Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax

Photo: thefullwiki.org

The Lord Nelson Hotel was built in 1927, across from the Halifax Public Garden. Funding for the project came from a consortium of investors led by the CPR. The supervising architect was O.C. Gross and the construction company was H.L. Stevens Co. of New York and Toronto.

The hotel was named in honour of Lord Horatio Nelson. Although he never visited Halifax, his name conjured up the city's naval traditions. The lobby contains a mural of Nelson's flagship before the Battle of Trafalgar.

The Lord Nelson was the first modern hotel in Halifax. The same year, construction on the Nova Scotian, now owned and operated by Westin, got under way. The timing of the construction was good. If these hotels had been built ten years earlier, as some other railway hotels were, they would have undoubtedly have blown up in the 1917 Halifax explosion.

Both hotel and garden feature in Stuart McLean's wonderful story about Dave and the duck who swallows his wedding ring.