The Fairmont Empress Hotel sits in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia Canada, full of rich history. With its beauty, the hotel hangs over Victoria’s Inner Harbour with its majestic early 20th century design. With it comes a well known elegant tea room, best known for afternoon teas and wonderful views of the harbour and parliament buildings. The Fairmont Empress has a total of 464 guest rooms and suites. It is also a Canadian historical building, With this in mind we are going to talk more into the history of The Fairmont Empress hotel.
The man that built a dream.
As with all things built it always starts with a persons dream, by a man named Sir William Cornelius Van Horne who worked for the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) as general manager. By 1885 Van Horne had already built a series of hotels along the transcontinental line. A British architect Francis M. Rattenbury, was awarded the project and had chosen the best location for the hotel, which sat on Victoria inner harbour. When first built they had named the hotel “The Empress” which was one of the last buildings Van Horne had developed. Design for the hotel was based on Chateau style with its steep roof-line and asymmetrical floor plan. Inside it had Tudor arches and Gothic flourishes which created a fairly tail feeling. The exterior was built to resemble a historic manor from Loire Valley in France. Construction of The Empress started in 1904 and was finished in 1908.
People who stayed.
With a hotel of this grandeur many wealthy people and celebrities had stayed at the hotel. When the hotel was built it was intended as a terminus hotel for Canadian Pacific railroad, in which the main terminal was just a block away. Edward, The prince of Wales (1919) had visited and was seen dancing with many local ladies in the Crystal Ballroom. Other known royals that had visited were King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother (1939) Also Queen Elizabeth II visited. Many other People that had spent time in the Hotel where Celebrities like Rita Hayworth, Roger Moore, and Shirley Temple. The main people that stayed were mostly made up of wealthy business men and tourists, but business at the empress suffered during the Great-Depression. In the Depression-era the hotel started to practice housing Wealthy widows and other long-term residents for a low rate of one dollar a day.
Recent years.
By 1960s the hotel was in dire, which in 1965 there was a debate to tear down the The Empress to make room for a more modern hotel. The news sparked outrage with the locals one newspaper wrote “Without this splendid relic of the Edwardian era, literally tens of thousands of tourists will never return. This is the Mecca, this is the heart and soul of the city.” Thankfully in 1966 hotel’s owners announced they would not demolish the hotel. By 1981 the building was introduced into the National Historic Site of Canada. In 1989, a fresh restoration project was put in motion, which they called “The Royal Restoration”. They renovated guest rooms, a health club, indoor swimming pool and guest reception was built. The whole project cost about $45 million to complete. The hotel was later renamed “The Fairmont Empress Hotel”, due to Canadian Pacific Hotels it was renamed under a new brand called Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. The name change caused a huge problem with the local newspapers and citizens, which thought the change was unacceptable for the city. The name finally stuck but the sign out front stayed the same and it calmed down the public’s outrage. Lastly, the hotel was sold by October 31, 2000 to Legacy Hotels REIT for $120 million CAN. In 2014, the hotel was sold again to two Vancouver owners, Nat and Flora Bosa, which they invested $60 million in renovations. By 2017, the first phase of restoration work and renovations was completed.
Ghosts at the hotel.
Over the years at The Fairmont Empress has had its share of ghost stories. With reports of a woman’s spirit who roams the halls after she died of natural causes in her room, which was later destroyed for a new elevator. The woman has been seen following people to the elevators then disappears. Francis M. Rattenbury is said to haunt his picture after he was beaten to death in England in 1935 from his second wife’s lover. In the 1960s a construction worker reported seeing a figure hanging in a room where a worker hung themselves a year earlier. Other stories are that of a little girl who is seen in one room and a maid has been seen cleaning the sixth floor. All these stories have give the idea that the The Empress is haunted. So stay at your own risk of seeing some ghosts.
