 Excavation for the hotel began by contractors Waring White Building Co . Ltd in June 1904 , and it was completed by 1 October 1905 , and opened the following May . The building progress was documented each month by The Builder 's Journal and Architectural Engineer , and in one edition noted the difficulties of some of the aspects of construction such as hoisting 20 @-@ ton 39 feet ( 12 m ) steel joists in a narrow building site . The Architect and Contract Reporter noted that the limited space did not allow for the storage of materials on site . All mortar had to be mixed in the basement and the stone was dressed " on a platform with a watertight roof over the footway " . The red @-@ brick foundations of the earlier Walsingham House had to be blasted away to facilitate the foundations of the steel structure in concrete . 
