Nelson Hotel
9 Main Street
Carberry

Designation Date:  June 12, 2007
Designation Authority:  Town of Carberry
Present Owner:  Town of Carberry

The Nelson Hotel, built in 1909, is a conspicuous southern anchor in the Historic Downtown Carberry heritage district and a rare juxtaposed example of how Manitoba’s hospitality trade evolved in the 1900s in response to a changing marketplace. The complex’s unpretentious hotel, set on a strategic corner site across from the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks (and once to the railway’s station, which has since been demolished), recalls the time when hostelries were essential assets in small communities, offering modest short-term lodgings and food and bar services to travellers, itinerant workers and others. The motel, also of practical design and construction, and with side-by-side units conveniently placed at grade around surface parking, represents the trade’s mid-century answer to a major shift in business and personal travel from trains to motorized vehicles. The Carberry complex is exceptional in that it combines a motel with an established hotel at an in-town rather than a highway location, a strategy that draws on the attributes of both facilities to sustain the business as a contributor to the vitality of the historic town centre.