WINNIPEG -- A city committee is requesting that the McLaren Hotel and Brookside Cemetery be considered to be added to the list of historical sites.

The hotel, which is located at 554 Main St., opened roughly 110 years ago.

The Historical Buildings and Resources Committee recommended to the Standing Policy Committee on Property and Development that the hotel should become a historical site for several reasons.

It said the hotel is one of downtown Winnipeg's most substantial pre-First World War hotels and that it was designed in the Chicago School style.

It is also a conspicuous building on a major intersection downtown and has suffered little alteration to the exterior.

The committee also mentions the association to the McLaren brothers who owned the building into the 1920s and how it was designed by John Cooke Caldwell and built by local contractors Charles W. Sharp and Son.

A committee also wants the cemetery to be considered a National Historic Site and is looking to apply to Parks Canada to make this happen.

The Brookside Cemetery was first used in 1878 and is the final resting place for more than 11,000 veterans, peacekeepers, and merchant marines, who fought in both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam and beyond.

The committee said if the cemetery was given the designation it would increase public awareness and create opportunities for funding.