The Ritz-Carlton Montréal is a luxury hotel located at 1228 Sherbrooke Street West, on the corner of Drummond Street, in Montreal, Quebec. Opened in 1912, it was the second Ritz-Carlton hotel in North America after one in New York City. Its name was originally licensed by César Ritz directly, and while the hotel is now part of the chain managed by the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, it retains its original branding stylization.
The original builders referred to themselves as the Carlton Hotel Company of Montreal, with the concept of naming the hotel after London's celebrated Carlton Hotel. However, one of the investors, Charles Hosmer, was a personal friend of César Ritz, and persuaded his colleagues to incorporate the Ritz name associated with the success of the Hôtel Ritz Paris, which opened in 1898.
For a fee of $25,000, César Ritz agreed to lend his name, but stipulated that by the "Ritz standards," every room was to have its bathroom, there was to be a kitchen on every floor so room-service meals could be served course by course, and around-the-clock valet and concierge service were to be made available to the guests for, amongst other duties, tracking lost luggage or ordering theatre tickets. Finally, the lobby was to be small and intimate, with a curved grand staircase, for ladies to show off their ball gowns on their descent.
Early years
Around 1820, John Bigsby observed that Montreal's hotels were "as remarkable for their palatial exteriors as they are for their excellent accommodation within." Donegana's Hotel became the largest in the British Colonies in the 1840s, and the Windsor had been Montreal's pre-eminent hotel in the 1870s.
By 1909, some of the city's wealthiest citizens wanted a modern "first class residential hotel". The citizens, led by Charles Hosmer (a personal friend of César Ritz), Sir Herbert Holt, Sir Montagu Allan, and Sir Charles Gordon, met with the Hon. Lionel Guest (a first cousin of Winston Churchill) and Harry Higgins (Chairman of the Ritz Hotel London) to found the Carlton Hotel Company of Montreal. The land on which the hotel was built was purchased from Charles Meredith, who became the fifth principal shareholder, and had a significant influence on the hotel's image and future. The hotel was designed by the architectural firm of Warren and Wetmore, and it was completed at a cost of $2 million. Its doors officially opened at 11:15 pm on New Year's Eve, 1912, marked by a gala ball attended by 350 guests.
As the founders had hoped, two-thirds of the guests at the Ritz-Carlton took suites comprising several rooms and lived there permanently for $29 a month. The First World War made standards difficult to keep, and in 1922, in direct rivalry to the Ritz-Carlton, the Mount Royal Hotel, was erected as the largest hotel in the British Empire. The Ritz-Carlton and the Mount Royal Club (not to be confused with the similarly named hotel) were the most fashionable meeting places for the city's wealthy within the area later known as the Golden Square Mile. On Valentine's Day, 1916, the first transcontinental telephone call was made from the hotel. An audience of two hundred businessmen were said to have listened breathlessly as the Chairman of the Bell Telephone Company enquired: "Hello. Is this Vancouver?" The clear reply - "Yes" - was met with a roar of approval and toasted with champagne.
In the years before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the hotel enjoyed a period of great prosperity. In 1918, Lord Birkenhead described it as "very luxurious and comfortable," and the American Bankers Association held their annual meetings there. In 1919, the Prince of Wales made the first Royal visit, staying in the seventeen-room Royal Suite. Queen Marie of Romania, Prince Felix of Luxembourg and Prince George, Duke of Kent also stayed at the hotel in the 1920s. Several movie idols stayed, such as Lillie Langtry, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks. Former US President William Howard Taft and his wife "entertained lavishly" in the Presidential Suite for all of 1921.
Depression
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 was followed by the Great Depression and then World War II. The Swiss General Manager, Émile Charles des Baillets, had been with the hotel since 1924. In 1929, he lamented that before guests had come to stay for several weeks accompanied by trains of luggage, but during this time, when they did come, they came for a night or two with only a single bag.