One of Rossland’s earliest and smallest hotels, best known for its saloon, the Bodega was constructed between 1896 and 1898. The dining room and the kitchen were located below the ground floor and the main floor had the bar-room, two club rooms and a reading room. There were a total of 32 bedrooms in the hotel and just one bathroom (water closet).
In 1911, George Green, the founder of Green City near Salmo, opened an ice cream parlour on the premises. The popular Rosie’s Cafe occupied the building from 1930 until 1945.
The Rossland Light Opera Company bought the building in 1985 and have used it for meetings, practices, set construction and storage since then. Founded in 1951, The Rossland Light Opera Company is "
".
The Bodega Hotel represents common mining settlement architecture of the time, with a false front and peaked roof. The western-style building represents a typical establishment of the boom days in Rossland. The Bodega Hotel is situated on one of the blocks with the densest amount of original buildings in Rossland, due to the fires of 1927 and 1929. The building operated as a hotel and saloon until 1911 when businessman George Green opened an ice cream parlour inside. After brief ownership by several other businesses as well as the Fraternal Order of the Eagles, the building is now the home of the Rossland Light Opera Players as of 1983, which are believed to be the oldest musical theatre company in BC, having been founded in 1951.
From the Rossland Museum
Bodega Hotel
Description of Historic Place
The Bodega Hotel is located on the eastern side of the first block of Washington Street, north of the intersection with Columbia Avenue, in Rossland, British Columbia. It is a two-storey wooden building constructed prior to 1898 in a false-front style common to that era. It has a narrow frontage and extends deep into the lot with a 15' by 60' footprint.
Heritage Value
Originally used as a hotel and saloon, the Bodega Hotel has historical and architectural value.
Washington and Columbia Streets define Rossland's historic and current downtown core, and the first block of Washington Street containing the Bogeda Hotel is the densest block of turn-of-the century commercial buildings remaining in Rossland, due to the huge fires of 1927 and 1929 that destroyed many buildings along Columbia Avenue. With its wood construction and Western style of architecture, the Bodega Hotel is representative of the smaller hotels that were abundant in the downtown area of Rossland during the gold mining boom town days of the late 1890s and very early 1900s. According to an 1898 Licence Inspector's Report to the City, it contained the prerequisite bar room, "nicely fixed up," 31 bedrooms and one water closet, "dirty."
After the gold mining days ended, the Bodega Hotel was used for a variety of business enterprises such as a restaurant, an ice cream parlor and a public library. Since 1983, the building has been the home of the Rossland Light Opera Players. A plaque identifies it as one of Rossland's significant historic buildings.
Character-Defining Elements
Key character-defining elements of the Bodega Hotel include:
- Location on Washington Street in downtown Rossland
- Western false-front style of architecture
- Wood construction
- Original exterior features such as Western-style false front, set-back doorway entrance, transom windows above entrance door, cargo doors, large display window, roofline, cornice trim, and lower wall cladding
- Original interior features such as remaining elements of original floor plan, mouldings, tin bar-room ceiling, original staircase to second floor, beadboard wainscoting, transom windows above second-floor doors, original support beams in basement, and coal chute
From Historic Places Canada