The Architectural Economy of Reform: Notes around the Newfoundland Hotel, 1928-1983

Designed by the preeminent Montreal firm of Ross and Macdonald, the Newfoundland Hotel is an unattributed project that also bears the dubious distinction of being the only railway hotel designed by the firm (of which there are now nine) to have been entirely demolished. In this paper I chart the rise and fall of the Newfoundland Hotel, from its design and inception in 1928 to its destruction in 1983. In particular, I focus on the financial history of the Hotel and its relationship to a series of economic reform movements in Newfoundland spanning the pre- and post-Confederation period that saw ownership of the hotel pass from private to public hands and elevated it from a provincial to a national concern. The Hotel presents a remarkable case study in this respect for its embeddedness in multiple financial discourses, ranging from economic diversification, to insolvency and corporate investment strategy, as well as for its involvement in a series of changes to the organization of Newfoundland as a political state. By highlighting the architectural agency of these financial processes felt through the creation, alteration, and destruction of the Newfoundland Hotel, I propose financial architectural scholarship as an approach to reading the public and the corporate archive.