Description of Historic Place

The Terminal Hotel is a three storey Edwardian Commercial style building located on a main thoroughfare in the downtown core. The historic place is confined to the building footprint.

Heritage Value

The Terminal Hotel, built in 1912, is a handsome, very good example of vernacular Edwardian Commercial style. This restrained and symmetrical style was a reaction to the exuberant eclecticism of the Victorian architecture that preceded it. The building's storefront has been modified over time, most extensively in 1951, but the upper storey and essential form remain intact.

The three-storey Terminal Hotel is very prominent on the street and is part of a continuous line of historic buildings on one of Nanaimo's oldest commercial strips.

The Terminal Hotel is a tangible reminder of the social and economic importance of hotels in Nanaimo history. Like most mining communities, early Nanaimo had a large population of single, often transient, men. The City's many hotels functioned as affordable living quarters and, in the saloons and restaurants typically located on the ground floor, as social centres.

The Terminal Hotel has been in continuous use as a hotel or similar function for almost 100 years.

Source: City of Nanaimo, Development Services Department, file #6800-20-H01-02/63 Victoria Crescent

Character-Defining Elements

Character defining elements of the Terminal Hotel include:

-all of the elements of the Edwardian Commercial style as expressed in the overall restrained appearance, simple form and massing, symmetrical facade, brick cladding, double hung wooden sash windows, corbelled cornice and segmental arched window openings on the upper stories.

-the building's location on a main thoroughfare within a grouping of historic buildings.