Embassy at Nite

Although it no longer exists physically, the Embassy Hotel still functions as an integral part of London’s cultural history. For the majority of Londoners who do not know about this cultural bastion, they can wade into its essence by visiting the Embassy Hotel Mural on the newly built Embassy Commons residential and commercial building at 744 Dundas Street. Alex Hassan first opened the hotel (known as Sunnyside) back in 1936. Alex’s daughter Helen took over the hotel in 1977 and began to initiate cultural activities, exhibitions and avant garde musical performances. Shortly thereafter Helen’s sister Jamelie Hassan (who would later become a resounding force in Canadian art) helped to introduce a diverse network into the site, making it a place where artists and activists could socialize, debate, experiment, exhibit, and perform.

As such, throughout the 1980s the hotel became known as the Embassy Cultural House. What resulted was, according to the late Melanie Townsend, a social experiment of sorts, one that paired a hotel and restaurant with creative practice and social justice. In the 1990s the hotel became widely known as a venue for live music. The hotel shut down in 2009 to make way for a 150-unit condo project, but two months after closing a suspicious fire gutted the hotel and it was demolished. The condo project also faced a financial collapse and for ten years the site was an abandoned lot.

However, a new life force has arisen from the ashes in the form of the impeccably designed Indwell building. Its name, Embassy Commons is a tribute to the Embassy Hotel’s landmark status and local history. And what better way to signify that status than with a most fitting large-scale mural. In 1978, Helen commissioned Jamelie to paint a series of watercolours related to the Embassy, its workers and residents. The watercolours, a tribute to life in the Old East Village, were on display in the hotel lounge for many years. Helen donated these historic watercolours to Museum London’s permanent collection in 2019.

One of the watercolours, Embassy at Nite, was selected by the Indwell organization to be printed and installed on the South facade. It is a refreshingly loose image, awash with overlapping semi-transparent brush strokes. It is truly a captured moment as seen through the artist’s eyes, and marked through her flowing hand, the watery pigment eloquently staining and embedding the precious paper surface. Light and perspective are completely evocative and so inviting of an ungrounded and open experience for the viewer. Perhaps this public artwork will inspire Londoners to learn about the history of the Embassy Hotel.

Image sourced from the Tourism London website: https://www.londontourism.ca/murals