Pyramids On the Prairie
Pyramids on the Prairie
The Buildings and History of Winnipeg’s Exchange District
Narration Script From
A Prairie Public Television Documentary on
Winnipeg’s Exchange District
Written by
George Siamandas
1994
WINNIPEG’S EXCHANGE DISTRICT
Winnipeg’s Exchange District comprises a twenty-block area of turn of the century warehouse and commercial structures. Located just north of Portage and Main and straddling both sides of Main St., this collection of masonry and terra cotta buildings is considered unique in North America. Within forty years of the city’s founding these veritable Pyramids of the Prairie sprung up. You can stand in its centre, Old Market Square Park and turn 360 degrees. Only a small angle of the circle would reveal buildings younger than 1900. For all you know it could be 1882 or 1910.
My name is George Siamandas. Like many I arrived as an immigrant in Winnipeg’s CN Station. For the last 11 years I have been involved in promoting Winnipeg’s heritage buildings. Now I would like to take you on a tour and show you people and places that make this area so exciting. We are at the centre of what became the city of Winnipeg in 1872 these are the oldest remaining buildings on the western edge of where Winnipeg began to grow. Winnipeg soon came to be called the Chicago of the north. And Winnipeg shared not only the same distribution role based on being a railway hub, but also the prevailing architectural styles of Chicago.
VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE
During the first period of Winnipeg’s growth between the 1880s and 1903 most buildings were built in the Victorian style. Very simply this means that they were embellished with intricate detail in their brick and stonework.
The first Grain Exchange building built in 1892 is a good example of this ornamental style. The cornices, which were fashioned to look as though they were made of stone, were actually constructed of stamped metal pressed into intricate shapes. Architectural elements like these triangular pediments are frequently found in buildings from this Victorian period. Just up the street is one of the first old building to see a new use the Old Spaghetti Factory located at the corner of Bannatyne and Princess St. Originally part of Maw’s Garage it once served as one of Winnipeg’s first car dealerships.
WAREHOUSE DISTICT
While Main St. is home to the banks and other elegant commercial buildings, most of the Exchange District is comprised of warehouses. Most are constructed of yellow brick. The earliest of these are designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style with large cut stone limestone foundations and massive arched windows. As you look up their facades you can see signs of the period of great growth during which many of these warehouses saw a series of additions. This required that the cornices be dismantled and reinstalled leaving behind ghostly signs of their relocation.
As their original uses ended a series of new owners have introduced light manufacturing. Garment manufacturing in particular became a prominent use. In recent decades many warehouses turned to furniture salesrooms and professional offices. But in large part these structures with their strong floor loading capacities, and low occupancy costs continue in various forms of light manufacturing mingled with businesses requiring lots of low cost space.
WINNIPEG’S EXCHANGE DISTRICT
Winnipeg’s Exchange District comprises a twenty-block area of turn of the century warehouse and commercial structures. Located just north of Portage and Main and straddling both sides of Main St., this collection of masonry and terra cotta buildings is considered unique in North America. Within forty years of the city’s founding these veritable Pyramids of the Prairie sprung up. You can stand in its centre, Old Market Square Park and turn 360 degrees. Only a small angle of the circle would reveal buildings younger than 1900. For all you know it could be 1882 or 1910.
My name is George Siamandas. Like many I arrived as an immigrant in Winnipeg’s CN Station. For the last 11 years I have been involved in promoting Winnipeg’s heritage buildings. Now I would like to take you on a tour and show you people and places that make this area so exciting. We are at the centre of what became the city of Winnipeg in 1872 these are the oldest remaining buildings on the western edge of where Winnipeg began to grow. Winnipeg soon came to be called the Chicago of the north. And Winnipeg shared not only the same distribution role based on being a railway hub, but also the prevailing architectural styles of Chicago.
VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE
During the first period of Winnipeg’s growth between the 1880s and 1903 most buildings were built in the Victorian style. Very simply this means that they were embellished with intricate detail in their brick and stonework.
The first Grain Exchange building built in 1892 is a good example of this ornamental style. The cornices, which were fashioned to look as though they were made of stone, were actually constructed of stamped metal pressed into intricate shapes. Architectural elements like these triangular pediments are frequently found in buildings from this Victorian period. Just up the street is one of the first old building to see a new use the Old Spaghetti Factory located at the corner of Bannatyne and Princess St. Originally part of Maw’s Garage it once served as one of Winnipeg’s first car dealerships.
