Hotel Saskatchewan

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The Hotel Saskatchewan is a grand hotel located in downtown Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, overlooking Victoria Park.

Canada's Queen Elizabeth II is among noted guests to stay at the Hotel Saskatchewan

One of a chain of hotels constructed and owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway, the railway's earlier hotels, such as the Château Frontenac in Quebec City, were designed in a distinctive château style, but by the late 1920s this was abandoned in favour of a much simpler and less expensive style. The Hotel Saskatchewan was the hub of the city's social life, and as part of the Radisson Hotels chain, is still a luxury hotel.

[edit] History

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, to the south of Victoria Park. 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 Chateau Qu'Appelle. The building itself was a Modernist Classical design that incorporated the use of Manitoba tyndall stone on the outside façade (the same material used for the façade of the Saskatchewan Legislative Building and the Royal Saskatchewan Museum), as well as brick. 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 CAA Four Diamond property in international tourist guides.

Declared a munipal heritage site in 1993, it is first choice for any member of the Royal Family when staying in Regina, and between 1945 and 1984, was the official residence and office of Saskatchewan's Lieutenant Governor.