page_title: Château Laurier
section_title: Grand Trunk Railway 1909–1923
hierarchical_section_title: Château Laurier / History / Grand Trunk Railway 1909–1923
context_page_description: The Fairmont Château Laurier is a 660,000-square-foot hotel with 429 guest rooms in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, located near the intersection of Rideau Street and Sussex Drive and designed in a French Gothic Revival Châteauesque style to complement the adjacent Parliament buildings. The hotel is above the Rideau Canal locks and overlooks the Ottawa River. The main dining room overlooks Major's Hill Park. The reception rooms include the Wedgewood-blue Adam Room; the Laurier Room defined by Roman columns; the Empire-style ballroom and the Drawing Room featuring cream and gold plaster ornament. The hotel was designated a national historic site in 1980.
context_section_description: Grand Trunk Railway president Charles Melville Hays commissioned Château Laurier, and construction occurred between 1909 and 1912 for $2 million, in tandem with Ottawa's downtown Union Station (now the Senate of Canada Building) across Rideau Street. The two buildings were connected with a tunnel. When the hotel opened, private rooms cost $2 a night; 155 of the 350 bedrooms featured a private bath while the other 104 rooms had washstands with hot and cold water connections. In addition dormitories and common bathrooms were available as were rooms for travelling salesmen with sample tables to display goods.
  The hotel features original Tiffany stained-glass windows and hand-moulded plaster decorations dating back to 1912. The walls were faced with Indiana limestone and feature conical turrets, dormer windows topped by a copper roof. The gables are carved with flowers, scrolls and crests. The lobby floors were constructed of Belgian marble.
  The plans for the hotel initially generated some controversy, as the Château was to be constructed on what was then a portion of Major's Hill Park. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, then the Prime Minister of Canada, helped secure the important site for the construction, and the hotel was eventually named in his honour. Laurier's government was also subsidizing the Grand Trunk Railway's Pacific Line. Further conflict ensued when the original architect, Bradford Gilbert, from New York was dismissed due to disagreements with Grand Trunk executives, and they engaged the Montreal firm of Ross and Macfarlane to complete the design.
  The hotel was to be opened on 26 April 1912, but Hays, who was returning to Canada for the hotel opening, perished aboard the RMS Titanic when it sank on 15 April. Grand Trunk officials held a more subdued opening ceremony on 12 June 1912, with Sir Wilfrid Laurier in attendance. The sub-basement housed laundry, repair shops, engineering and electrical departments. A barber shop was added in 1918.
  In August 1914, Major Raymond Brutinel enrolled the first recruits for the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade at the hotel. A memorial plaque with a circular bas-relief of Brigadier-General Brutinel and a bas-relief of machine gunners on Vimy Ridge is dedicated to the memory of Brigadier-General R. Brutinel, C.B. C.M.G. D.S.O. who commanded the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade and the members of the Canadian Machine Gun Brigade who died on active service and in honour of those who served.
caption: Château Laurier looking southeast across the Ottawa River
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot S2 IS", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2007:02:16 13:42:25", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Tag 0x1001": "2592", "Image Tag 0x1002": "1944", "Image CustomRendered": "Normal", "Image ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "Image WhiteBalance": "Manual", "Image DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "Image SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "Image ExifOffset": "320", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1094", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7145", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2006:07:07 08:22:05", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2006:07:07 08:22:05", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "189/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "29/8", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "463/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1944", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2592", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "11520", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "81000/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera"}