LEWISTON – Beneath the charred and broken upper floors, Marco’s Restaurant lay dormant.

Tuesday night’s fire never reached the building’s first floor, where waiters had prepared settings for future diners. But the damage was evident: Smoke blackened the walls and water flooded the floors.

The water from the firefighters’ hoses also filled the glasses.

“It looks like a ghost restaurant,” said Steve Taylor, co-owner of Marco’s. “It’s like walking onto the Titanic.”

On Thursday, Taylor and his wife, Evie, returned to the devastated Lisbon Street restaurant with city building inspector Gary Campbell.

They walked into the upper stories, where the roof was destroyed and much of the structure was charred beyond saving. They also walked through the former restaurant, where water and smoke did the damage.

“It’s too soon to know what we’re going to do,” said Taylor.

“Ideally, we’d like to rebuild,” he said. “That would be the ultimate: bigger, better and modern. We just don’t know yet.”

However, any renovation would be only a partial one. After the inspection, the city determined that the top two stories of the building must be torn down, said David Hediger, Lewiston’s deputy planning director.

It’s news that Taylor is still coming to terms with. “It’s like a death in the family,” he said.

At the time of the fire, the restaurant was closed for a week’s vacation. The Taylors were camping in Monmouth with their three girls.

Then, at 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, Evie Taylor’s mother appeared at the campsite.

The Taylors rushed to the fire and watched as the place burned. Several of the restaurant’s 18 workers came, too. They stayed until firefighters shooed them away around 4 a.m.

“Things had been going better than ever,” said Steve Taylor. “When you see this, you can’t think straight.”

The 35-year-old restaurateur had worked there since 1993, when he was hired as a cook. In April 2000, owner Marco Giancotti sold the restaurant to Taylor and his partner, Duane Arnold.

By the following January, business was going so well that Arnold and Taylor bought the building in an owner-financed deal. As much as they could, they reinvested earnings back into the business.

“We were trying to renovate in small ways,” Taylor said. They had purchased new carpeting and furniture. There were behind-the-scenes investments on equipment. The partners were also in the process of refinancing the property in hopes of getting a lower interest rate.

Then, the fire happened.

Steve and Evie Taylor never slept Tuesday night. They went home and showered after watching the fire and began answering the telephone.

“The phone calls didn’t stop,” said Evie Taylor, 29. Friends lent support. Employees called.

“That was their life, too,” Steve Taylor said Thursday. He had yet to speak to everyone who worked there. He was also talking to people who had hired him for catering or planned to hold banquets there.

“Everyone has been understanding and supportive,” Taylor said.

He also called Arnold, who was vacationing in Pennsylvania at the time of the fire.

“I expect he’s on the road, heading back,” Taylor said Thursday.

The partners will have to investigate all of their options. They were insured, but the money will probably pay a fraction of the replacement cost, Taylor said.

“This is going to be a slow process,” he said, likely lasting months before a decision is made about Marco’s future.

For the next few days, though, the Taylors plan to be with their girls.

“They loved Marco’s, too,” Evie Taylor said.