flagstaff hotel #2

Went past the former Flagstaff Hotel a couple of days ago and got a shot of what is probably the only remaining element of the deco detailing, I am referring to the bit between the 'window' below (with the gruesome artefacts) and the rollerdoor. I don't know what you call that but I assume it has no function, and it wasn't removed because why bother (and I suppose if you removed it you'd have to put something else there instead to stop the rain getting in). I could be wrong but looking at this picture now I think I can see some words above that window, perhaps the word 'Hotel'? Probably. 

So what's here is hideous but I had a little browse through the newspapers and it would seem that in the early 90s the block was slated to become a high-rise (ten storey?) apartment block, that didn't happen clearly, I am ambivalent about whether that would have been a better outcome than Witches in Britches, I mean this is an ugly building now, but its former incarnation wasn't that delightful (can't speak for what it looked like originally, it certainly has the dimensions of a 19th century hotel). 

the flagstaff hotel, who knew

...a lot of people probably but I didn't. I have started (gulp) watching Division 4. This is an establishing shot from the episode 'Night Out', first broadcast in (I think) April 1969. 

Witches in Britches hides in plain sight. It never occurred to me to wonder what the building was before it was whatever it is now, I guess if challenged I'd imagine it was some kind of warehouse, I don't know why. I've never been inside but I wonder if there's anything appealingly deco about the inside or whether the exterior, obviously now completely destroyed, was just a hack piece of modernisation.