The history of hotels in Prince Albert is an interesting one and spans from the founding of the city until present day.
Prince Albert Historical Society member and researcher Fred Payton discussed this history during ‘Historic Prince Albert Hotels’, the Prince Albert Historical Museum’s latest Coffee and Conversation on Sunday.
Payton said he had two subjects in mind when asked to do another Coffee and Conversation: historical hotels or the Penitentiary and University,
“I thought, things are really up in the air right now,” Payton said. “We’re living in a hotel because we’re having some work done on the house after a tree fell on the house, so anyhow, here we are.”
Living out of a hotel inspired Payton’s talk in more ways than one. With his house under renovations, it’s difficult to access information on other topics like the Penitentiary. Hotels, he said, are a big easier.
“Everything out of my upstairs study is now in another bedroom and I can’t get at it,” Payton said.
His discussion began with the first known hotel in Prince Albert in 1876. Then he jumped to two other more prominent hotels: the Queens Hotel, which sat where Plaza 88 is currently located, and the recently torn down National Hotel.
“Then I’m going to talk about the Broadway Hotel, which was on 15th Street, just west of where the Fire Hall is now, the Lincoln Hotel, which was torn down when they built the (Gateway) Mall, the Avenue Hotel, and I’m going to talk about the Royal Hotel, and I’m going to talk about the Windsor Hotel. The Windsor Hotel stood at Second Avenue and River Street West,” Payton added.
Windsor Hotels exist or existed across Saskatchewan. One still stands in Humboldt.
“I was updating my research (and) I kept running across this Windsor Hotel that was owned by a McLeod, who is a brother of Samuel McLeod, but it was in Regina,” he said.
Payton said hotels can be used to trace the prosperity of a city like Prince Albert. The ebbs and flows of hotel business can be used as economic indicators, according to Payton.
“I think it’s significant because you can see the rise and the fall of the Prince Albert economy by looking at the hotels,” Payton said.
“When the economy is on the up, you get lots of hotels. When it’s on the down, you get lots of mortgage sales and auction sales of furniture and stuff and fewer hotels being opened,” he added.
The past may be mimicking the present with several new hotels opening in Prince Albert over the past several years.
“There are a bunch of hotels opening and one wonders, what do people know that we don’t know,” he said.
Payton said the evolution of these hotels and their many owners is a fascinating subject. During his talk, several names came up numerous times as owners of several hotels.
He said not all hotels are remembered with the same level of enthusiasm.
“If you ask somebody ‘where was the Grand Hotel’ they wouldn’t know,” he said. “They might know where the Royal was, but they wouldn’t know where the Grand was.
“The Broadway Hotel, people will remember that, but it opened as the Saskatchewan Hotel, and then it was the Seymour Hotel. Then it was the King’s Hotel and then it became a Broadway. And where did he get the name Broadway from?”
Payton explained that 15th Street was once Broadway. You can also find interesting information about a cafe that still exists on Central Avenue.
“The Princess Cafe used to be in the Queen’s Hotel,” he said. “They closed the cafes in the Queen’s Hotel and the Princess Cafe migrated up Central Avenue. It was in where the Bison is now.”
Then it moved into where the PO was and the PO, of course, was the Post Office Cafe.
I mean, lots of little itty-bitty things like that I find really fascinating,” Payton said.
“So yeah, I just find it interesting to have all these different hotels with all these different names, all these different people, and some of the issues that arose.”
Payton concluded his talk with some information on hotels he was not able to find. There were also some hotels and motels that were off limits, at least right now.
“Some people were expecting me to talk about things like the Flamingo Motel and the South Sider Motel. I’m not talking about them. They were built in around the 1950s, 1960s. That’s not historic hotels in my mind. In another 50 years, maybe,” Payton said.
There is no Coffee and Conversation in December and it will return in January. The Prince Albert Historical Museum will be hosting their annual Christmas Tea on Dec. 7.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
