​​Big, lost Nelson buildings: The Strathcona Annex

For all of Nelson’s many surviving heritage buildings as well as its lost buildings that at least we have photos of, many others existed for which few if any photos survive. I’m not necessarily talking about minor structures either. In some cases massive brick buildings were inexplicably overlooked by photographers of their era.

Fortunately, we can sometimes catch fleeting glimpses of these buildings in bird’s-eye-view photos scanned at high resolution. The photo below by Queen Studio, taken circa 1899-1900, shows several such buildings, including the Johnstone Block annex, which I have written about before, the West Block, the Clarke House/Bartlett Hotel, and the Strathcona Hotel annex.

(Detail from Nelson Museum and Archives 66-002-082)

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The Strathcona stood at the corner of Victoria and Stanley streets, where the library and police station are now, from 1891 until 1955, when it burned in the deadliest fire in the city’s history.

The hotel was known as the Phair until 1903 after manager E.E. (Pop) Phair and for a long while it vied with the Hume for the title of the city’s leading hotel. It was the city’s largest hotel as well, although it eventually lost its prestige and became a shabbier version of itself.

The hotel was added onto a few times. The Miner of June 20, 1896 reported:

The influx of visitors during the last week or two to Nelson has been so great that the hotel capacity of the town has been taxed beyond its capacity, and many people have been unable to get sleeping accommodation at all. To meet the increased business an annex of 15 rooms is to be at once added to the Hotel Phair. A bowling alley will also be erected.

But nothing else appeared in the newspapers immediately thereafter about the annex or the bowling alley, so I doubt anything went ahead at that time. The next we hear of improvements to the hotel is the following year:

• The Miner, Jan. 9, 1897: “It has been determined to make an addition of the Phair hotel next spring.”

• The Tribune, April 10, 1897: “Work will probable [sic] be commenced next week on a 20-room annex to the Hotel Phair. The outlook is good for additions to several other hotels in the city during the present month.”

Again, there was nothing further. Construction finally did get underway in 1898, although details of what was actually occurring were frustratingly elusive.

• The Miner, March 26, 1898: “The improvements to the Phair hotel have been commenced. It is the intention of the management to spend $6,000 or $7,000.”

• The Miner, April 2, 1898: “The improvements to the Phair hotel have been commenced and the carpenters, painters, kalsominers, and paper hangers are hard at work.”

• The Tribune, April 2, 1898: “The Phair hotel is being repaired and otherwise improved.”

• Nelson Economist, April 6, 1898: “The additions and improvements to the Phair Hotel are progressing satisfactorily.”

Much later, the Nelson Daily News of Jan. 6, 1913 noted that “Since the Strathcona was originally built additions have been made. The ground under the front of the building was excavated and a foundation raised and a considerable addition was made to the rear.” But it didn’t elaborate.

Regardless of when it was built, the Phair/Strathcona annex shows up on a July 1899 fire insurance map and in some bird’s eye view photos that reveal the following:

• The annex was on Block 13, Lot 14, which was one lot in from the corner. It was therefore set back further from Stanley Street than the rest of the hotel. I don’t know why they chose that location. Perhaps they were unable to buy the corner lot.

• At two storeys, the annex wasn’t as tall as the four-storey main hotel, but it was longer.

• The annex had its own entrance on Silica Street, complete with a false front and awning!

• The part I love most: because the annex was actually across the alley from the hotel, an elevated walkway connected the two sections. I don’t know what they called it at the time, but I’ve dubbed it the Strathcona skywalk. While such things weren’t unheard of, this is the only example I’m aware of that ever existed in Nelson.

The skywalk was very odd looking. It had a long string of windows and the section closest to the main hotel was two storeys; it probably contained a stairwell or fire escape.

Because the annex sat further up the hill than the main hotel, its first and second floors were at roughly the same elevation as the main hotel’s third and fourth floors. The skywalk connected the second floor of the annex to the fourth floor of the main hotel.

The Strathcona Hotel (right), the annex (left), and the skywalk (centre). (Detail from Dominion Photo Co., Nelson Museum and Archives 85-154-004)

The fire insurance map also shows the skywalk was built at about a 60-degree angle to connect with the east wing of the original hotel. This is because the centre wing didn’t extend as far back as the other wings, in order to create a lightwell at the rear.

Fire insurance map, July 1899 (Nelson Museum and Archives)

Another zoomed-in version of a bird’s eye view gives us our best look at the skywalk. If you had shown me the picture below without any other context, I might not have even guessed it was Nelson, for in addition to the annex, a few other seldom-photographed buildings are seen: the rear of the Royal Hotel on Stanley Street (a different business than the later Royal on Baker Street) and the Club Hotel at the corner of Silica and Stanley, which seemed to consist of two or three parts itself.

(Detail from Nelson Museum and Archives 1994-288-2322)

The photo above was taken in 1899, but prior to July of that year because the fire insurance map of that date shows a further addition to the rear of the Phair on the Stanley Street side that we don’t see in the photo. By 1912, another floor was put on this second addition, which was further gussied up with bay windows.

The insurance map also shows a couple of barns/sheds at the hotel’s rear and a one-storey addition on a separate lot to the west of the original hotel. Those sheds can be seen in the photo below.

The rear of the Phair Hotel and the skywalk are seen looking northeast in this detail from a William Baeur photo taken circa 1899-1900. (Uno Langmann collection/UBC Rare Books and Special Collections)

Strathcona Hotel, in a postcard mailed in 1907. Note the additions at rear and at right. (Greg Nesteroff collection)

The annex was in the news in June 1900 after a “small fire under the first floor of the Phair Annex caused much excitement.” Otherwise references to the building are few and far between. We know the annex was still standing as of April 1917, when another fire broke out “in the lightwell, situated between the main building and the annex to the Strathcona hotel.”

The damage was minor, but that’s the last reference to the annex I can find. What happened to it? Photos suggest it was gone by 1919, along with its quirky skywalk. Business must have declined drastically during the later years of the First World War, leading to its demolition.

Strathcona Hotel, ca. 1919. The annex has disappeared, while the other addition at the rear is now sporting bay windows. (Greg Nesteroff collection)

The City of Nelson acquired the site of the Strathcona annex, perhaps in a tax sale, and in 1926 the city sold the property along with the corner lot next door to St. John’s Lutheran Church. A new church was built on the corner the following year. The annex site is now the church lawn and parking area.

Few photos of the Strathcona Hotel exist after about 1920. One newspaper photo showed the damage wrought by a 1938 fire and other photos show the hotel burning in 1955 and the rubble it was reduced to. But we don’t have much evidence of what it looked like in its declining years.

A more extensive history of the hotel can be found in Glen Mofford’s Room at the Inn: Historic Hotels of British Columbia’s Southern Interior.