WAREHOUSE DISTICT
While Main St. is home to the banks and other elegant commercial buildings, most of the Exchange District is comprised of warehouses. Most are constructed of yellow brick. The earliest of these are designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style with large cut stone limestone foundations and massive arched windows. As you look up their facades you can see signs of the period of great growth during which many of these warehouses saw a series of additions. This required that the cornices be dismantled and reinstalled leaving behind ghostly signs of their relocation.
As their original uses ended a series of new owners have introduced light manufacturing. Garment manufacturing in particular became a prominent use. In recent decades many warehouses turned to furniture salesrooms and professional offices. But in large part these structures with their strong floor loading capacities, and low occupancy costs continue in various forms of light manufacturing mingled with businesses requiring lots of low cost space.
WINNIPEG GENERAL STRIKE
The most divisive event ever to occur in Winnipeg was the General Strike which took place during May and June 1919. “Thursday May 15, 1919 is a date that will live long in the history of Winnipeg” declared the leaders of the Winnipeg General Strike. “In less than two hours the whole productive industry of an entire city was tied up. Not a wheel was turning in the big plants, not a street car was visible.” Workers were convinced that their cause of improved wages, the rights to bargain as large groups and to organize politically were just causes.
The whole country was watching Winnipeg and wondering what was happening to the workers of Canada’s third largest city. Worried employers saw a city paralysed by militant workers demanding collective bargaining, and higher wages; of mass demonstrations in the streets and the firing of the police force.
Businessmen and government leaders felt they were seeing the beginning of a revolution and an effort to establish Bolshevism. On May 16th, a Committee of 1000 was created to fight the strike. On June 1 ten thousand returning soldiers marched on the provincial legislature to express their support of the strike. On June 9th the entire police force is dismissed. Raids were conducted on strike leaders homes and offices and many like John Queen, R. B. Russell and A. A. Heaps were arrested. Finally on June 26 the strike committee called off the strike and called on workers to send a large group of labour representatives to every level of government. Of it was borne the beginning of a new political force. And a tradition of strong labour politics in Winnipeg.
REVIVAL
In the last twenty years Winnipeg Exchange District is seeing a great new revival. There are now artists, a series of restaurants and public events that are helping to bring the district to life. The combination of rehabilitated structures in the Exchange District and unimproved buildings is a boon for the diversity of people interested in finding space in the area. Not all buildings have seen rehabilitation and this is a good thing. While a processional firm may be able to a afford relatively high rents of $15 per square foot in improved buildings, non profit groups and artists are happy with less. Artists’ studios and small independent businesses proliferate in structures like the Bate Building.
JOHN ATCHISON
One of Winnipeg’s most distinguished architects was John Atchison. Atchison was born in 1870 in Monmouth, Illinois and studied at the Chicago Art Institute. In the 1890’s, he worked in the offices of William Le Baron Jenney, who designed the first true steel-framed skyscraper, a step that completed the most radical transformation of construction techniques since the development of the Gothic System in the 12th century. Jenney’s 1884 design for the Home Insurance Building in Chicago made him one of the best-known designers of commercial buildings in that city, at the time, the hub of North American architecture. Atchison opened his own office in Chicago in 1895 and practised there until 1905, when he came to Winnipeg on business. By 1906, he had become the city’s leading architect with as much work as he could handle.
One of Atchison’s first buildings was the Fairchild Building, at 110-120 Princess St., built in 1907. It was a radical departure from the styles of other architects, such as J.H. Cadham, reflecting Atchison’s Chicago experience. It was built for the Fairchild Co., manufacturers of agricultural equipment. Since farm machinery was a public attraction, Atchison opened the facade at ground level to allow the public to see the latest in farm equipment. This metal-framed building looks quite modern and uses windows extensively to provide natural light and the entire rear facade features industrial glass a technique which did not become common for another 20 years.
Many of Winnipeg’s most handsome buildings were designed by Atchison. The Maltese Cross Building at 66 King St. (1909) was designed to be completely fireproof…no wood was used, and the floors are concrete and window frames are metal.
Atchison is also responsible for the outstanding Great West Life Building at 177 Lombard, the Union Trust Building at 387 Main St., the Hamilton Bank at 395 Main St., the Boyd Building at 388 Portage Ave. and numerous churches and residences.
