The Sunset Hotel

The Sunset Hotel. . , A large three storey 80-bedroom summer hotel once sat on the north side of Britannia Road at the corner of Essex Street, occupying most of the west end of the block. It was built of yellow brick veneer construction, had a staff complement of 32, a fine dining room plus a spacious open lobby and adjacent sitting rooms. The hotel was flanked by broad verandahs on the south and west sides., To the west was Hibernia Terrace giving access to the beach and harbour. This original road (c.1829) made its way diagonally down the side of the cliff from the end of Britannia Road to below the lighthouse where it joined Beach Street. When the lake bank gave way in the 1920s, after decades of wave erosion, the road was abandoned., The 'Goderich Summer Hotel', built by Wm. H. Smith, a Detroit entrepreneur who ran into financial difficulty even before the hotel was completed in 1901, was purchased in 1912 by Charles C. Lee of Goderich and renamed the 'Sunset Hotel'. Mr Lee ran it until his death in 1944 when his family took over its operation until 1958 when it was sold. The hotel then ran intermittently until 1971 when it was demolished. Time had passed it by. Always full of patrons in its heyday, the hotel welcomed guests all summer long, including many famous Canadians and even some Hollywood film stars. The south side of Britannia Road up to Wilson Street was occupied by tennis and shuffleboard courts, while to the east of the hotel, there were extensive flower and vegetable gardens.