Hotels in Greater Vancouver
by Claire Hurley
The colonial hotel, built by the Grelley brothers on Columbia Street in New Westminster around 1860, was the first hotel in the Greater Vancouver area. In those days New Westminster was connected to Burrard Inlet by a meandering Douglas Road. In 1865, at the Inlet end of the road, Oliver Hocking and Fred Houston opened the Brighten Hotel with beautiful grounds, picturesque walks and a floating wharf. The hotel attracted vacationers from New Westminster who, starting in 1867, could take a weekly stagecoach to get there. Maximilien Michaud, who had walked to the Pacific coast from Eastern Canada, bought the place in 1869 and renamed it the Hastings Hotel. Other early hotels of note were Mansion House in New Westminster (1868), the Deighton Hotel (built by Gassy Jack Deighton of Gastown fame in 1870) and the Granville Hotel (1874). The latter two were destroyed in the Great Fire on June 13, 1886. With great speed new hotels were built: in 1886 the Terminus Hotel at 30 Water Street featured projecting bay windows on the upper floors; rooms at the opulent Alhambra Hotel, built in 1886-87 at 2 Water Street, went for more than a dollar per night!
The Canadian Pacific Railway built the first Hotel Vancouver which opened May 16, 1887, at Georgia and Granville Streets. Its location, far from the centre of town, was ridiculed by some. However the site afforded fabulous views and its luxurious style ensured its success. The timely arrival of the first CPR passenger train a week later boosted business. The first banquet of the Vancouver Board of Trade was held in the hotel March 5, 1889--at a cost of $12.50 per plate, which included a quart bottle of Mumm’s Extra Dry Champagne. And Vancouver’s Canadian Club held its inaugural luncheon there September 25, 1906, with Governor General Earl Grey as guest of honor, an event marked by the first public singing of the “Buchan version” of “O Canada.”
Vancouver experienced rapid growth between 1908 and 1913. The flatiron building at 43 Powell Street, the Hotel Europe (1908-09), is one survivor of this period. Other early hotels and buildings in Gastown and neighboring Chinatown remain intact because of the B.C. government’s 1971 decision to designate these areas as historical sites, thereby preventing demolition. A splendid new Hotel Vancouver, the second, was built in 1916 on the same site as the first. It was a building still fondly recalled by oldtimers for its grandly ornate exterior, but it was not well-built and deteriorated over time. The first convocation (1916) for the conferring of degrees by the University of British Columbia was held there. The Georgia Hotel, still active, opened May 7, 1927.
In 1928 the Canadian National Railway began building a chateau-style hotel at Georgia and Hornby Streets but the depression halted construction in 1932. The building stood uncompleted for five years, until the CNR reached a joint-operation agreement with the CPR--whose second hotel was proving too costly to maintain--and construction resumed. Still it was seven more years before the grand new structure opened. The new (the third and present) Hotel Vancouver was hastily completed in time for the royal visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The official opening took place May 25, 1939. In 1962 CP Hotels, unwilling to spend more money on a hotel it didn’t own, decided not to renew its contract. CN contracted the hotel’s management to Hilton but then resumed sole management in 1983. Finally, in 1988, the hotel’s ownership came full circle as Canadian Pacific Hotels once again acquired the Hotel Vancouver. The famed hotel’s steep green copper roof (used to dramatic effect in the 1975 film, Russian Roulette), ornate dormer windows, menacing gargoyles and notched machicolations evoke memories of medieval French castles.
Some fondly recalled hotels live on only in memory: on December 10, 1962, the old Union Steamship Hotel on Bowen Island--once a favorite gathering spot for leisure-minded locals--was demolished and the resort closed down. And, on a more dramatic note, on July 5, 1981, the Devonshire Hotel was brought down by a controlled explosion. New hotels blossomed in the 1980s in anticipation of Expo 86 and to meet the increasing demands of the convention trade. Following Expo, offshore investors bought, sold and built hotel properties at a fast pace. More hotel development is inevitable following the construction of a new convention centre in Vancouver, a facility whose location was not yet announced at this writing.
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