These pictures show the grand Hotel Royal.  It opened in 1835 as the Exchange Hotel, and later was known as the St. Louis Hotel.  The large and beautiful building stretched all the way from Royal to Chartres Street.  A new street, Exchange Alley, was cut through to Canal Street between Royal and Chartres to lead to the front door of the hotel.  During the reconstruction period, the building was leased to the State of Louisiana, serving as the state capitol beginning in 1874.  In 1882, after repair of considerable damage, it was once again opened as a hotel.  It was again in run down condition as early as 1903, and by 1912 was being used as a stable.  After further damage in the storm of September 30, 1915, it was demolished.  The top two views show the entire front of the building, about 1907, with Royal Street at the left.  The block in front of the hotel had been cleared to make way for a new Civil District Courts Building, which was constructed beginning in 1908.  The middle picture appears to have been taken during construction of the courts building.  A track can be seen in the left foreground, on the construction site, presumably built to move materials around the site.  The next view shows the hotel after construction of the courts building; shadows of parts of the completed courts building can be seen on the hotel.  The bottom view, from a glass slide, features an approaching Clio streetcar, on its way to cross Canal Street and return to its uptown neighborhoods.  In the middle and the two bottom pictures, note how the columns of the increasingly decrepit hotel building have been partially hidden by sign boards.  At the right in the bottom picture, we glimpse a corner of the completed Civil District Courts Building, which by then occupied the block in front of the hotel (see Picture 157).  The identity of the gentleman with the straw “boater” is, unfortunately, not known. — C. B. Mason (top), Curt Teich (second), Lipsher Specialty Co. (middle), Acmegraph (fourth)