Favourite Edmonton Historical Building
What is your favourite historical building in Edmonton? These buildings would be before the end of World War Two, meaning 1945. So what is your favourite?
You can add photos if you want.
Mine:
-McLeod Building
-Gibson Block
-Canadian Permanent Building
-Fairmont Hotel Macdonald
-Chianti's Building
-Armstrong Building
-Mercer Loft
-Philips Lofts
-Rutherford Building
...n lots more!
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Alberta Legislature Building and MacDonald Hotel
Fly Edmonton first. Support EIA
Have to go with the Mcleod Building. May not be as visually impressive as the Hotel Mac and the Leg, but it provides a street pressence that is just about perfect.
Hotel Mac, the Leg, Rutherford House, the Gibson Block, Shaw Building (where Maverick Brewery was), the Kelly Ramsey Building and the Empire Building.
Strathcona Hotel. If those walls could talk!
My antidepressent drug of choice is running. Cheaper with less side effects!
Legislature
Hotel MacDonald
MacLeod
Gibson Block
CIBC on Jasper and 101 St
Federal
Bowker
MacLean Block (Audreys)
Masonic Temple (100 Ave & 103 St)
Lemarchand Mansion
“You have to dream big. If we want to be a little city, we dream small. If we want to be a big city, we dream big, and this is a big idea.” - Mayor Stephen Mandel, 02/22/2012
In addition to the above most excellent buildings, you could add the rebuilt Alberta Hotel.....any one know any more about this project? I remember hearing it could still go ahead this year...
The Arts Building at the U of A. Gorgeously restored and renovated about 10 years ago. Also the Dentistry-Pharmacy Building (originally built as the Medical Sciences Building).
Almost always open to debate...
Originally Posted by davidnorwoodink
I agree. I hadn't realized how many great old buildings there were on campus, till I walked around there a year ago. I liked the old library, with the great study hall at the one end.
You mean the "Post Office" :P
www.decl.org
My vote goes to the Shaw Building for sure.
www.decl.org
^Where is that?
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The historic (H.V.) Shaw Building, 10229 105th St. was erected in 1914.
I love the Dentistry-Pharmacy building at the U of A, and Rutherford House, and definitely the McLeod on 100 Street.
McGrath Mansion
Convocation Hall
My Grandfathers House on 78 st & 104 ave.
I also love the mansion over in the Highlands.
Strat Hotel! But that's only because the Cecil got mowed down for the Sobey's
Propsed design for Omniplex IIRC.
oh really ?? cool
Edmonton Rocks Rocks Rocks
jagators63 where on the internet did you find that picture, I want to look at the source.
I have never seen that proposal before and must say it looks gigantic.
Edmonton first, everything else second.
I found through google images under ( historic buildings edmonton )
Edmonton Rocks Rocks Rocks
Alright, I found it.
http://communities.canada.com/edmont...hs-part-1.aspx
It would be a good idea to post a link to the image's source when posting an image on the forum so readers will know what the image is about.
Edmonton first, everything else second.
The best building in the city, bar none, is the Bowker Building.
Check out its 109 street facade.
My favourite are all the ones that got knocked down, lol! CN yard roundhouse (Oliver square), Central Pentecostal Tabernacle, various hotels, the Main Library...
But to be serious and choose something that is still standing, I would pick the Shaw Building hands down for Chicago Warehouse style.
Others are:
- First Presbyterian Church
- Strathcona Library
- CP Rail Station
- Clinker brick houses on 104 Street, south of 99 Ave
- MacCosham Building (MacCosham lofts, for timber post and beam)
www.decl.org
"Telephone Building" is a candidate
102 ave and 100 st
Next door to the Bowker Building is the Haltain Building.
Fly Edmonton first. Support EIA
The Bowker Building.
The Leg.
The Gibson Block.
The Mclead building.
The Mac.
The Denistry/Pharmacy building.
Rutherford House.
The Old Library and Old Court House.
The old Federal Building on 107 Street and 99 Ave.
Gone............................and very quickly forgotten may I add.
St. Joachim's Catholic Church in Grandin is one of my favorites. Not only is it a beautiful building, I get a kick out of walking by and knowing that it very likely was the parish of my francophone ancestors a hundred years ago.
The Federal Building
The Mac
First Presbyterian Church(but mostly because I love the way it interacts with the ATCO building next door)
Check this out...
The Town of Edmonton
Government House
Rutherford House
Strathcona Library (funded by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation)
Wellesley United Church on 123rd Street @ 102 Ave
Christchurch Anglican on 121st @ 102 Ave
The Residential Streets of 125 St to 128 St from 104 to 109th Avenue Great examples of homes built and in most cases preserved from the 1910-1925 period in Groat Estates. Area was subdivided by Macolm Groat (Hence the name) He also built the Groat Ravine Iron bridge on 102 Ave.
