Stanley Hotel

Designed by architects Grant and Henderson in 1906, the Stanley Hotel was developed as two adjoining hotels run by separate proprietors.

The hotel illustrates the rapid construction of a number of hotels along Cordova Street at this time, in response to a change in liquor licensing laws on July 1, 1906 that abolished free-standing saloons.

The Hotel Stanley represents Gastowns’s seasonal population in the early twentieth century. It was built as part of the investment portfolio of Evans, Coleman and Evans, general merchants and shipping agents, considered at the time one of the leading commercial firms in the province.

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 commercial services on the ground floor and lodging rooms on the upper floors.

During the revitalization of Gastown in the 1970s, the Stanley Hotel and the adjacent New Fountain Hotel were renovated in a project that combined commercial activity with the city’s first privately developed rent-controlled housing.

Source

Canada's Historic Places, Portland Housing Society website

More information

http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=2531&pid=0