Melville's King George Hotel: Royal Heritage

King George Hotel, c. 1940. Source

Originally named the Windsor Hotel, the King George Hotel in Melville was built in 1909 by J. N. (Joseph Napoleon) Pomerleau. It was one of three hotels in the community. The 1916 Canada Census shows that Joseph Pomerleau, age 22, and Antoinette Pomerleau, age 20, (both single) were managing the hotel on Main Street. Twenty-four other people were living at the hotel that year, including the cook Won Yee, two waitresses, and two servants. Most of the hotel guests at the time of the 1916 census-taking were railway workers.

The hotel's name was changed to the King George in 1919. By 1921, proprietor J. E. Benwell had redecorated the hotel from top to bottom.

Regina Leader-Post, May 21, 1921.

 

Royal Visit of 1939

The hotel's name must have resonated during the Royal Visit of 1939. On June 3rd of that year, over 60,000 people thronged to Melville, population 3,000, to catch a glimpse of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The visit was to be a ten-minute whistle-stop, but in view of the magnitude of the crowd, organizers agreed to stop for half an hour. Melville pulled out all the stops for the Royal Visit celebration. According to the Regina Leader-Post (June 5, 1939), the town staged one of its biggest sports days in history. "Concessionaires made money and the streets throbbed with loudspeaker advertising until after midnight," the newspaper stated. "Hotels and cafes were packed for hours, and at meal times hundreds jammed their way into them, demanding meals. Beer parlours had one of the biggest days of business since beer parlours came to Saskatchewan, one being reported as taking in $800 for the day."

Crowd waiting for the Royal Couple, CN station, Melville, 1939.

http://www.melvilleadvance.com/CN_Station_Restoration/CN_Station_Restoration.html

"Duke' Dutkowski of Hockey Fame

The hotel was sold by Jim Benwell in 1940 to a company headed by A. Borget. In 1941, guest rooms at the King George Hotel were renovated, with plumbing and new woodwork installed in each suite. On January 13, 1942, the Leader-Post reported that there had been a small fire in suite No. 9 in the northeast corner of the hotel. The fire department saved the building from destruction, and hotel manager "Duke" Dutkowski had carpenters on the job repairing the damage within a few hours.

"Duke" Dutkowski, player with Saskatoon Sheiks, 1922. Source

Laudus J. "Duke" Dutkowski had been a professional hockey player for more than a decade before becoming a hotel manager in August of 1940. He was profiled by the Leader-Post on May 16, 1945 while still operating the King George. Born in Regina in 1900, he started playing with the Saskatoon Crescents in 1921; then the Regina Captials until 1925; the Rosebuds in Portland, Oregon, and the Chicago Blackhawks throughout the 1920s; ending his career in 1934 with the New York Americans - the Big Apple's first professional hockey team. Dutkowski coached senior hockey in Regina before taking over management of the King George Hotel for Borget's company.

Concern for Comfort

George Zylich was the manager of the King George on July 19, 1948 when he was interviewed by the Leader-Post. Zylich had spent 13 years as a commercial traveller for the Scott Fruit Company, so he was particularly aware of the needs of the travelling salesmen who patronized his hotel. He said he spent most of his Sundays in his hotel's lobby getting better acquainted with the salesmen stopping over for the weekend. He made a point of familiarizing himself with their product lines, and when new men came into the territory, he was able to connect them with contacts. New to the hotel business, Zylich told the newspaper that he felt a hotel "must keep a new face." Things had to change around every so often to keep the place looking fresh and "homey." His firm had followed this principle, giving each guest room a different motif. He said people had dropped into the hotel between trains just to see the rooms which they had heard about.

A Modern-Day Hotel

By 2006, the three-storey hotel on Main Street had been through many upgrades and renovations. Stucco had been applied over the brick exterior. The 212-seat Windsor Tavern on the hotel’s main floor was open seven days a week. It had six video lottery terminals (VLTs), a dance floor, a DJ booth, a big screen TV and a Bose sound system valued at over $20,000. The tavern featured occasional live entertainment, and weekly specials such as “Sunday nine-ball tournaments, Wednesday Night Slow-Pitch BBQ in the beer patio, Friday Night "wing night" with tricycle races and more!” Ten guest rooms on the second floor, two of which were suites, had been modernized with full bathrooms, new windows and air conditioning. The hotel’s third floor had not been renovated in 2006.

The King George Hotel, Melville, 2006.  Joan Champ photo

The kitchen of the King George Hotel, Melville, 2006.

 

Destroyed by an Arsonist

On February 17, 2010, Melville's historic King George Hotel was destroyed by a suspicious fire that started in the kitchen. Several hundred people gathered to watch the firefighters battle the blaze. Hotel owner Sam Pervez, told the Leader-Post that, prior to the blaze, the updated bar had only been open for about three weeks and the restaurant was just days away from reopening. A resident of the landmark hotel, 63-year-old Roland St. Amand, pleaded guilty to setting the fire and was sentenced to three and a half years behind bars.

