©2008 Historic Downtown Association-St. Charles

340 North Main Street
Galt House Hotel
(1863 by Henry Angert, Sr.)

Hotels were extremely popular businesses in St. Charles largely because of the railroad. Cars and coaches were transfered by ferry at the foot of Morgan Street from 1856 to 1871. Henry Angert, Sr. built the Galt House Hotel and Angert Grocery in 1863. The proprietor of the Hotel in 1885 was Thomas J. Robbins about whom these lines were written: "He has educated himself up to the point of keeping his physiognomy in the presentment', as the French would say, of a perpetual perennial smile, the like of which it is a very joy to see. The traveling man, especially, delights to revel in the luxuries of his bounteous epicurean table and to stentorate circumtononically snugly tucked away within the folds of his immaculate sheets." This property remained in the Angert family until 1923.