The Story Behind Calgary’s King Eddy

After closing in 2004 after 99 years, the King Eddy reopened as a Calgary bar, restaurant and music venue in 2018.

Photos by Jared Sych.

The King Edward Hotel opened in 1905 on 9th Avenue S.E. — a site chosen for its proximity to the railway line. The hotel, which would come to be known as the King Eddy, was so popular that a five-storey addition was added to the original three-storey building a few years later. The downstairs bar survived Prohibition (most certainly by illegally serving alcohol), and, by the 1960s, it gained traction as a music venue. As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, blues took over as the bar’s specialty genre, with the likes of John Hammond, Buckwheat Zydeco and Jeff Healey all hitting the stage.

But the venue got a case of the blues itself, falling into disrepair and ultimately closing in 2004, just one year short of its centennial. Though shuttered, its 99-year run earned it a place in the history books as Calgary’s longest-operating bar. In 2008, the hotel was acquired by the National Music Centre and the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation, which set out to restore it in painstaking detail.

In 2018, it reopened as a bar, restaurant and music venue, with the CKUA radio station, Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, and NMC offices filling up the rest of the building. Today’s King Eddy 2.0 is much cleaner, serves better food, and is more family-friendly, than in yesteryear, but the music plays on.

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This article appears in the September 2024 issue of Avenue Calgary.

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