One of the on-lookers shot this video:  

Watch more video of Melville's main street before the hotel fire, August 2008: YouTube link     © Joan Champ, 2011

Gasthaus Neudorf: "A Place to Frolic"

Neudorf Hotel on right, c. 1930.  From Doug McHardy

I have been to the Gasthaus Neudorf near the Qu'Appelle Valley twice now -- once on a rainy day in the spring of 2006, and once in mid-winter when I stayed overnight in one of the newly renovated guest rooms - complete with its own bathroom (a rarity in old hotels)! During my stay, there happened to be a dinner show featuring a magician from Nova Scotia. I was the only non-local in the audience, so the good people of Neudorf naturally suspected that I was a "plant" for the magician's act!

Fritz Engelland and his cousin John Paysen, recent arrivals from Germany, saw a business opportunity when the Canadian Pacific Railway chose the town of Neudorf as the location for a divisional point in 1904. The building of the rail yards, roundhouse, shops, station, and water tower sparked the growth of the town. In 1906, Engelland and Paysen purchased two lots on the corner of Railway Avenue and Main Street and built a hotel.  

From Neudorf Memories of Pioneer Roots

Perhaps the two partners flipped a coin over which one of them the hotel was to be named after, and John Paysen won. After the Paysen Hotel opened in 1907, Engelland, his wife Augusta, and their four children lived in the hotel, as did his bachelor partner, Paysen, and all the hotel staff. The staff included chambermaids, dining room staff, and the cook – all from Austria, a “pool table man” from Wales, and the hotel barber from England. Living in such close proximity eventually led to a romance between Paysen and one of the maids, Barbara Ulmer.  By 1911, the two were married with two children and farming in the Moose Jaw district.  

Paysen Hotel dining room, c. 1910.  From Neudorf Memories of Pioneer Roots (1980)

In 1909, the hotel’s name changed to King George Hotel; that name stuck until 1929. The hotel featured a dining room, a pool hall, a theatre, a dance floor, and a barber shop. The theatre was likely on the third floor, where, it was reported, there was a large painting of a gruesome battle. In the spring of 1911, the Neudorf hotel was purchased by business partners, Michael Bateman and Henry Shatsky, who came to Canada from Russia in 1880. Like the previous owners, Bateman and Shatsky lived at the hotel with their wives and young children. The census for 1911 shows that there were fourteen guests (mainly CPR workers) and seven staff members – two teenage chamber maids, a “dining room girl” age 19, a 16-year-old kitchen maid, a 45-year-old Chinese cook who had been in the country since 1876, and Joseph, the 24-year-old hotel porter from Switzerland. 

Prohibition came into effect in Saskatchewan on July 1, 1915, closing down the bars, and with them, many rural hotels.  While the Neudorf hotel remained open, there was a noticeable downturn in business; by the time Prohibition ended in 1924, the third floor of the hotel had been closed off. During the 1920s, the hotel was owned and operated by Percy Bradley and his wife Tillie, who was renowned for the meals she cooked for hotel boarders – still mainly railroad workers. Owners came and went over the years, and at some point the name was changed to the Leland Hotel.

Neudorf Hotel under renovation, June 2006. Joan Champ photo

Out of the Ashes

Janice and Bernhard Caulien

in their work clothes, June 2006.

Joan Champ photo

In the 1990s, the hotel became known for some unique food served in the bar: pickled chicken gizzards.  In 1998, the hotel’s name changed to the Gizzard Inn to reflect this culinary novelty. The hotel was given a more cosmopolitan moniker in 2002 when Bernhard and Janice Caulien became the owners. Their goal was to turn the old hotel into a European style “guest house” (Gasthaus), or country inn, so they called it Gasthaus Neudorf.   

The Cauliens realized that the hotel could not make a go of it just by serving as a “filling station” - Bernhard's playful reference to the bar. What was required was a restaurant which served good food, as well as modern, comfortable guest rooms. The couple began the work of renovating the Neudorf hotel, when disaster struck.  In 2004, a fire started in a stove in the Caulien’s living quarters destroying part of the Gasthaus Neudorf. Bernhard and Janice were devastated, but they didn’t give up. They tore down the damaged part of the hotel and took up the work of renovating the remaining parts of the building. By 2007, three guest rooms were ready. The Gasthaus Neudorf was advertised as "a place to rest, a place to dine, a place to frolic," with international home cooked meals, and “the biggest selection of local and import beer, wine and spirits east of Regina.” 

The Cauliens’ Gasthaus project came to an end in 2015 when the couple sold the hotel and moved to British Columbia. The business then became known as the Neudorf Bar and Grille.

In the early morning of September 3, 2017, Neudorf’s old hotel burned to the ground. The owner and his son, the only two people in the building when the fire broke out, managed to get out safely. “Well, its been a long, tiring, not to mention devastating, week for our family and this great community,” the owners posted on Facebook. “At this time our plan is to rebuild."

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Stairs being refinished in the foyer, June 2006.  Joan Champ photo

Guest room, June 2006.  Joan Champ photo

Beverage room, June 2006.  Joan Champ photo

© Joan Champ, 2011

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