The Walper Hotel, Kitchener: History and Ghost Stories

The Walper Hotel has been the social heart of downtown Kitchener for well over a century. Eleanor Roosevelt ate breakfast in its courtyard, Louis Armstrong played his trumpet from the King Street balcony, and a 2016 restoration brought the building back to its Victorian best. Today it is The Walper Hotel, part of JdV by Hyatt.

It also carries ghost stories: a maid said to wander the halls, and figures resembling builder Abel Walper and longtime owner Joseph Zuber. We want to be straight with you: these stories are thinly sourced. The hotel does not discuss them and we could not find them in published press, so this guide sets out what is told, what the history shows, and why the Walper is worth a stay either way.

The ghosts of The Walper Hotel

The maid

The best-known story is of a maid who is said to have died in a gas explosion at the hotel. Guests are said to see her walking the hallways, and she is linked to one room in particular, though no room number has ever been attached to the story. We have not found a record of a gas explosion or a maid’s death at the Walper, so treat this as local lore.

Abel Walper

Abel Walper built the hotel that still stands today, studying other 19th-century hotels before he designed it, according to Canada’s Register of Historic Places. Some guests have described a figure matching his description in the building. Walper ownership lasted about 15 years before Joseph Zuber bought the hotel in 1908.

Joseph Zuber

Joseph A. Zuber bought the hotel in 1908, and his family ran it for decades, adding the Crystal Ballroom and two guest floors in 1925. Local lore says Zuber spent a long final illness confined to bed inside the hotel, and that his figure has been seen since. We could not confirm the details of his death.

The fire of 1892

The earlier hotel on the site burned down in 1892. Some retellings claim hundreds of guests and staff died in that fire. There is no confirmation of this at all, and published histories of the site describe only the building’s destruction, so we treat the claim as false until a record turns up.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The guest hallways: Where the maid is said to walk. The 2016 restoration gave each room its own design, so expect modern comfort in a historic shell.
• The Crystal Ballroom: Added by the Zuber family in 1925 and still used for weddings and events. Ask if you can look in when it is free.
• The King Street balcony: Where Louis Armstrong played. You can see it from the street, which is the best view of the 1893 facade.

History of The Walper Hotel

Inns and hotels have stood on the corner of King and Queen since at least 1820, when a two-story whitewashed hotel, the Varnum Inn, served as trading post, gathering place and political stage for the young town of Berlin, as Kitchener was then called. Curry Walper bought the hotel on the corner in 1886, according to Kitchener’s LocalWiki, and fire destroyed it in 1892. Wikipedia names the burned business as John Roat’s Commercial Hotel.

Abel Walper rebuilt it in brick in a style close to Beaux Arts and opened the new Walper Hotel in May 1893, at a cost of $75,000. Early guests paid $4.50 a week for a room, meals and shared bathrooms. Joseph A. Zuber bought the hotel in 1908, and in 1925 the Zuber family added the Crystal Ballroom, two guest floors, a formal dining room and a men’s beverage room. In the 1960s Maclean’s and Reader’s Digest named it among the finest hotels and dining rooms in the country.

The guest list over the years included almost every Canadian prime minister, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Queen Mother, Liberace, Bob Hope, Duke Ellington, Marcel Marceau and Pierre Berton. The City of Kitchener designated the building a heritage property under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1983, protecting its upper facades, arched brickwork, cornice and corner presence.

In September 2013 a group of local investors, among them the Zehr Group and Perimeter Development, bought the hotel for $4.6 million. A $3.5 million restoration, led by BNKC Architects with interiors by Dubbeldam Architecture + Design, Jill Greaves Design and Dialogue 38, reopened it for weddings in spring 2016 and for guests that July, and won a Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for excellence in conservation. In May 2021 it joined Hyatt’s JdV brand as a 92-room boutique hotel, only the second JdV in Canada.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book the Walper for its history and design first; the ghost stories are a bonus, not a promise.
• Look at the restored lobby and public rooms, which carry most of the building’s story.
• Stand across King Street at night to see the 1893 facade and the balcony where Louis Armstrong played.
• Downtown Kitchener is compact and walkable, with restaurants and bars a few steps from the hotel.
• Stayed at the Walper and noticed something? Tell us what happened using the form below.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Prince of Wales Hotel, Niagara-on-the-Lake: Room 207 and the War of 1812 legend
• Glenerin Inn, Mississauga: a haunted manor inn on the way to Toronto
• Fairmont Royal York, Toronto: Toronto’s grand railway hotel
• Haunted hotels in Ontario: every Ontario hotel in our guide
• Haunted hotels in Canada
• Haunted hotels in Ontario

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Wikipedia: The Walper Hotel
• Kitchener LocalWiki: The Walper
• Canada's Historic Places: Walper Terrace Hotel
• Hotel Online: Hyatt opens The Walper Hotel in Kitchener (2021)
• Dubbeldam: Lieutenant Governor's Ontario Heritage Award for the Walper Hotel

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