Graffiti in the Downhome Shoppe shows history of St. John's visitors

Some of the older building in downtown St. John's have survived through city-wide fires and world wars, and at one location, graffiti can still be seen documenting visitors.

The Thompson Building houses the Downhome Shoppe, and once you get past the updated first two floors, graffiti from the 1940s and beyond remains in the shop's attic.

The Downhome Shoppe was once a Railroad Hotel, and the names scratched on the wallpaper tell the stories of couples, visitors and soldiers who stayed there.

"There are some dedications of love. There are some, you can see that there are people that were in the war, World War II, that stayed here, because they have their service number, or they say what ship, vessel, they were on," said Downhome President Grant Young.

According to Young, there's no real way to track where the tradition started, but he says he thinks once the first names were scrawled on the walls, it quickly caught on.

"If someone writes something on the wall, then someone else gives them the liberty to do it themselves," he said.

"I think it just started a tradition, almost like graffiti does on granite rock sometimes on the roads. I think it was a thing that started with a little seed and it just grew from there."

The store owners knew the graffiti was there when they first moved into the location, but have only recently taken a closer look at what's written on the walls.

While they aren't sure what their plans are for the piece of history, they'd like to find out who the people were that stayed in the former hotel decades ago.