Description of Historic Place

This building, the former Hotel Connaught, is a six-storey, buff coloured brick structure, identifiable for its restrained and solid appearance. This building is located mid-block on the north side of West Pender Street, within the context of other commercial buildings of a compatible age and scale in downtown Vancouver. It is still in use as a hotel, now part of an international chain.

Heritage Value

Constructed in 1912-13, the Hotel Connaught is valued as a good example of the influence of the Chicago School, with its main facade articulated to emulate the classical column with distinct divisions of base, column, and capital. Its upper and lower storeys are detailed with multi-textured brickwork, such as recessed banding and corbelling, but not the applied carving and ornamentation otherwise common in architecture of this type. The center section remains undecorated with plain brick walls. This modest and straightforward detailing lends the structure a solid, dignified and practical appearance.

Built to cater to the business travellers visiting the city’s central business district, and travellers requiring the relative close proximity of the Canadian Pacific Railway station and piers, the hotel is an important component of the development of the Victory Square area as a primary centre of commercial activity in Vancouver during the early twentieth century.

Providing an important service to those visiting the offices of the nearby companies, the building was a full service hotel with bar, dining room, drawing room, and equipped with all the most modern comforts and conveniences of the day, including rooms with hot and cold water, telephones, and in many cases, private baths. Notably, the building maintains its original function and continues to serve many business travellers though the central commercial and business district has shifted several blocks westward.

The hotel was built for Walter William Walsh (1875-1947), who also built the adjacent building at the corner of Pender and Richards Street in 1906. This building represented an extension of his holdings during the height of the Edwardian boom. Known as the Hotel Connaught when it opened, its name was later changed to the Niagara Hotel, and featured a prominent neon effigy sign of Niagara Falls.

The Hotel Connaught is significant as an extant example of the work of architect Otto W. Moberg. Little is known about the origins or fate of this architect, likely of Scandinavian extraction, who practiced successfully in Vancouver for just a few years during the pre-First World War boom. Moberg designed some large downtown hotels and a few small apartments and industrial buildings, but he is best remembered for his work in both Hastings and Stanley Parks, most notably the chalet-style 1911 dining pavilion in Stanley Park.

Source: City of Vancouver Heritage Conservation Program

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Hotel Connaught include its:
- mid-block location on north sloping lot, built to the property lines
- continuing use as a hotel
- commercial form, scale and massing, as expressed by its six-storey height (with above ground basement to the rear) and regular, vertical rectangular plan
- flat roof with raised parapets
- heavy timber, steel, and masonry construction with buff coloured pressed brick cladding
- Chicago School influence, such as its heavy, overhanging sheet metal cornice with block modillions and heavy scrolled brackets with guttae; secondary sheet metal cornice between the first and second-storey; sheet metal roofline cornice on rear elevation; and brick corbelling below the sixth floor
- additional exterior features, such as its receiving doors at the rear
- regular, symmetrical fenestration: window openings of two sizes with larger openings on the second and sixth storeys; smooth finished windowsills on the front facade with continuous sill on sixth-storey; rear windowsills of rough-dressed sandstone, some with segmented arches
- metal effigy sign can from the time of its use as the Niagara Hotel