This key Unlocked a Dark Past
At first glance, it was already an awesome old skeleton key, but then the name stamped on it opened the door to one of Philadelphia’s darkest and most fascinating chapters.
Doug and I were metal detecting around an 1820s home in Pennsylvania that we knew very well.
We had hunted the property several times before, and it had been incredibly good to us. Between those previous trips, we had recovered nearly two dozen silver coins, military buttons, large cents, jewelry, you name it.
But on this return trip, I wanted to try something different.
Just outside the property’s old carriage house was a nasty patch of iron loaded with nails. It was difficult ground to hunt, but it was also exactly the kind of place where I thought something good could be hiding between all that iron.
So I put the smallest coil on my Legend 2 metal detector and started picking my way through it.
Eventually I heard one of those signals that most people probably wouldn’t dig. I could swing over the spot four or five times and maybe hear one tiny blip.
But in an iron patch like this, one blip was enough for me, so in went the Lesche.
I worked my hand digger and AccuPoint pinpointer around the hole until the pinpointer suddenly locked onto something with a steady tone. Whatever it was, I knew I was touching it. I still couldn’t see anything, so I reached into the dirt where the pinpointer was reacting, felt something metal with my fingers, and pulled it out.
I was staring at an old skeleton key. And not just any skeleton key.
It had a huge, flat head unlike any old key I had ever dug before.
The head was so large that my first thought was that there had to be writing on it. I carefully brushed away the dirt, and sure enough, letters started appearing.
BELLEVUE-STRATFORD
PHILA.
Wait a minute.
Bellevue-Stratford?
As in the famous Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia?
So I turned the key over and stamped into the other side was a room number:
468.
That’s when I knew exactly what I was holding.
This wasn’t just an old house key.
At some point, this key had opened the door to Room 468 inside one of the most famous hotels in Philadelphia history.
The Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia - 1904
The Bellevue-Stratford opened at Broad and Walnut Streets in 1904 and quickly became known as the “Grand Dame of Broad Street.” With more than 1,000 guest rooms, elaborate ballrooms, rooftop spaces and some of the finest accommodations of its era, it became one of the most prestigious hotels in the country.
Presidents, politicians, celebrities, business leaders and members of high society passed through its doors. For decades, staying at the Bellevue-Stratford meant you were staying at one of Philadelphia’s most fashionable addresses.
Even every president from Teddy Roosevelt thru Richard Nixon has stayed at the Bellevue Stratford hotel. If you were a member of high society then this was the place you went.
But in the summer of 1976, the hotel’s name became connected to something entirely different.
That July, the Bellevue-Stratford hosted an American Legion convention. Shortly afterward, attendees began becoming seriously ill with a mysterious form of pneumonia.
Ultimately, 182 people who had been inside the hotel became sick and 29 died.
Doctors initially had no idea what was causing it.
The investigation became national news, and for months researchers searched for an explanation. Eventually, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control identified a previously unknown bacterium responsible for the outbreak: Legionella pneumophila.
Because the mystery illness had first gained national attention among members of the American Legion convention, it became known as Legionnaires’ disease.
The hotel’s cooling system was suspected in the outbreak, and the publicity was devastating.
By November that same year, just months after the outbreak, the Bellevue-Stratford had closed its doors. And just like that, the most luxurious hotel in all the city was gone.
And that’s what makes holding this key so fascinating to me.
Long before anyone had ever heard the words “Legionnaires’ disease,” someone checked into one of America’s grandest hotels and was handed this key to Room 468.
Maybe they were an important person. Maybe they were attending a wedding, a convention, or some important social event. Maybe staying at the Bellevue-Stratford was a special occasion they remembered for the rest of their life.
But for whatever reason, that key never made it back to the front desk.
Instead, it somehow traveled from the bustling city of Philadelphia to this old property, where it was eventually lost beside a carriage house and disappeared beneath the ground.
Decades later, buried among a mess of iron and nails, I heard that one tiny blip through my headphones.
And suddenly, Room 468 had a key again.
WATCH THE HUNT
Watch the full hunt below, or jump to 19:22 to see this incredible key come out of the ground.
