By Jean Elford for the Sarnia Gazette
(1961) Everyone familiar with downtown Sarnia refers to building number 176 on the east side of Front Street south of Lochiel as the Belchamber. It has been called that ever since James Belchamber had it built as a hotel in 1866. The name has persisted though the place has had many different owners and has changed from a hotel to a business block. Like all old buildings that are updated, it has suffered much in appearance.
Originally it had an elaborate façade with arched windows overhung with wrought iron valances. An ironwork balcony jutted out from the second floor and formed a porch over the sidewalk. At one time a large round clock hung from the porch. The balcony went after the First World War and the iron valances after the tornado of 1953. Since then the old hotel received a blue stucco face.
David Murray of Guelph designed the building after the hotel that occupied the site burned. His plans called for a four-storey edifice on a stone foundation to extend 60 feet along Front Street and 70 feet east. Two courts were formed in the structure so that all rooms received daylight. The basement contained the kitchen, a laundry, and a wine cellar. The bar, an office, a parlour, and a traveller’s sample room occupied the main floor. Each floor had a parlour, and there were a total of 57 bedrooms. The stables were in the space between the east end of the building and Christina Street.
James Belchamber accepted the bid of William Ireland of $7,438 for the construction of the new hotel. Ireland began work in the late spring of 1866 and completed the building by September. Robert Mackenzie supplied the furnishings. Henry Hall did the carpentry work. Ireland himself took charge of the masonry. C. Lacroix plastered it. Charles Taylor did the painting.
When Ireland handed over the keys to Belchamber, the latter and his wife got ready for the grand opening. Mrs. Belchamber apparently did the cooking for the establishment. She prepared a meal for 150 invited guests. The people honoured with an invitation felt they could not accept the hospitality in its entirety, and they agreed among themselves to contribute a dollar each toward the expense. Alexander Mackenzie chaired the after dinner gathering. A man named Carter proposed the toast to Queen Victoria. Mayor F. Davis reminisced about the early days in Sarnia and mentioned the Double N-I, an ancient tavern run by Oliver Allen as early as 1834. Apparently it had stood in the same place as the new building.
A few years after a hotel named the Exchange replaced the Double N-I, Samuel Hitchcock operated it, and in 1858, James Belchamber took ii over. In January, 1860, the Exchange burned to the ground. Fire broke out next door in a flat over Brown’s bake shop. Although calm weather prevailed and the Sarnia Fire Department came to the scene immediately, the fire spread rapidly. The firemen ran a hose from the river to the hotel and put a steady stream of water on it but did not save any part of the hotel or the stables behind it. The Port Huron Fire Department came to help but in spite of the combined efforts fire destroyed a number of [Editor’s Note: next line illegible]..
Many of the patrons of the burned out hotel would mourn the loss of its bar, for seemingly bars did a seven day a week business in early Sarnia until Sunday. May 1, 1881. This is the day the Scott Act came into effect. Hotel owners forced to close their bars Sundays and weekdays closed their hotels in protest. Pranksters hung a cloth at half-mast from the flagstaff of the city hall on George Street. People coming into (these places) by train found the porters at the station on the corner of Cromwell and Front off work to show their disapproval.
Carrying their own luggage, travellers went from hotel to hotel only to find them all closed. A preacher from the township accustomed to dine every Sunday at a favourite hotel went away hungry. On Monday with the opening of the grocery stores, those who ordinarily would have had their meals in hotels were glad of the chance to buy bread and cheese to dine on. Tuesday, James McAvoy, who had leased the Belchamber and been out of town, found his help had closed his hotel and stables like all the others. He promptly opened them, but the bar remained closed as long as the Scott Act remained in force.
In the twenties, Samuel Hitchcock, a grandson of the man who had run the Exchange, renovated the Belchamber and turned it into a business block. It now contains apartments on the upper floors and three business establishments on the ground floor. The tiled entranceway with “Belchamber” inset in it is one of the remaining vestiges of its former grandeur. A door in the rear of the entrance hall opens unto a court and from it may be seen the original brick walls of the old hotel that has stood on the site of the Double N-I and the Exchange since before Confederation.