Pagoda - Thunder Bay ON
Posted by: 
PeterNoG
N 48° 26.069 W 089° 13.088
16U E 335936 N 5366969
This Ontario Heritage Property is the Thunder Bay Tourist Pagoda, 170 Red River Road at North Water Street in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Waymark Code: WMF09P
Location: Ontario, Canada
Date Posted: 08/01/2012
Views: 9
~ from HistoricPlaces.ca (visit link) ~ Thunder Bay Tourist Pagoda National Historic Site of Canada is an early tourism bureau built in a novelty design inspired by a mixture of classical and Asian architecture. An octagonal brick structure surrounded by a verandah, it has a pagoda-shaped roof with cupola and a columned entranceway surmounted by a carved beaver.
Thunder Bay Tourist Pagoda was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1986 because it symbolizes the themes of civic boosterism and inter-city rivalry in the early 20th century and it has an eccentric but carefully conceived design.
The Thunder Bay Tourist Pagoda was designed by local architect H. Russell Halton, and built by the Port Arthur Industrial Commission in 1909. It was an early tourism bureau designed to attract the attention of train and ship passengers traveling through Port Arthur, in order to promote the town's advantages as an industrial and tourism centre at a time when it's rival, nearby Fort William, was becoming an increasingly important transportation hub. The pagoda continued to be used as a tourism bureau until declining rail traffic made its future uncertain. By 1986 it had closed and its future remained in doubt until it eventually was restored as a heritage facility.