The Leland Hotel is one of the two which survive, both of which survive as hotels, complete with pub and eatery. Prohibition in Alberta in 1915 caused the hotel to close for a time, becoming home to a pool hall from October 1915 and a barber shop from 1917. The Leland reopened without a bar in 1918 and under new management. In 1919 a Café opened in the hotel offering "meals at all hours". With the end of prohibition in 1923, the hotel continued in operation as a boarding house, again with a pub, which was expanded circa 1952.
While the hotel has undergone many renovations and additions through the years, it retains its basic appearance, remaining recognizable when compared to turn of the century photos.
Leland Hotel
The Leland Hotel has heritage value for its historic associations as one of the town's three early hotels with the services it provided mirroring the social and economic evolution of the town. Constructed over the summer of 1901, painted in contrasting colours of white and green, complete with new furniture from Edmonton, it formally opened October 15, 1901, with a grand ball and supper to which its proprietors George Sellars and Jack McCue extended a cordial invitation to the public. Answering the need for accommodation for a transient population in the early days of settlement the Leland Hotel, along with its competitors, the Royal Hotel (1900-) and the Temperance Hotel (1900-1920), offered rooms, meals, and a bar stocked with liquors and cigars. The Leland Hotel initially fulfilled a significant social function in the town, providing a meeting space for numerous groups from women's organizations to those interested in organizing a football club, and was a popular venue for dinners and dances.
The Leland Hotel is also significant for its ability to demonstrate the effect of Alberta's changing liquor regulations. Its closure from August 1915 in anticipation of the outcome of the Prohibition plebiscite held in July 1916, put about a dozen people out of work and according to the Ponoka Herald, left "a great big void" on Chipman Avenue. Home to a pool hall from October 1915 and a barber shop from 1917, the Leland Hotel reopened without a bar in 1918 and under new management. In 1919 a Café opened in the hotel offering "meals at all hours", a welcome service for the increasing number of farmers delivering grain to the elevators in town and commercial travellers serving the thriving businesses of the town. Following the end of Prohibition in 1923; the Leland Hotel continued to mirror changing social and economic dynamics, operating as a boarding house and expanding its tavern to the rear circa 1952 as beer halls became the norm in Alberta following the granting of hotel beer licenses in 1951. Following the privatization of government liquor stores in 1993, the café became a liquor outlet. The prominent location of the Leland Hotel, its historic associations and continuing function as hotel and tavern has given it landmark status in Ponoka as one of the earliest extant buildings in town.
The architectural value of the Leland Hotel lies in its early wood frame design, and in the demonstration of changing architectural taste and adaptation of wood frame construction to modern requirements and new building materials in Ponoka over more than half a century. The original portion of the site is characterized by a distinctive and unusual hipped roofline that features a series of high gable-roofed dormer windows on the front of the building and smaller ones at the rear and sides. The two and one-half storey structure presents a long façade on the street with a row of double hung single pane windows on the upper floor. Changes to the façade, including the alteration of the east corner entrance were made in 1938 when the wood siding was stuccoed (except for the west elevation), in keeping with a number of other buildings in PonokaFs commercial core following this trend. The Leland Hotel continued to modernize its appearance, and the design of the circa 1952 rectangular extension entrance to the café on the north-west corner incorporated contemporary Moderne horizontal stream line elements including a glass block window and glass block side lights flanking the slightly recessed main doorway.
From the Ponoka Municipal Heritage Inventory