Sarnia Hotel and 1860s Fires

It was built of brick in a village made of wood, right down to the sidewalks.

The Sarnia Hotel, originally named the Western, was constructed in the spring of 1852 by Mr. W.G. Harkness, joining four other hotels in The Rapids. The building material had been delivered by oxen from Niagara Falls. When the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) spoke from its balcony overlooking Front Street in 1860, the Western was the only brick hotel west of London. This would save the hotel from two calamitous fires soon to come.

The insecurity of wooden buildings was most acute in winter, when blazing hearth fires, candles and oil lanterns made fire a serious fear. In 1866, Port Sarnia, a town of 2,000 souls, would face its first great cataclysm. The fire began on a frosty January 8 in a downtown core mainly clustered on Front Street (then called Trongate Street). Christina Street was a mix of residential and commercial properties.

The blaze began on the east side of Front Street just south of Lochiel. As consecutive buildings caught fire on Front Street, citizens rushed into the buildings, hauling out rescued goods and property and placing it into a growing pile of goods in the centre of the road. By the time the fire was finally put out, a large portion of the Front Street block between Lochiel and Cromwell streets, and much of Lochiel and parts of Christina were a mass of destruction.

But only one year later would see a massive, destructive blaze the likes of which Sarnia hasn’t seen before or since. The fire that tore across Sarnia’s commercial downtown district on the night of November 14, 1867, destroyed Sarnia’s business core, but it could have been worse without the heroic efforts of Sarnia’s young fire department and their colleagues in Port Huron who rushed to the rescue.

The fire was believed to have started at Harkness’ Billiards, a shop that was located behind the Western Hotel on George Street. What had begun as simply a bad fire was about to become a conflagration. Practically the entire block between Christina and Victoria Streets between George and Lochiel lay in ruins. Fully half of Sarnia’s downtown commercial district had been destroyed.

The brick construction of the Western Hotel saved the property from both of Sarnia’s calamitous fires of 1866 and 1867. Briefly called Cadillac House in the 1880s, the name reverted to Western Hotel in 1891. It passed through the hands of several owners and lessees, eventually passing into the hands of a Mrs. Abel. In 1940, she sold it to Charles Taylor of Toronto. With the name Western Hotel now changed to Sarnia Hotel,the property now joined five other hotels in this city of 18,000: the Windsor, Colonial, Vendome, Morden House and the McFee.

Every business was thriving in the boom years that began with the wartime construction of Polymer Corporation in 1942.The following year, Taylor sold the Sarnia Hotel to Hillard Martin, who refurbished Sarnia’s oldest hotel. Growth continued through the 50s and 60s.

So the old Sarnia Hotel has quite a history – first called The Western and then Cadillac House, then the Western again, then the Sarnia Hotel, the Sarnia Tavern, the Blue Sail, and the Coconut Club. And now it still lives on, becoming an apartment building, housing four apartments with lower level retail space for rent.

The old Sarnia Hotel remains a still-standing relic of the days when our city was still known in this region as The Rapids.