Castle in the Wilderness (Part 4)

 

Here is the last post for the series of Fairmont Banff Springs.  Though you have viewed the posts of the lounge/terrace, lights, and windows, but you probably haven’t seen the doors of the Alhambra room or heard about the anecdote of the painting hanging at the end of the hallway of the second floor (see photo above).

First, let’s take a quick tour of these beautiful antique furniture displaying on both sides of the hallway.

The cast bronze doors of the Alhambra Room were designed based on the style of Alhambra. They actually sent people to Alhambra to learn about the style. It costed $8,000 for these doors then, it’d be $2 millions today:

The painting below was painted by Van Horne who had the idea of building this luxurious hotel and hired Bruce Price of New York, one of the leading architects of the time. Our tour guide told us an anecdote of this painting. Interestingly, Van Horne signed his name on the low left corner rather than the right side of the painting, because he wanted to remind people that the building was built reversely from the original blue print. Due to this mistake, the kitchen and other rooms were facing the scenery side, thus the guest rooms were on the other side. Since the mistake was discovered a year after the ground opening, the architects were under the pressure of coming up with a solution. They finally decided to build an extension from the kitchen side allowing guests to enjoy the view.

Hope you have enjoyed the tour of this series of the “Castle of the Wildness”. 🙂

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Dr. Hb is sharing one of his best memories from his days in medical practice in India. A very moving post, you don’t want to miss. Click HERE…

 

• September 14, 2015
• Canada
• 43 Comments