The Omni King Edward Hotel is a historic luxury hotel in
Downtown Toronto,
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
, Canada.
The hotel is located at 37
King Street East, and it occupies the entire block bounded by King Street on the north, Victoria Street on the east, Colborne Street on the south and Leader Lane on the west.
History
The King Edward Hotel was designed by Chicago architect
Henry Ives Cobb
Henry Ives Cobb (August 19, 1859 – March 27, 1931) was an architect from the United States. Based in Chicago in the last decades of the 19th century, he was known for his designs in the Richardsonian Romanesque and Victorian Gothic styles. ...
and Toronto architect
E.J. Lennox
Edward James Lennox (September 12, 1854 – April 15, 1933) was a Toronto-based architect who designed several of the city's most notable landmarks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Old City Hall and Casa Loma. He d ...
for developer George Gooderham's Toronto Hotel Company, and was granted its name by namesake
King Edward VII
Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910.
The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria a ...
.
The structure opened in 1903 with 400 rooms and 300 baths, and it claimed to be entirely fireproof.
In 1922, an 18-storey tower with 530 additional rooms was added to the east of the original eight-storey structure. On the two top floors of the tower is the Crystal Ballroom, that until the late 1950s was the most fashionable in the city. The room was closed in the late 1950s due to stricter fire codes and was not restored during the 1979-81 renovation.
When the
Omni Hotel
Omni Hotels & Resorts is an American privately held, international luxury hotel company based in Dallas, Texas. The company was founded in 1958 as Dunfey Hotels, and operates 50 properties in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, totaling over ...
chain invested in the hotel in 2013, restoring the ballroom was one of its announced goals.
The ballroom re-opened in April 2017 after a closure of 38 years.
Throughout the years, the hotel has passed through the hands of a number of owners. The
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
MetLife, Inc. is the holding corporation for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC), better known as MetLife, and its affiliates. MetLife is among the largest global providers of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs, wi ...
became owners in 1933 when it foreclosed on the mortgage. Between 1941 and 1950, the hotel passed between C. A. Ripley and Vernon Cardy. Cardy's Hotel chain also owned the
Mount Royal Hotel
Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest.
Mount or Mounts may also refer to:
Places
* Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England
* Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, Co ...
in
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
, the
Royal Connaught Hotel
The Royal Connaught Hotel is a 13-storey building in downtown Hamilton, Ontario. It was built by Harry Frost of Buffalo, New York in 1914, who also started up and owned the Frost Fence Company in Hamilton. It is located at the corner of King Str ...
in
Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Hamilton has a population of 569,353, and its census metropolitan area, which includes Burlington and Grimsby, has a population of 785,184. The city is approximately southwest of T ...
, the
General Brock Hotel in
Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls () is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the border between the province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York in the United States. The largest of the three is Horseshoe Falls, ...
, the Prince Edward Hotel in
Windsor, Ontario
Windsor is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on the south bank of the Detroit River directly across from Detroit, Michigan, United States. Geographically located within but administratively independent of Essex County, it is the souther ...
and the Alpine Inn in
Sainte-Adèle, Quebec. In 1950,
Sheraton purchased Cardy's hotels and assumed management of the property, renaming it ''The King Edward Sheraton''.
The hotel dropped the Sheraton name in 1975, after the opening of the brand new
Four Seasons Sheraton Hotel nearby, becoming the ''King Edward Hotel'', but it remained part of Sheraton for another three years, until 1978. After a number of years of decline, Trans Nation, Inc. bought the hotel in 1979 for $6.3 million and closed it on September 2, 1979, for a $30 million restoration designed by Stanford Downey Architects Inc. The property reopened May 7, 1981, as part of
Trusthouse Forte Hotels, which bought the hotel outright on December 23 of that year.
When Forte acquired hotels from
Air France
Air France (; formally ''Société Air France, S.A.''), stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the flag carrier of France headquartered in Tremblay-en-France. It is a subsidiary of the Air France–KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global air ...
in 1994, the King Edward was rechristened '' King Edward''. The chain was involved in several other acquisitions and mergers between 1996 and 2003 when the brand came under the ownership of
Lehman Brothers Holdings
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. ( ) was an American global financial services firm founded in 1847. Before filing for bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States (behind Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, an ...
.
For the hotel's 100th anniversary, the
Ontario Heritage Trust unveiled a commemorative plaque on May 8, 2003.
Starwood purchased the brand from Lehman in 2005 and the hotel was renamed, dropping ''Royal'', to become simply '' King Edward''.
In 2009, a consortium purchased the structure but retained to manage it. The new owners announced a major restoration that included creating 140 condominiums on the third through fifth floors which had been unused for a number of years. In 2012, Skyline Hotels & Resorts, one of the owners, assumed management and marketing from and the hotel became ''The King Edward Hotel''.
Omni Hotels assumed management on August 1, 2013, when the hotel was renamed ''The Omni King Edward Hotel''.
After managing the hotel for two years, Omni Hotels bought it outright on November 24, 2015.
Guests
Notable dignitaries and luminaries who stayed at the hotel have included
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...
,
Rudolph Valentino
Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926), known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor based in the United States who starred ...
,
Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several era ...
,
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...
,
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
,
Britney Spears
Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer. Often referred to as the " Princess of Pop", she is credited with influencing the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s and early 2000s. After appearing in stage productio ...
, and
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...
who had lived in the hotel for a period.
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
stayed at the hotel's royal suite during their first visit to Toronto, in 1964, and caused the hotel's biggest commotion to date, when 3,000 fans packed the streets and flooded the lobby. In 1969,
John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...
and
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野 洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Ono grew up i ...
stayed in the same royal suite a day before their
bed-in for peace began. In February 1964, "moralists picketed" when
Liz Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. ...
and
Richard Burton stayed in a suite together; they were not married to one another at the time, causing a
scandal.
In film
The King Edward has not only housed film stars but also film sets, from the mellow,
Leonard Cohen’s 1983 musical ''
I am a Hotel
''I Am a Hotel'' is a 1983 Canadian made for TV short musical film, written by Leonard Cohen and Mark Shekter and directed by Allan F. Nicholls.
The storyline is based on imaginary events in the King Edward Hotel in Toronto, and the guests' (u ...
'', to the melodramatic,
Jamie Foxx’s film ''
Bait'', which, during a stunt mishap, caused an explosion that shook the building and shattered windows.
See also
*
Royal eponyms in Canada
In Canada, a number of sites and structures are named for royal individuals, whether a member of the past French royal family, British royal family, or present Canadian royal family thus reflecting the country's status as a constitutional monarch ...
*
Monarchy in Ontario
References
External links
Official websiteThe King Edward Hotel, Toronto, Canada oronto : The Hotel, ca. 1903; (Stone Limited, Printers). 20 p. Illustrated guest book from the year the hotel opened. Accessed 4 January 2014, in PDF format.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Omni King Edward Hotel
Hotels in Toronto
Hotel buildings completed in 1903
Hotels established in 1903
United Hotels Company of America
Sheraton hotels
E. J. Lennox buildings