movement; it would run on an early 21st century small battery as its power source.

Second, there was no battery in the back of the watch and yet the watch was still running, never missing a second, keeping perfect time.

Third, there had been three black scratches on the back surface of the gold watch. It had been passed down through the generations, from her grandmother, to her mother, and to Kate. The gold watch no longer had any of the three scratches on the back of the watch. They had mysteriously disappeared.

Moreover, fourth, even more mysterious than the three scratches that had disappeared, the time of the watch face was running, without even so much as a battery installed. The gold watch seemed to be from a future time, running perfectly in its modern quartz movement, with the hands of the watch moving about the dial… BACKWARDS!

Chapter 2

The Eastlake

To fully appreciate the surroundings from where Mrs. Tiffany Nichols had vanished, a brief history of the Eastlake Park Hotel is necessary.

Construction plans for Portland’s newest high-rise hotel were announced in 1908. The hotel was conceived and built by Portland’s visionary hotelier, Henry P. Rines, who owned and operated the Congress Square Hotel. The new hotel, which cost $2 million, was connected to the Congress Square Hotel, forming the largest hotel north of New York.

The Hotel was designed by local architect Herbert Rhodes. It included 241 guest rooms and apartments. Construction of the 12-storey hotel was completed in 15 months. It featured a brick, limestone and plaster exterior with steel casement windows.

A name-the-new-hotel contest was held, with $100 in gold awarded to Portland resident C.E. Weeks for his entry, The Eastlake.

The Eastlake Hotel opened its doors with lavish ceremonies on June 15, 1910.

Portland’s State Pier, radio personality Graham McNamee and governor Ralph O. Brewster dropped the keys to the hotel’s front door into Portland’s Harbor, signifying that the Eastlake would never close.

Henry P. Rines and his wife, Adeline (the first woman to practice law in Cumberland County) were frequent travelers to Europe and the Middle East. Their travels impressed them and the lobby and restaurants of their new hotel were fashioned after their favorite locations abroad.

The hotel entrance was designed to resemble an old Spanish patio with stone benches, a colorful red and yellow striped awning, slate floor, and red tiled roofs for balcony effects.

The steps beside the front door led downstairs to the grill, (then called the Sunrise Gateway Room) and a barbershop. This room was later renovated to become the popular post-war Polynesian lounge, the Hawaiian Hut and in 1990 became the Sonesta’s state-of-the-art function room, Eastlake Hall (now known as the Eastlake Park Hotel’s Longfellow Hall).

The Eastlake lobby featured a beamed ceiling supported by massive pillars. The wrought iron candelabras were copied from old fixtures in a Madrid café. Several wall sconces in the lobby cleverly simulated old Spanish flowerpots with trailing vines.

The street-level shopping arcade included a beauty shop, Ask Mr. Foster travel information service, the Chisholm newsstand, and the House of Conant Tailor and Valet Service. A Delicatessen was later established to provide bakery products and coffee to the hotel apartment tenants.

The Danish Tea Room (now the Greenhouse, a private function room) was an authentic reproduction of an 18th century tavern, which was located in the marketplace of Ribe, the capitol of medieval Denmark. The tavern had not been remodeled in over 150 years, and the Rines family used it as the model for their new restaurant.

Old pieces of Baroque-style furniture were imported from Denmark to furnish The Skenkstuen (the room where patrons are served). These pieces included pine tables worn smooth by years of use, corner cupboards, an antique clock and a billegerovn heating chamber that drew hot air from the chimney in the adjacent room.

The Spanish Baronial Dining Room, later named the State of Maine Ballroom, featured an oak floor, carved adornments on the entranceway and balcony, and antique Spanish lanterns. The beam supports were decorated with sculpted armor. The President of the United States, William Howard Taft, all 320 pounds of him, visited the Eastlake on July 7, 1910. Brought by horse-drawn carriage into Old Orchard Beach, he spoke to crowds at Deering Oaks Park. He later returned to the Eastlake to rest and on that night, he was honored at