Some rooms at the Rockyview Hotel are being restored to their former glory.
The hotel’s owner operator, JJ Ludwig, alongside fellow staff members have been updating some of the hotel’s 15 rooms to reflect the building’s rich history. The hotel, which is located above the Texas Gate Bar & Grill serves as a landmark because it is one of the town’s few remaining original buildings since Cochrane was founded in 1903.
“The hotel has been around since 1904 and there’s a lot of history behind that. For example, at one point, travelling salesmen would get off the train, rent a room, put their cot in the corner and from there they would sell their wares – so people would come up here for the week,” Ludwig explained.
Ludwig said the building has undergone many changes over the years including housing doctors’ offices and serving as a teahouse during the prohibition. She said the hotel is third oldest operating hotel in the province and was also the first place in Alberta to allow men and women to drink together.
“Basically we’re trying to take all the aspects of what this history was of the hotel, from 1904 until now, and update the rooms to reflect that,” Ludwig said.
Of the rooms that have been updated there is a trapper-themed room, a cowboy-themed room, a Victorian-themed room, and a prairie room. The next room her staff plans to update will have a Canadian Pacific Railway theme.
“It will kind of give homage to the rail system that is obviously a big part of Cochrane,” Ludwig said.
All of the décor for the rooms has been sourced locally save for the bed frame in the country room, which was imported from the Czech Republic after being built in Australia. Baroke Design out of Water Valley has been working with Ludwig to source the decorative items while Lynn Ellis of Insomniac’s Attic has been helping with the interior design.
“Each piece we source has a story behind it and we made sure we found out all the stories so we can pass that on to the guests who stay here as well,” Ludwig said.
Currently, Ludwig is focusing the renovation on the hotel’s second-storey rooms and the hallway and hopes to be finished the project by the fall. The restoration process for the rooms involves taking down drywall and incorporating the original wood and designs of the rooms when they were built.
“We had to take down drywall and found the original wood underneath so what we’ve tried to do is reclaim as much of the wood as possible and put it into aspects in the rooms… We’ve been trying to find ways to save everything,” Ludwig said.
Despite some negative feedback from people in the community about taking on this project while the economy is in peril, Ludwig is proud of the work done so far by her staff and will be looking at how and when she can update the third-storey rooms too.
“This building has just spoken so much with locals as a sort of meeting place. You can feel that, when people come visit there’s a pride that’s part of it and I have just as much pride in that. So I wanted to honour that by taking it back to what it used to be or even just paying attention to what the history was,” Ludwig explained.
