Title: Hotel Saskatchewan
Date: ca. 1930
Retrieval Number: CORA-B-295
Extent: 1 B&W print and 1 archival-quality negative; 20.5 cm x 25 cm
Scope and Content Note: The front of the Hotel Saskatchewan at 2125 Victoria Avenue . Railway car off to the left.
Access Restrictions: None
Photographer: Unknown
Parent fonds/collection: CORA Photograph Collection
Historical Note: After the embarrassing fiasco that was the Chateau Qu'Appelle, Regina 's aldermen felt that a first-class hotel was needed for the city. They began to lobby the CPR to build an appropriate establishment in order to attract more tourists to the Queen City . The CPR responded in 1927 by building the Hotel Saskatchewan, the fourteenth of the CPR's national chain of hotels. The hotel was built on the site of F.N. Darke's first residence, skirting Victoria Park to the south. Construction took less than a year and incorporated many of the girders that had stood for so long as the skeleton of Regina 's ill-fated first railroad hotel. The building itself was a Modernist Classical design that incorporated the use of Tyndall stone on the outside façade (the same material used for the façade of the Legislative Buildings). The building was as lavish inside as out, featuring vaulted ceilings and marble thresholds. Although construction was an epic undertaking that, at its height, involved a thousand men working shifts 24 hours a day, the results were worth it. The building, like the McCallum Hill Building on the north end of the park, generated its own power and water. The site became a favourite of royalty and political dignitaries alike, and its grand reputation is still maintained today - the hotel is Saskatchewan 's only Four Diamond property in international tourist guides.