{{Coordinates, 54.312766, -130.327778, display=titleThe Château Prince Rupert was an unexecuted hotel to be built in

Prince Rupert, British Columbia Prince Rupert is a port city in the province of British Columbia, Canada. It is located on Kaien Island near the Alaskan panhandle. It is the land, air, and water transportation hub of British Columbia's North Coast, and has a population of 12, ...

. The hotel was planned by the

Grand Trunk Pacific Railway The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was a historic Canadian transcontinental railway running from Fort William, Ontario (now Thunder Bay) to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, a Pacific coast port. East of Winnipeg the line continued as the National ...

and was designed by

Francis Rattenbury Francis Mawson Rattenbury (11 October 1867 – 28 March 1935) was a British architect although most of his career was spent in British Columbia, Canada, where he designed the province's legislative building among other public commissions. Divorc ...

. The architect's first sketches were made in September 1911, and he completed the final plans in June 1913. Work on the foundations began in late 1913, but halted shortly thereafter and never resumed. The hotel project was part of the Grand Trunk Pacific's plan to make Prince Rupert a west coast port city to rival Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. If built, the structure would have been the focal point of the town and one of the largest hotels in the country. However, the railway's financial problems, combined with the onset of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, prevented its realisation. By 1923 the GTP had been absorbed into the new

Canadian National Railway The Canadian National Railway Company () is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN is Canada's largest railway, in terms of both revenue a ...

, which chose Vancouver as its western terminus.

History

The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway had chosen Prince Rupert in 1904 to be its western terminus. President

Charles Melville Hays Charles Melville Hays (May 16, 1856 – April 15, 1912) was the president of the Grand Trunk Railway. He began working in the railroad business as a clerk at the age of 17 and quickly rose through the ranks of management to become the General M ...

intended Prince Rupert to become the "metropolis of the north." The company contracted landscape architects Brett, Hall & Co. of Boston to plan the town. At the company's annual meeting in 1911, president

informed shareholders that the railway "proposed to construct a chain of first-class modern hotels" stretching from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert. In July 1913, Rattenbury's designs for the Château Prince Rupert, Château Mount Robson, and Château Miette received an extensive profile in the ''Contract Record and Engineering Review''. Rattenbury submitted to the journal a watercolour rendering of each building. Curiously, the image Rattenbury submitted and the building the article describes was the first iteration of the design, which had been superseded in September 1912. In November 1913, the ''Canadian Railway and Marine World'' reported that excavations for the hotel had begun recently.

Drawings

In the summer of 1985, a set of 283 drawings of the hotel was found in the attic of Glenlyon School in Victoria by headmaster Keith Walker. Part of the school buildings comprised Rattenbury's former house, "Iechinihl." These drawings are now held at the

British Columbia Archives The British Columbia Provincial Archives are located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The BC Archives merged with the Royal BC Museum in 2003. The BC Archives contain the archives of the British Columbia government, and are valuable for bot ...

in Victoria. A full set of drawing is also held by the Prince Rupert City and Regional Archives as part of the ''Francis M. Rattenbury fonds''.https://princerupertarchives.ca/search/detail-bare.php?ID=14326

References

Châteauesque architecture Châteauesque architecture in Canada Francis Rattenbury buildings Grand Trunk Pacific Railway hotels Grand Trunk Pacific Railway History of British Columbia Hotels in British Columbia Prince Rupert, British Columbia Railway hotels in Canada