The Spadina Hotel was one of the names of the hotels operated at 460 King Street West, in Toronto, at the corner of Spadina Avenue and King Street. [1] [2] [3] [4] The hotel was built in late 1873, the three storey Victorian building featuring a small clock on the east facade. A four-storey annex was later built to the north of the hotel. It has been known by at least half dozen names, and has had many proprietors. It is now a commercial office building including a programming school.
Initially the hotel was owned by James Richardson, and known as Richardson House. [2] [3] Robert Falconer acquired it in 1906, and renamed it the Hotel Falconer. Charles Zeigler acquired it in 1914, and renamed it the Zeigler′s Hotel. In 1917 the Chartered Trust and Executor Company foreclosed on the hotel′s mortgage. [5] The property was transferred to the Imperial Bank of Canada. According to a 1917 report in the Financial Post , at the time of the foreclosure the building was worth $12,500 CAD. [5] According to the Financial Post the next hotel to open in the building was a ″temperance hotel″. [5]
Toronto Sun columnist Mike Filey speculated that the 1917 change of name from the Zeigler Hotel to the Hotel Spadina was to counter prejudice against German names during World War I. [3] The Hotel operated under the names Hotel Spadina, or Spadina Hotel for the next eighty years.
In 1982 Douglas Martin, of the New York Times , described the hotel′s bar as a ″cozy, mainly working-class bar″, while he reported Canadians' reaction to one of Pierre Trudeau's speeches. [6]
Over its history it has been home to many notable residents. [1] In the 1960s and 1970s it was a centre of the Queen Street West music scene, and saw such visitors as Leonard Cohen and the Rolling Stones. On the second level, the Cabana Room was a central venue to the strip. The Jack Nicholson film The Last Detail was also partially filmed at the hotel. [7]
According to the National Post , Ernest Hemingway, who was a reporter for the Toronto Star before he became a famous writer, used to stay there. [1] They reported that Leonard Cohen and the Tragically Hip used to perform there. According to the BC Music Review, it was also one of the venues of Toronto's punk scene. [8]
The hotel was renamed the Global Village Backpackers in 1997 and the once seedy hotel became a welcoming youth hostel to Toronto, Ontario. [1] With 190 beds (four people per room) it was the largest youth hostel in Toronto. The hostel closed on January 20, 2014.
In July 2014, Allied Properties Real Estate Investment Trust announced it was in negotiations to purchase the Hotel and the property it sat on. [9] When the purchase was finalized in November 2014 Allied completed its ownership of all the properties between King and Adelaide. After its purchase, Allied clad the building in scaffolding, and began repairs to the facade, which had fallen into disrepair.
Konrad Group announced the launch of a new "innovation hub" at the iconic corner in 2015. The "hub" is the home and headquarters for BrainStation, Konrad Group's digital and technology training arm.[ citation needed ]
Queen Street is a major east–west thoroughfare in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It extends from Roncesvalles Avenue and King Street in the west to Victoria Park Avenue in the east. Queen Street was the cartographic baseline for the original east–west avenues of Toronto's and York County's grid pattern of major roads. The western section of Queen is a centre for Canadian broadcasting, music, fashion, performance, and the visual arts. Over the past twenty-five years, Queen West has become an international arts centre and a tourist attraction in Toronto.
Spadina Avenue is one of the most prominent streets in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Running through the western section of downtown, the road has a very different character in different neighbourhoods.
The Fairmont Royal York, formerly and still commonly known as the Royal York, is a large historic luxury hotel in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located along Front Street West, the hotel is situated at the southern end of the Financial District, in Downtown Toronto. The Royal York was designed by Ross and Macdonald, in association with Sproatt and Rolph, and built by the Canadian Pacific Railway company. The hotel is currently managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts.
Spadina is a subway station on Line 1 Yonge–University and Line 2 Bloor–Danforth in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located on Spadina Road, north of Bloor Street West. It is one of only two stations open overnight, along with Union station. Wi-Fi service is available at this station.
