Strathcona Hotel

By: Ryan Krawchuk

Iconic on the landscape of Whyte Avenue is the Strathcona Hotel. You cannot help but notice this regal building if you travel through Old Strathcona in Edmonton.

Photo Credit: Provincial Archives of Alberta, B.4351

Originally built in 1891, by the Calgary and Edmonton Railway company across the street from its railway station at the "end of steel," it was the first hotel in the Town of Strathcona. Originally named the "Edmonton Hotel", it was renamed to the "Strathcona Hotel" in 1899 when the Town of Strathcona was established. "At the end of steel," the Strathcona Hotel served as a stopping point for immigrants seeking to establish homesteads or businesses in the Northwest.

The Strathcona Hotel was an important meeting place and landmark for early Strathcona; the largest hotel in the region between 1891 and 1904; sporting 45 rooms. The hotel is a three-storey wood-framed building originally built in 1891. Later, in 1903, a two-storey annex was built just to the west, and another three-storey addition to the north in 1907. It sits on two city lots at a prominent corner location in Old Strathcona. It is Edmonton's oldest known wood frame commercial structure.

As the hotel relied so heavily on the revenue from the tavern, in 1916, due to prohibition, the hotel was sold to the Presbyterian Church. The church used the building to house the Westminster Ladies College from 1918 to 1924. The church acquired the hotel through a foreclosure in 1923 before reselling it to investors in 1928. By the end of prohibition in 1928, taverns were once again profitable and the build was once again transformed back into a hotel.

In September of 2020, restoration work on the hotel uncovered a below-ground brick exterior entrance into the building. Looking through old archival photos, it is possible to see people leaning on rails from where the stairs would have led down to the entry. They also learned that the metal grates outside on Whyte Avenue are actually the original window wells for the building’s basement.

"Finding that entryway was again another small piece to an artifact," Chris Dulaba said. "And one that will be reused and repurposed into a new entrance into the lower space."