Also known as the Guichon Block at 401 Columbia Street, New Westminster, Hotel Guichon is a prominent, three-storey masonry Victorian Italianate building built in 1887. Its location marks the eastern edge of the historic downtown and this is the city’s oldest surviving commercial structure. The heritage value of the Hotel Guichon is directly associated with the earliest development of downtown New Westminster.
The site is also significant for its association with Laurent Guichon (1836-1902), who was an early landowner and developer of Delta, and who acquired and renamed this hotel in 1899. He was a French immigrant and is remembered as the founder of Port Guichon, the terminus of the Great Northern Railway in Delta, west of Ladner. The Guichon family is associated with additional economic development in B.C., including cattle ranching and a hotel in the Nicola Valley.