Hotel Vancouver (1916)
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- This article is about the second Hotel Vancouver. For the current building, see Hotel Vancouver
The Hotel Vancouver, the second hotel of that name, was an Italian Renaissance style hotel built in 1916 by the Canadian Northern Railway.
The Canadian Northern went bankrupt in 1918 and was merged into the Canadian National Railways. CNR demolished the building in 1949 to make way for the third Hotel Vancouver which still operates.
Many famous people had stayed at the hotel such as Winston Churchill, Sarah Bernhardt, Babe Ruth, Ethel Barrymore, Pavlova. It stood at 15 floors/ 77m tall.
The building was much loved in Vancouver and with its rooftop dining room and dance floor, the Panorama Roof, was a favourite place for a night out. This building was one of the triumvirate of large, ornate buildings which anchored the centre of town at Georgia and Granville streets: the Hudson Bay Store, Birks Building, and Hotel Vancouver provided an elegant foci of which the rest of the town radiated. Only the Hudson Bay store remains of those three jewels of Vancouver's golden age of Edwardian architecture.
The site is one of the highest points in the downtown peninsula, and thus good for an imposing building; a fact which was not lost on the Canadian Pacific Railway. The upstart rival Canadian Northern Railway wanted to impress and richly furnish the town to further that railway's credentials. To this end, the east side of False Creek was filled in to situate expanded rail yards and a Beaux Arts CN station , still standing today as Pacific Central Station, alongside a much more elaborate Great Northern station, since demolished. In addition, the contract with the city, which initiated this work, called for a joint CP-CN Hotel in the city. Fearing that the market was not large enough for competing hotels, the city and both railway companies agreed to the arrangement.
The bankruptcy of the Canadian Northern Railway, the First World War, the Great Depression, and a more than suitable existing hotel, delayed the building of the third Hotel Vancouver until 1937. When it was erected, it was expedited as a public work project to bring in much needed construction in the dark days of the depression.
During the Second World War, the second Hotel Vancouver was used as a barracks. The building was boarded up and placed under guard at the end of the war, during a time when returning veterans were having difficulty finding housing. In January 1946 35 veterans were unimpeded by the Army sentries when they took over the vacant hotel and announced that the building was now veterans housing. They organized themselves and soon the building was housing approximately 1,000 veterans and some spouses. The building was used by the veterans until 1948 and was subsequently torn down in 1949. The block was used as a parking lot until 1969. Pacific Centre mall and the Eaton's Store (constructed between 1969 and 1972) stand on the site today.
