Description of Historic Place

This property is located downtown Smithers, British Columbia at 3771 Broadway Avenue. The historic place includes the building.

Heritage Value

This property has historical value due to it housing prominent businesses during Smithers settlement history and surviving through multiple disasters. While the exact date of construction is unknown, the property at 3771 Broadway Avenue was constructed by 1923 and was purchased by Duncan and Susan McRae that year. In the fall of 1929, they added a 42-foot, two-storey extension onto a pre-existing building to accommodate their hotel business, the McRae House (later McRae Hotel). The name of the hotel changed to the Smithers Hotel in 1955 and it remained open until 2001. The building survived both the 1944 and 1945 fires that destroyed much of this end of Main Street, including adjacent buildings at the corner of Broadway Avenue and Main Street.

Character-Defining Elements

The Character-Defining Elements of this historic place include its:

- Line of 10 upper floor windows on the Main Street side consistent with the original building