The Story Behind Charlesgate

The Charlesgate Hotel is an actual building located in Boston’s Back Bay. Built in 1891 by John Pickering Putnam, its three street addresses--Four Charlesgate East, 535 Beacon Street, and Ten Charlesgate East became known as a premiere location during the city’s Gilded Age.

A theory exists that Putnam’s design of the Charlesgate was heavily influenced by his interest in Nationalism, a movement that, in part, strove to solve the country’s social ills, yet the Charlesgate remained a hotspot for the wealthy until 1920 and remained a respected residential address until the early 1940s. At that point, Boston University purchased the hotel and used it as a female seminary. Boston University used the hotel as a dormitory until the 1970s and later, Emerson College used it for student housing.

By the 1970s, the Charlesgate had acquired a disreputable reputation. Rumors that the residence had become a drug den, a bordello, a mafia headquarters, and an illegal rooming house were rampant in the city. The boarding house rumor was probably true, according to an article in the Boston Phoenix. Tales of ghosts, originally told by college students, persist to this day. The Charlesgate was also a creative haven for artists and musicians, immigrants, and those down on their luck--communities that otherwise could not afford to live in the Back Bay.

By the early 1990s, the building had been abandoned and had fallen into disrepair until renovations began in the late ‘90s. Currently, modern condominiums are available in the Charlesgate.

John Pickering Putnam’s goals for the Charlesgate Hotel and his future buildings as models of national reform were unrealized: he died before he could make his dream come true. Charlesgate seeks to remedy that.

I’ve wanted to write romance since the impressionable age of thirteen and I’ve wanted to capture the mysterious Charlesgate Hotel on paper since it captured me when I first moved to Boston at the jaded old age of twenty-three.

I was lucky enough to live on Charlesgate East before rent skyrocketed, where the ruined, gothic, abandoned Charlesgate still reigned over the sedate and proper Back Bay residences. Lonely and scared, the old hotel brimmed with character and I immediately became obsessed.

Unfortunately, except for a few tales from friends who once inhabited the building and a couple of measly websites with snippets of ghostly reports about the building, I found no information about her until two events occurred, one after the other.

First, my friend Ryan recommended I visit the Emerson College Archives. I did. And struck gold. After reading the Charlesgate files, which included photographs, references, excerpts from Sarah Putnam’s diaries, and student theses about the architect, I knew I had to memorialize the hotel before it fell under a wrecking ball.

Then, exactly like Zylla, I walked by the Charlesgate on my daily commute and noticed that the “No Trespassing” sign had been removed. Turning the corner, I spotted a large banner emblazoned with the name of a management company. Thrilled that the hotel wasn’t doomed to an early grave, I managed to contact the construction manager, Alex Steele, who kindly gave me a tour of the damaged lady, and on that tour I realized the Charlesgate was dead after all. 

The original design had been destroyed when the building was converted into dorms, its former splendor covered over in sheetrock and staleness. Now it would be filled with people who might not know or care about its history. 

And so the character of Lydia Berry was born, who'd loved the Charlesgate when it was a grand lady. Except, the book just wanted to be a contemporary and Zylla demanded to be the heroine.  So Lydia became Zylla’s dead ancestor. At the same time, I was researching the life of the historical Charlotte de Berry, a seventeenth century female pirate, for another novel, but she just wouldn’t stay in her own story. I think she secretly had a crush on Jabe.

Speaking of, Jabe’s name is shamelessly stolen from my friends, Jabe Beyer and Bow Thayer, whose music kept me writing when I really wanted to devour ice cream and watch “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Because of their brilliance, and my husband’s cruel motivation of withholding ice cream until I completed each chapter, Charlesgate was finished. I hope you enjoy Zylla and Jabe’s tale.