BANKER’S ROW
We are here right now in front of one of my favourite buildings at the corner of Portage and Main. This is Winnipeg’s financial centre now and at the tun of the century. This is where all the funding came from that helped build the city and its various industries and warehouses into a level of prosperity that was unequalled in Canada. Growing cities attract financial firms to help finance expansion: real estate developers, banks, insurance companies, manufacturing, merchants, hostelries and a host of business activities. At one time twenty-seven different branches operated in Winnipeg and Main St., their preferred location was known as Banker’s Row.
Today seven banks remain as witness to this exuberant period in Winnipeg’s growth. Banks were the kind of client that architects killed for in Winnipeg’s fabulous decade of bank construction between 1905 and 1916. Often bearing strong resemblance to Greek and Roman temples Bank architecture featured columns, capitals, pediments, and lavish interiors finished in the best marble the world had to offer. Everything was first class. Inside, the banking hall made a second and equally impressive statement. Some halls felt like the interiors of cathedrals, so sacred is the space. So valued is its function in the community. Palaces of Commerce, the banks have left Winnipeg’s Exchange District a legacy few cities can match.
MILLIONAIRES
But while politicians of today must make difficult choices about which buildings to save and which to demolish, those that built Winnipeg at the turn of the century felt that the world was their oyster. And their individual successes rivalled that of men in much larger cities. With only one third the population of Toronto in 1919, Winnipeg boasted that it had 19 millionaires to Toronto’s 21. They ran the Legislature, city hall, education, medicine, the Board of Trade. The leaders were in the vanguard of all civic improvements schools hospitals, parks libraries, water supply, transit, electricity, phones, music, and theatre.
Winnipeg’s public works mirrored the optimism shown by its private citizens. Seeing great promise in Winnipeg’s future, civic leaders dreamed and executed great public works. A major hydro electric facility was being established on the Winnipeg River 120 kilometres north. A water supply system that would last for centuries and The James Ave Pumping Station a high pressure pumping station for fire fighting were built in 1907.
BAIN BUILDING
Located at the foot of the Red River at the east end of Bannatyne Ave., the Bain Building was an example of the kind of structure that the pumping station was designed to protect. The wooden floor and post and beam structures comprising the interiors of these warehouses as well as the variety of goods they stored resulted in fires and accompanying high insurance rates. The increased capacity provided by the pumping station helped reduce the risks and costs of warehousing and distribution. Once a grocery dry goods store, the Bain Building was one for the earliest buildings to see renovation in the early 1970s. And the project succeeded in attracting a variety of professionals in the design field.
ASHDOWN WAREHOUSE
One of Winnipeg’s early settlers was James Ashdown. A tinsmith by trade Ashdown became a prominent businessman and citizen. He served as mayor in 1907-1908 a period in which he was Merchant Prince of Winnipeg. Ashdown’s hardware empire was the largest in the west and his massive warehouse at 167 Bannatyne itself saw expansion reflecting Winnipeg’s growth spurts as more and more capacity was increasingly needed to serve the growing west. Today this building has been completely rehabilitated into 100 upscale condominium residences. Its occupants include young upwardly mobile professionals and empty nesters and those that like to live close to work and the theatre and entertainment district.
But the Ashdown’s original occupants were workers. The railways contributed more to Winnipeg’s growth than the business of transportation. Rail also brought hundreds of thousands of immigrants swelling the city’s population with every train headed west. And while most continued west, a large number stopped and found work in this growing settlement. Immigrants that made up the bulk of the work force for this expanding city.
The Exchange District has always been the place for entertainment. Whether it’s a theatrical performance or a night out at a fine restaurant or an even in Old Market Square, this is the place to be. Today the Exchange district continues to see new life. On the East Side, Waterfront Drive has given a new river experience, making it prime for future residential development.
The dreams the hopes of past and future generations have made all we have seen possible. The status of a heritage district is always a precarious one subject to the whims and fads of the day. It is each generation’s responsibility to preserve a treasure so that it can be willed to the hands and eyes of our next set of dreamers.
CREDITS
Producer
Bob Dambach
Host and Writer
George Siamandas
Editor and Graphics
Mike Mohs
Videographers
Dave Geck
Mike Mohs
Music
John Altenbernd
Associate Producers
Kay Christenson
Dennis Neumann
Executive Producer
Bob Dambach
© Prairie Public Television 1994
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