Description of Historic Place

The Queen's Hotel is a two-story Italianate style building located in downtown Nanaimo. The historic place is confined to the building footprint.

Heritage Value

The Queen's Hotel is a tangible reminder of the historic importance of hotels in Nanaimo history. Early Nanaimo, subject to the boom and bust economic cycles typical of mining towns, had a large population of single, often transient, men. As affordable housing alternatives, hotels functioned as living quarters and, in the saloons and restaurants typically located on the ground floor, as social centres.

The Queen's Hotel is significant as a reminder of the importance of Victoria Crescent as an early commercial strip. Most of Nanaimo's oldest surviving commercial buildings are located on this street.

The Queen's Hotel has been in continuous use as a drinking establishment for over 100 years.

Located mid-block, Queen's Hotel is prominent on the street and is part of a grouping of historic buildings in this area.

Built in 1892, the Queen's Hotel is a good, rare surviving example of the Italianate style, one of the most popular styles of the nineteenth century. Although the hotel was substantially renovated in the 1980s and many of the original architectural elements were lost, the essential form and mass of the building are intact.

Source: City of Nanaimo, Development Services Department, file #6800-20-H01-02/34 Victoria Crescent

Character-Defining Elements

Character defining elements of the Queen's Hotel include:

-all of the remaining elements of the original Italianate style including the form and vertical massing of the building and the second floor arched double-hung windows.

-the building's location on an early commercial street within a grouping of historic buildings.

-the building's continuous use as drinking establishment