Description of Historic Place

The Edward Hotel is a four storey, stone-clad Edwardian era commercial building located at the corner of Cambie and Water Streets in the historic district of Gastown.

Heritage Value

Gastown is the historic core of Vancouver, and is the city's earliest, most historic area of commercial buildings and warehouses. The Edward Hotel is valued as an early Gastown hotel, representative of the area's seasonal population in the early twentieth century, as Vancouver emerged as western Canada's predominant commercial centre. Hotels such as this provided both short and long-term lodging, serving primarily those who worked in the seasonal resource trades such as fishing and logging. Many of these hotels had combined functions of commercial services on the ground floor and lodging rooms on the upper floors, which contributed to the lively street life in Gastown. Businesses such as the Edward Hotel prospered in this vital economy, and the substantial size and detailing of this hotel attest to the commercial prosperity of the area in the early twentieth century. Additionally, it illustrates the rapid construction of a number of hotels in the area, in response to a change in liquor licensing laws that abolished free-standing saloons on July 1, 1906.

The Edward Hotel is valued for its design attributes, illustrating how popular architectural styles were used by the hotel business to market a progressive image. The Edward Hotel, built in 1906, is one of few stone-clad commercial buildings in Gastown. The elegant design, with its simple lines and grid-like geometry, illustrates the growing popularity of the Classical Revival style during the Edwardian era, while its decorative finishes and rough-dressed masonry demonstrate the persistence of the influence of the Romanesque Revival.

Source: City of Vancouver, Heritage Planning Street Files

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Edward Hotel include:
- prominent corner location, in close proximity to the waterfront of Burrard Inlet and the Canadian Pacific Railway yard
- siting on the property lines, with no setbacks
- form, scale and massing, as expressed in its four-storey height, flat roof and rectangular plan
- Edwardian era design, with tripartite articulation into base, shaft and capital
- rough-dressed sandstone cladding, with horizontal floral bands on the upper storeys
- concrete rear and west side facades
- projecting sheet metal cornice
- rectangular storefront openings with transom windows, cast iron columns and iron I-beam headers with rosettes
- fenestration, including double-hung 1-over-1 wood-sash windows with transoms on the upper floors of the two main facades; and double-hung 1-over-1 wood-sash windows on the rear facade
- original interior features such as wood floors