Hotel Saskatchewan

Hotel Saskatchewan
Radisson Plaza Hotel Saskatchewan
General information
Location	Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Coordinates	50°26′48″N 104°36′41″W
Opening	1927
Management	Radisson Hotels
Technical details
Floor count	10
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Ross and Macdonald
Developer	Canadian Pacific Railway
Other information
Number of rooms	224
Number of suites	27
Number of restaurants	1

The Radisson Plaza Hotel Saskatchewan is a historic hotel, one of Canada's grand railway hotels located in downtown Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, overlooking Victoria Park.

The Hotel Saskatchewan was the fourteenth hotel in a nationwide chain constructed and owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway The railway's earlier hotels, such as the Château Frontenac in Quebec City, the Chateau Lake Louise and the Banff Springs Hotel were designed in a distinctive château style, but by the late 1920s this had been abandoned in favor of a much simpler and less expensive style. The Hotel Saskatchewan was the hub of the city's social life, and today operates as part of the Radisson Hotels chain.

Hotel Saskatchewan, circa 1930

Artistic rendering of the planned and partially constructed Chateau Qu'Appelle

History

A prior attempt at construction of a grand railway hotel for Regina, the Chateau Qu'Appelle, failed when the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway went bankrupt. The site of the partially constructed Chateau Qu'Appelle—now the site of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum on the corner of Albert Street and College Avenue—remained derelict for some years on the corner of College Avenue and Albert Street until the CPR purchased the disused girders for use in the construction of the Hotel Saskatchewan and the large excavation was finally filled in.

The foundations remained in the ground, however, substantially accounting for the positioning of the Provincial Museum (now renamed Royal Saskatchewan Museum at the corner of College Avenue and Albert Street but diagonally and substantially back from the streets.

The City of Regina Archives website describes the Hotel Saskatchewan in the following terms:

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 strives to retain its grand reputation - the hotel was once Saskatchewan's only CAA Four Diamond property in international tourist guides. However in 2009, the hotel was demoted to a Three Diamond property, and has yet to regain its previous ranking. Declared a municipal 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.

External links

• Official website
• Emporis Listing