Château Laurier
| Fairmont Château Laurier | |
|---|---|
Château Laurier seen from Parliament Hill
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| General information | |
| Location | 1 Rideau Street Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 8S7 |
| Opening | 12 June 1912 |
| Owner | Capital Hotel Limited Partnership |
| Management | Fairmont Hotels and Resorts |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect |
Bradford Gilbert, Ross and Macfarlane |
| Other information | |
| Number of rooms | 429 |
| Website | |
| Official name | Château Laurier National Historic Site of Canada |
| Designated | 1981 |
The Fairmont Château Laurier is a 660,000-square-foot hotel with 429 guest rooms in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, located near the intersection of Rideau Street and Sussex Drive and designed in the French Gothic Châteauesque style to complement the adjacent Parliament buildings. The hotel is above the Rideau Canal locks and overlooks the Ottawa River. The main dining room (now the Laurier Room) overlooks Major’s Hill Park. The reception rooms include the Wedgewood-blue Adam Room; the Laurier Room defined by Roman columns; the Empire-style ballroom and the Drawing Room featuring cream and gold plaster ornament. The hotel was designated a national historic site in 1980.
Château Laurier was commissioned by Grand Trunk Railway president Charles Melville Hays, and was constructed for $2 million, between 1909 and 1912 in tandem with Ottawa's downtown Union Station (now the Government Conference Centre) across the street. The two buildings were connected with a tunnel. When the hotel first opened, private rooms cost $2 a night; 155 of the 350 bedrooms featured a private bath while the other 104 rooms had washstands with hot and cold water connections. In addition dormitories and common bathrooms were available as were rooms for travelling salesmen with sample tables to display goods.
The hotel features original Tiffany stained-glass windows and hand-moulded plaster decorations dating back to 1912. The walls were constructed of Indiana limestone. There are conical turrets and dormer windows and the roof is copper. The gables are carved with flowers, scrolls and crests. The lobby floors were constructed of Belgian marble .
The plans for the hotel initially generated some controversy, as the Château was to be constructed on what was then a portion of Major's Hill Park. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, then the Prime Minister of Canada, helped secure the important site for the construction, and the hotel was eventually named in his honour. Laurier's government was also subsidizing the Grand Trunk Railway's Pacific Line. Further conflict ensued when the original architect, Bradford Gilbert, from New York was dismissed due to disagreements with Grand Trunk executives, and the Montreal firm of Ross and Macfarlane was hired to complete the design.
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