The Buena Vista Block,Thats the present name, I cannot remember the original! (Houses the Glenora Bed & Breakfast)
Princess Theatre
Dominion Block on Whyte Avenue
CPR Station in Old Strathcona ( A Canadian Prairie Classic)
MacKay Avenue School
Prince Of Wales Armouries
St Josephs Basilica
I love the Bowker building. It is absolutely stunning.
Presently:
MacDonald Hotel.
Commercial Buildings now gone or excessively unrecognizable:
The Garneau Theater and the Eaton's downtown store were the best of Art Deco design.
Residential Buildings that are now gone:
The Shaw home; last known as Yamaha Coyne, Co on the corner of 100 Avenue & 118 Street.
An intersting house in the wrong neighborhood: Had a round porch and second floor with a turret style roof and bay window in the kitchen. It was on east side of 127 Street and just south of the CNR underpass. Was torn down around 1975/6. Today, it would have made a nice lawyers' office. Anyone else remember this particular house? It was very run down by the early seventies, unfortunately, which probably led to its demise.
Last edited by glenorarat; 05-12-2011 at 12:59 PM.
federal
I didn't know this even existed but the late Art Deco-style Shop-Easy Grocery building built in 1948 has been designated a Municipal Historic Resource. It's on the northwest corner of 129 Avenue and 116 Street.
https://goo.gl/maps/qaqb1BVAHCT2
On Street View it looks like it's been shuttered for some time. I hope the designation provides impetus for improvement.
That makes two of us. And I don't think I'd ever heard of the Dover Hotel either.
I used to ride the (old) route 24 past this most times I wanted to go to Kingsway or Downtown, and was one of the routes I had to choose from for my high school commutes. Had a friend who lived nearby, I think I bought some Sweet Tarts there.
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/bf...dFavorites.htm
The whole experience was quite formative for me in how I didn't want to live, but I agree it's good to preserve our history (like Hitler's birth house
Last edited by JayBee; 10-11-2016 at 01:47 PM.
Let's make Edmonton better.
CoE PSA: (Rezoning of the Shop-Easy property.)That makes two of us. And I don't think I'd ever heard of the Dover Hotel either.
Proposal to rezone property in Calder
March 6, 2017
Citizens are invited to a public meeting about a proposed rezoning of 11606 - 129 Avenue NW.
Date: Monday March 13, 2017
Time: 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Location: Calder Community Hall, 12721 - 120 Street NW
The rezoning would change how the property can be used, from a Low Density Infill use (RF2 Zone) to a heritage Direct Development Control Provision use (DC1 Zone).
The DC1 Zone is unique to this site and would allow for the:
- Preservation and rehabilitation of the historic “Shop-Easy Grocery” building
- Small-scale, neighbourhood-oriented commercial uses, in the Shop-Easy building
- A maximum of four apartment units located above/within the Shop-Easy building
- A maximum of three row housing units located on the north side of the site
- A maximum height of 8.6 m (the same as the existing zoning)
The meeting will be an opportunity to learn more about the proposal and provide your feedback to the City and architect. Feedback will be summarized in a report to City Council before they make their decision on the rezoning.
Remember our Hotel Mac addition?
Well, this is hilarious - it’s from 2016 and I don’t know what the outcome was, but it looks like they either didn’t know or didn’t learn a single thing from the Edmonton’s experience.
Expansion plan for Ottawa’s historic Chateau Laurier sparks social media backlash | Toronto Star
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...-backlash.html
http://www.metronews.ca/content/dam/...arge-promo.jpg
http://ottawastart.ottawastartinter....ion-ottawa.jpg
http://provincialarchives.alberta.ca...rta/PA3098.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3561/...8f9a7f37de.jpg
Last edited by KC; 03-01-2018 at 05:57 PM.
When I was in Ottawa 2 yrs ago I had a chance to see the plans first hand....awful. It will significantly detract from this beauty. I am a bit biased for when growing up, we spent many a Sunday there for brunch.
Still true in large part. Knock it down and save a bit here or a facade there and pat ourselves on the back for preserving history. Which, as we all know, is nonsense.
From the article linked above.
Take it from me: Edmonton is not a town whose architectural history you’d want to mimic. Since its fur-trading days, the city has been built in successive waves of economic desperation, bad policy incentives, wartime housing pressure, corner-cutting and hinterland culture-cringing. Nice old buildings have not always been preserved as they might have and that, in turn, creates an awful second-order effect in the eye-starved citizenry: a counterproductive, indiscriminate mania for anything more than a few years old.
Good read, thank for digging this up.
From that article:
“...
Architectural postmodernism is about defying the citizen’s expectations of what a building should be, but the unfortunate effect is that crass or crazy additions to deeply conventional older buildings are themselves a cliché. Why don’t architects notice that their daring bolshie audacity is itself faded and tiresome? Frank Gehry is 87 years old, guys, and, news flash, this box with the whimsical aleatoric windows isn’t a Gehry. It’s some subfusc practitioner trying to put his “signature” on a structure at modest expense, and creating an impression of cheapness.
