636 Centre Street S.E.

Built: 1929 - 1930

Photo not available.

Contractor

Original cost

Original owner

Construction materials

Architectural style

Original interior details

Historical highlights

North West Construction Company Limited under the direction of the President A.C. McDougall.

Original cost: $600,000 - $650,000.

Original owner:

Builders and Investors Limited, owners of the St. Regis Hotel. The President was J.A.Knoepfli. Knoepfli moved to Calgary from Ontario around 1905 and worked as a carpenter. During the boom years he began a contracting carpentry business constructing more than 300 city buildings, many in collaboration with real estate entrepreneur A. A. Dick. By 1921 Knoepfli was the proprietor of Connaught Apartments, the Georgian and a number of smaller buildings. In 1923 he took charge of the St. Regis Hotel.

Construction materials:

Reinforced concrete. Tyndall stone. Brown brick brought in from Vancouver.

Architectural style:

Edwardian Commercial with Art Deco style motifs.

Original interior details:

Eight stories. Interior decorative scheme was a "blend of Spanish and Egyptian" styles. "Bringing out more fully the general Spanish and Egyptian architectural design, painting work was cleverly carried out, the colors of red, pink and yellow predominating." Flooring in the main lobby was "terrazzo marble with brass dividing plates. The general appearance is that of a giant checker board, a dark red shade of marble being placed beside gray squares to give an attractive design." The main executive offices in the lobby were furnished with Philippine mahogany. Spacious rotunda and beer parlour on the main floor and a coffee shop, billiard and bowling parlour, stores and main office in the hotel annex on Seventh Avenue. Mezzanine floor was home to CFCN's broadcasting studio, ladies' lounge, and a board room for business meetings.

Historical highlights:

• The vacant lots on the corner of 7th Avenue and Centre Street were purchased in 1928 by Builders and Investors for $50,000. The property had been the site of the first Knox Presbyterian Church and Calgary's first oil exchange building. When the sandstone church was vacated, Dr. Neville Lindsay bought the property and began hauling the sandstone blocks to the site of a mansion he was planning to build on the Elbow River. "Lindsay's Folly" was never completed and remnants of the ruins serve as a reminder of his unrealized dream.
  

• Construction on the hotel began in June 1929
  

• Official opening April 2, 1930 included presentation of the hotel keys to Mayor Andy Davison who was the first to sign the register. The York featured 187 rooms with baths or showers. Rates were $3.00 for a single room and $5.00 for a double. Each room included telephone, writing desk, walnut bureau and a full length mirror.
  

• A large neon sign "York Hotel", installed by Neon Products of Western Canada, quickly became a Seventh Avenue landmark.
  

• Following the June 1946 sale of the York to Royal George and Leland of Edmonton for $500,000, R.E.Noble, former owner of Calgary's Noble Hotel became the manager.
  

• 1958 - extensive renovations by Mardonard Holdings Limited. 180 rooms were refurbished and a New Windsor Dining Room and Redcoat Lounge were opened.
  

• About $1.5 million was spent renovating and redecorating between 1967 and 1970. The updated menu in the dining room included grilled Fraser River salmon and T-bone steak.
  

• Refurbishment following a November 1970 fire which destroyed the tavern and kitchen cost $1 million.
  

• Sixty six hotel residents and guests were evacuated during a December 1990 fire which caused $90,000 damage.
  

• In January 1993 Calhome Properties Limited, the city's non-profit housing agency, purchased the York Hotel for $1,030,000. The city converted the hotel into a housing project for low -income people, renovating 130 rooms into small apartments.

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