1907 – Deer Lodge Hotel, Winnipeg, Canada

Replacing an older hotel destroyed by fire, the Deer Lodge hotel was officially opened by the Premier Rodmond Roblin. By 1916, the owners had decided the days of Deer Lodge being a hotel would come to an end and donated the building to the Dominion Hospital Commission
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“The new convalescent home will be known as the ‘I.O.D.E (Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire) Mackenzie Home or Hospital,’ and the ladies who have been doing such invaluable work in caring for soldiers will be given full liberty to continue their endeavours. No home in Canada is as beautifully located and well built as the Mackenzie quarters at Deer Lodge, where it is expected that the returned soldiers will be re-educated in mechanics and office work as well as in horticulture, agriculture, poultry-raising and gardening. The soldiers will be encouraged to aid in making the new home more or less self-sustaining.” Reported the Winnipeg Free Press of April 11 1916.

The site still houses a medical facility but the hotel building is long swept away. The health centre was run by Veterans Affairs Canada until 1983 when it was transferred to the province of Manitoba.

“The new Deer Lodge Hotel is one of the most complete, luxurious and up-to-date road houses on the continent. Built on the exact spot where stood its predecessor, it occupies one of the finest sites in suburban Winnipeg.

The building is in early English style of architecture, clapboarded to the first storey and then beam and plaster work with pebble-dash plastering on wire lath. The roof is shingled and stained a tile red. The exterior woodwork is painted white with green trim and the beams stained dark oak. Wide verandahs run round the front and both ends of the building. The rotunda, dining room and bar room have beamed ceilings, while all the main rooms are paneled in British Columbia fir stained a dark oak color. A rich red flooring, made by the Ajax Company, of Winnipeg, is used in all the above rooms, while a light grey flooring with green border is laid in the kitchen and lavatories. The latter have a dado of tile and are finished above that in Keen’s cement laid off in courses.

Entering the south portal the visitor steps into a broad hallway off which doors open into the rose room and the blue room, two pretty ladies’ parlors. The rose room is finished in pink rose tints, hung tastefully with silk and decorated with some very fine art productions representing scenes of the halcyon days of Venice and Rome. The blue room is similarly treated with a variation in the color scheme.

The entire interior is laid out in mission style and furnished with weathered oak furniture, each piece of which has been specially selected for an appropriate place in the building. The free and easy atmosphere of the road house has not been sacrificed in making the interior beautiful, but a maximum of elegance is attained, while the dominant note of the entire furnishing and decorative scheme is artistic in the extreme.

The rotunda, a fine roomy, high roofed hall, is a work that reflects great credit to its designers, Mr. Chadwick and F. H. Mills, of the A.F. Banfield establishment, who looked after the interior finishing and furnishing. To the west is a well appointed office with a bell system, to the south is the entrance, to the north is the stairway leading to the upper floors, while to the east is a Dutch fireplace. It is one of those old-fashioned open grates under a solid stone structure which reaches to the ceiling and is made of boulders taken from the bed of the Assiniboine river and chipped into shape. Its fixings, and irons and equipments are of hammered iron, which are appropriate in their solidity and graceful angles. Brilliantly lighted by electric lamps which shine from fixtures specially made for the hotel, the room is a work of art and one of the finest of its kind in the country. Along the top of the paneling are placed bric-a-brac and rare pieces of chinaware that lend a finishing touch to the colonial mural decorations.

The dining room, measuring 52 by 26 feet, is furnished with quarter-cut oak and hung with mohair and champagne colored silks. Electric lights, placed high, diffuse a pleasing illumination on the spotless linen and the bright new cutlery. The kitchen is placed to the rear of it and no expense has been spared to make the culinary department as complete as possible.

On the first floor is a music room. A mission style piano, made expressly for the hotel from the design of an old Jesuit desk, is among the features, while the floor is laid with expensive Turkish rugs. Green and gold are the prevailing colors. The window hangings are of tapestry, lined with smoked silk. Opposite the music room is a reception room finished in green. On every floor there are ladies’ cloak rooms, toilet rooms and places for writing.

A ballroom, 56 by 26 feet, is placed in the west wing above the dining room, and is finished in the same artistic manner as the rest of the house. The hotel contains 74 rooms in all. Two small private dining rooms for exclusive parties are placed on the main floor, handy to the main dining room. The bar is one of the finest in the province. The bedrooms, of which there are 32, are finished in British Columbia fir, with floors of the same material. They are both single and en suite, the latter being supplied with private bathrooms. The servants’ quarters are in the kitchen wing, which extends north from the dining room.

The building is lighted with electric light and has private water works and sewerage system. The water is drawn from a depth of 135 feet by an electrically-driven automatically-controlled pump, which maintains the pressure at between 15 and 20 pounds. In ease of fire the pressure can be increased to 100 pounds, as the building is fitted with a high pressure system, with fire hose on every floor, and alarm gongs.

In the basement are located the wine vaults, heating system steam boilers, fuel and vegetable rooms, laundry and refrigerator plant.”
Canadian Architect and Builder, February 1908

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