Front Street is an east–west road in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. First laid out in 1796, the street is one of the original streets of the Town of York. The street was laid out along the shoreline of Lake Ontario as it existed during that time. It remains an important street, with many important uses located along it, including the St. Lawrence Market, Meridian Hall, Union Station and the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The eastern section of Front Street, in the West Don Lands, east of Cherry Street, is being rebuilt as a broad tree-lined boulevard, intended to be the pedestrian-friendly commercial spine of the new neighbourhood.
510 Spadina is a Toronto streetcar route in Ontario, Canada, operated by the Toronto Transit Commission.
Wilson Yard is the largest of the Toronto Transit Commission's subway yards and bus garages. The subway yard services subway trains on Line 1 Yonge–University. The facility is located on Transit Road north of Wilson Avenue, in the former city of North York, between Wilson and Sheppard West stations.
Queens Quay is a prominent street in the Harbourfront neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The street was originally commercial in nature due to the many working piers along the waterfront; parts of it have been extensively rebuilt in since the 1970s with parks, condominiums, retail, as well as institutional and cultural development.
The Sapphire Tower was a proposed luxury hotel and condominium skyscraper in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to be built by developer Harry Stinson. It was so named because all plans for it had deep blue glass curtain walls. This site had been involved in numerous other proposals, including Stinson's own Downtown Plaza concept, and an earlier proposal that would have incorporated the neighbouring Graphic Arts Building.
The Duke of York, known as the Duke of York Hotel for many years and now as Duke Live, is a historic structure in Leslieville, Toronto, Ontario. It is located at 1225 Queen Street East, at the corner of Queen Street and Leslie Avenue.
Ocean Island Inn is a historic building in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada; it is Vancouver Island's largest backpackers' inn.
The People's Palace is a heritage-listed building and a former temperance hotel in the Brisbane CBD, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It is located at 308 Edward Street on the southern corner with Ann Street, diagonally opposite to Brisbane's Central Railway Station. It was designed by Colonel Saunders and built from 1910 to 1911. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
The former Imperial Hotel is located at the corner of Fort and Queen Street in Auckland, New Zealand. It was built in 1883 and is now a notable example of Victorian architecture. The building was registered as a category II heritage structure by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust in 1987. The building's current use is as a backpackers hostel, pub, and communal lounge.
The Dineen Building is a registered heritage property on Yonge Street, at the corner of Temperance Street, in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The building was built in 1897, and was extensively renovated in 2012.
Frederick Henry Herbert (1865–1914) was an architect practicing in Toronto, Ontario, during the late 19th century and early 20th century. Several buildings that he designed have survived into the 21st century and have been registered as significant heritage properties. He was one of the city's best-known practitioners specializing in residential architecture at the close of the 19th century.
The National Hotel was a hotel built on the southeast corner of King and Sherbourne streets, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Under pressure for condominium apartment redevelopment, the City of Toronto attempted to preserve the building, designating it a heritage site in 2009, but the building was eventually torn down in 2013. The hotel's north and west facades were preserved as part of the new condominium development, examples of "facadism" in Toronto.
The Toronto Transit Commission operated a separate Spadina streetcar line on Spadina Avenue, from 1923 to 1948. Spadina Avenue is a major north–south road in downtown Toronto.
Mike Filey was a Canadian historian, radio host, journalist and author. He was awarded the Jean Hibbert Memorial Award in 2009 for promoting the city of Toronto and its history.
A few decades after the building was first constructed in 1873, it was where then-Toronto Star reporter Ernest Hemingway is rumoured to have knocked off after work for a few drinks.
When it opened, Global Village Backpackers was the largest hostel in downtown Toronto - a title it passed on for good last weekend.
The property has dimensions of 104 feet by 128 feet, and the assessment on the land is $56,500, while the building is assessed at $12,500. At present a temperance hotel is being run in the building.
The bands, The Viletones and The Diodes to name two, and events, The Last Pogo, were already fading into the mystery of myth memory by 1981. Thankfully, while parts of the scene had been co-opted and cleaned up for consumption by suburbanites, places like The Spadina Hotel, Larry's Hideaway, and The Horseshoe Tavern still catered to the punk trade.
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