CALGARY INN

Firm: Reno C. Negrin

Address: 320 4 Avenue SW

Date of final plans: 1963

Status: standing as built

When the Calgary Inn opened in July 1964, it was the first grand hotel to open in the city since the Palliser on 1 June 1914. The project was instigated by a syndicate called the Calgary Inn Ltd, who bought the property from the Army, Navy and Air Force Veterans' Club. As part of the deal, the Inn build ANAVETS a new clubhouse a block away. The syndicate's president was George L. McMahon, and other members included Ed O'Connor, Carl Nickle, D. P. McLaws, and Smiley Raborn. The Calgary Inn Ltd partnered with Western International Hotels (now Westin) of Seattle to build the hotel.

The Calgary Inn was the fourth Western International hotel in Canada following the Bayshore Inn and Georgia Hotel in Vancouver and the Imperial Inn in Victoria. The architect was Reno Celestino Negrin (1928–1997) of Vancouver, who had designed the Bayshore. Negrin was a UBC architecture school graduate (1955).

Plans for the hotel were announced in March 1963 and called for 16 storeys. Twelve storeys were constructed in the first phase and opened in 1964. Construction of the final four floors began in 1968 and was completed in March 1969, bringing the total rooms to 430. Around 1975 a second tower was added to the north.

In 1969, Walter Chell, the manager of the hotel's bar, the Owl's Nest, invented the Caesar cocktail. Today a sign hangs on the wall outside the bar commemorating the invention.