Fairmont Hotel Vancouver

Across the street, you can’t miss Vancouver’s imposing Fairmont Hotel. If you’ve ever traveled around Canada, it’s certainly not the first one you’ve stumbled upon, the best-known being in Quebec City. The Fairmont hotel chain is what we call a grand railway hotel. They were built by Canadian National Railways to promote train travel, offering luxurious accommodation along the way. The one in front of you, proud and magnificent in its château style, was built in the 1930s by Canadian architects John Smith Archibald and John Schofield. The Wall Street crash and the resultant economic crisis, known as the Great Depression, made it difficult to finance the hotel, which needed to join forces with Canadian Pacific Hotels, the hotel branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Like the other great railway hotels built across the country in the 19th century, the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver features a steel structure covered with carved stone, and a prominent light-green copper roof with dormer windows. If you take the time to admire it in detail, you’ll see that it also bears Renaissance-style touches, as well as gargoyles and sculptures. It is gigantic, and 112 metres tall. It was Vancouver’s tallest building when it was inaugurated in 1939. Recently renovated at great expense, the Fairmont’s 17 floors and 507 rooms are a Canadian heritage treasure and will continue to be part of the country’s history for many years to come.