Hear, O Ottawa, the warnings from Edmonton: cheapness is something a grand hotel cannot afford, in the hard-cash, bottom-line sense of “afford.” And sometimes, when you are told, “You’ll learn to love it,” the correct answer is, “Not likely, pal.”
I don’t mean to diminish the challenge of adding respectfully to a building whose decorative features may not be reproducible in 2016 at any price. The railway hotels were moonshot-scale projects ... And we have largely ceased to build for permanence in any context. When we build a city hall or a hockey rink, we know it will probably have to be changed like a diaper in 50 years.
Perhaps architects, knowing that their work is unlikely to outlive a parrot, cannot be entirely faulted for retreating into self-indulgence. But why leave taste behind?”
http://nationalpost.com/opinion/colb...-from-the-west
What Cosh failed to mention in his article is that this city is ready to repeat the same mistake by allowing a high-rise condo to overshadow and obscure the Hotel Mac. Just a small sliver of that downtown CRL would be enough for the city to acquire and preserve that park so that one of our few remaining historical gems can continue to be showcased from our main street. But oh no, according to the City, the DBA, DECL and the members of C2E and SSP, it is far more important to fill the skyline with big shiny phalluses on every conceivable block.
“You have to dream big. If we want to be a little city, we dream small. If we want to be a big city, we dream big, and this is a big idea.” - Mayor Stephen Mandel, 02/22/2012
Gotta say, even with the address and the photo, I'm not sure I have any clear memories of having actually seen that particular building. I guess it is not without its charms.It's not the majestic Hotel Macdonald overlooking Edmonton's river valley, or the prominent South Side Post Office in Old Strathcona, but the A. Minchau Blacksmith Shop is significant enough to save, heritage fans say.
The 1925 brick industrial building on 81st Avenue and 101st Street made the National Trust for Canada's top 10 list of endangered places for 2018.
link
Yes, the Mac annex was an abortion, but as Cosh fails to mention , it was torn down and the mistake corrected.
But that's what I expect from Cosh - bash, bash, bash a city he clearly hates.
Colby, just move somewhere else please.
... gobsmacked
Cosh is one of the few, probably the only, columnist writing on the national scene who portrays Edmonton as a place worth writing about, with a specific character and issues. Whether he's always postive is another question, but that's not something I demand of writers who focus on a particular city anyway.
If you look at the photos above, notice how the annex was so very close to being an asset rather than a liability. Had they matched the roofline and jogged out the big bland wall (angled it at some point) to add variation and rooms to then reduce the height adjacent to the original, they could have made the addition look very similar in appearance to the original building. Maybe not perfect but at least it would have looked like something else than a big flat-roof box stuck on the side.
Note that they matched up the windows but failed to reflect any of the hotel’s other classic features and worse, made it tower over the original structure. Just a bizarre mindset by the new architect or builder.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3561/...8f9a7f37de.jpg[/QUOTE]
This is a great example of a complementary expansion (poor quality photo though).
Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manche...nd_Hyatt_Hotel
The thinking that went into the original tower (article below) was clearly present in the design of the second tower. (Not the usual disdain and condescension new architects seem to have for their predecessors.)
Bolding mineNew Hyatt Is a Study in Design Contrasts - latimes
“Two major challenges faced by the architects were how to orient the tower so that all rooms could have bay views without making the building a looming monster on the downtown skyline, and how to give it a distinctive top.
"We did 15 or 20 different schemes," Lee said. "The flat slab turned sideways not only gives views from the rooms, but presents its narrow side to the city to maintain views. It also has a slender footprint that allows pedestrian access on the ground."
...
“"It didn't have to terminate like a refrigerator top," Lee said. ...”
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-12-...nterior-design
Last edited by KC; 30-05-2018 at 11:35 AM.
Colby Cosh's hatred for Edmonton and his despicable writing style makes him an embarrassment on the national stage (assuming the National Post attains such heights) and should be made unemployed.Cosh is one of the few, probably the only, columnist writing on the national scene who portrays Edmonton as a place worth writing about, with a specific character and issues. Whether he's always postive is another question, but that's not something I demand of writers who focus on a particular city anyway.
“You have to dream big. If we want to be a little city, we dream small. If we want to be a big city, we dream big, and this is a big idea.” - Mayor Stephen Mandel, 02/22/2012
I'd be curious to see an example of his "hatred for Edmonton".Colby Cosh's hatred for Edmonton and his despicable writing style makes him an embarrassment on the national stage (assuming the National Post attains such heights) and should be made unemployed.Cosh is one of the few, probably the only, columnist writing on the national scene who portrays Edmonton as a place worth writing about, with a specific character and issues. Whether he's always postive is another question, but that's not something I demand of writers who focus on a particular city anyway.
It's one of the last industrial staple-of-the-era buildings left in Old Strathcona. In almost any other city it would be converted and an addition put next to it on site - much like many Beljan developments, to provide an Edmonton example.
Live and love... your neighbourhood.
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