Despite this significant constraint, Construction remarked that there was "not…the slightest semblance of crowding…in the arrangement of the entire interior scheme," and that the space had been "so advantageously utilized that the rooms…[were] of generous dimensions."

During this period, the traditional artisanal character of many building trades was profoundly changed, and workers were often made to work in extremely unsafe conditions.

Under the anti-union Canada Foundry Corporation, which had been enlisted to help with the heavy iron construction, workers were exposed to considerable danger.

This was recounted in a poem written by an ironworker who worked on the project: After it opened, the Hotel Mossop enjoyed a number of profitable years, and procured significant investment from famed Canadian business tycoon E.P.

This was made worse by liquor restrictions enforced during Prohibition, which precluded Taylor from owning licensed hotels alongside his brewery holdings in the province.

In subsequent years, business improved considerably, and with the outbreak of WWII, Hotel Victoria joined the patriotism that swept Toronto by establishing a "Churchill Club" to raise money for the war effort.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, having had no major renovations, the profitability of the Victoria began to erode, and it came to be known for its "cigar-chomping prospectors, ladies of the evening and beer-drinking Bay St.

In 1971, Paul Phelan, a local real estate developer, assumed responsibility for the Victoria’s debts and purchased the hotel for $10,000.

Goldsmith spent a further $2.5 million in renovations, which took over a year to complete, and which included the replacement of the brick front of the entire first floor with architectural steel and glass panels, giving the lobby an "atrium effect".