[flar]

THE EXCHANGE DISTRICT
____________________
Winnipeg, Manitoba

Winnipeg's Exchange District is one of the most intact early 20th century commercial districts in North America. By the turn of the 20th century, Winnipeg had become a major railway centre and the commercial gateway to Western Canada. The city quickly grew into Canada's third largest and became known as the "Chicago of the North." The Exchange District covers an area of 20 blocks just north of Winnipeg's Downtown and contains a large collection of elegant brick buildings and warehouses. In 1997, the Exchange District was designated a National Historic Site.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

 

[sodapop]

spectacular! doesn't look like the winnipeg i know! what great buildings

 

[androiduk]

Wonderful stuff flar. Thank God they preserved most of the buildings. I can't believe the condition of that Pepsi mural in pic #58. Any idea what % of the buildings are residential.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Winnipeg is amazing. When I think about it, Winnipeg has more impressive pre-war architecture than Toronto does (even if you count all the buildings Toronto demolished and several notable exceptions like CCN and the Royal York), even though it was never as big a city. Sandwiched between Winnipeg's ornate commercial downtown and Montreal's sophisticated rowhouses, the Toronto of 1911 probably was an underwhelmingly mediocre second city.

Hell, the prewar commercial architecture in downtown Vancouver isn't even that much worse than Toronto's, and it was a cowtown back then.

Anyway, I'm not trying to dump on Toronto. It's just that photo threads like these remind me that Toronto always punched below its weight architecturally, and that it might actually only have been the last ten years (maybe even 5 years) when we were building the best stuff in Canada . Relative to other places, we might actually be living in the midst of the best architectural times this city ever had.

 

[greenleaf]

52

The last time I was in Winnipeg, I visited Red River College and this was BY FAR the coolest (best, perhaps) facadism I've ever seen. That front section starting with the glass on the left and then behind the facades is mostly open space and it looks like they just peeled back the the rest of the building giving you this behind the scenes look at the old buildings.

 

[Tewder]

Winnipeg is amazing. When I think about it, Winnipeg has more impressive pre-war architecture than Toronto does (even if you count all the buildings Toronto demolished and several notable exceptions like CCN and the Royal York), even though it was never as big a city. Sandwiched between Winnipeg's ornate commercial downtown and Montreal's sophisticated rowhouses, the Toronto of 1911 probably was an underwhelmingly mediocre second city.

Hell, the prewar commercial architecture in downtown Vancouver isn't even that much worse than Toronto's, and it was a cowtown back then.

Anyway, I'm not trying to dump on Toronto. It's just that photo threads like these remind me that Toronto always punched below its weight architecturally, and that it might actually only have been the last ten years (maybe even 5 years) when we were building the best stuff in Canada . Relative to other places, we might actually be living in the midst of the best architectural times this city ever had.

So much of old Toronto has been destroyed though. Is it fair to compare?

 

[Bogtrotter]

Really nice, I never appreciated the heritage architecture in Winnipeg in the short time I lived there. Surely in Canada it has the most concentrated stock of heritage commercial buildings outside of Montreal.

 

[Hipster Duck]

So much of old Toronto has been destroyed though. Is it fair to compare?

Even if we hadn't torn down most of our historic buildings, a quick look at historic photos of Toronto reveals that most of our pre-war downtown architecture - and certainly our pre-WW1 downtown architecture - was actually somewhat middling compared to what you see in Winnipeg or Old Montreal. Sure, we have one-off examples of greatness like Old City Hall and Union Station, but if you compare, say, the King Edward hotel with the building in photo #33, you see that the Winnipeg example is a far more ornate and confident design.

What might have helped is the way Winnipeg was laid out. Winnipeg came of age during the middle of the "City Beautiful" movement, and had wonderfully wide commercial avenues like Main and Portage with fantastic view termini; the intersection of the two roads was the undisputed centre of town. Toronto had somewhat narrow streets on a broken grid that didn't make reference to one another and nobody could say with certainty where the centre of action was in this city. Having a common knowledge of centrality probably gave an impetus for Winnipeg's business elite to pour a lot of resources into flashy buildings that mingled around this famous corner.

What happened was that Winnipeg was built to be a metropolis but ended up being a small town while Toronto was built like a small town but ended up being a metropolis.

 

[Tewder]

You make good points but I don't know that I find the building in #3 to be 'grander' in a big-city way than the Eddy:

... and if we're comparing apples to apples or Portage and Mains to Yonge Streets does Winnipeg hold up compared to what Toronto once was?:

Not that I'm saying you're wrong. I've never been to Winnipeg so I don't know, but I do find your argument to be interesting. Winnipeg does seem to have a lot of potential as a beautiful heritage town.

 

[flar]

What happened was that Winnipeg was built to be a metropolis but ended up being a small town while Toronto was built like a small town but ended up being a metropolis.

I agree with this, and add to it of course that Toronto was a Victorian city and Winnipeg is totally a 20th century city. Winnipeg grew extremely fast for a couple decades then pretty much stagnated since then. Even now there is still plenty of space to build in Winnipeg, so nothing needs to be torn down for new developments. There are many more impressive buildings in Winnipeg, I've now posted some photos of the rest of Winnipeg's downtown area, which is quite large: http://urbantoronto.ca/showthread.php?16322-Winnipeg-|-Downtown

 

[allabootmatt]

I've never been to Winnipeg, but find from the photos it seems very American in a good way--muscular old bank buildings and such. I think its growth in the 'City Beautiful' era has a lot to do with that, as opposed to Toronto's fundamentally Victorian past, as you point out Flar. But I would submit two points in defense of T-O.

First, I think Toronto actually has a great stock of heritage architecture, but so much of it is dwarfed by the glassy skyscrapers that we barely notice. Is the Exchange District much more impressive in terms of building stock than our Clubland and King West? It's an honest question, as I don't know Winnipeg, but the styles seem awfully similar--and the extent of that great brick-and-beam warehouse stuff in T-O is pretty substantial on both the east and west sides of Downtown. That's not to mention the still-reasonable stock of old-school skyscrapers downtown (Commerce Court North, etc), and one-offs like RC Harris, Queen's Park, Union Station, and my personal favorite, the old Massey-Harris works.

Second, one needs to make a distinction between residential and commercial architecture. When it comes to the former, Toronto is really no slouch, and I would argue close to Montreal in terms of quality at the rowhousey end, and much better at the detached end. Rosedale really has no equivalent in Canada, in my view, in terms of the quality of domestic architecture. Once again, having never been to Winnipeg I dunno, but presume much of the housing stock there is bungalows and the like.

 

[flar]

Toronto is so much bigger than Winnipeg that if you add it all up, it probably has more great old architecture than the Peg. But in relative terms, Winnipeg punches far above its weight, and it's all in one place.

Toronto completely beats Winnipeg in the residential architecture department. I didn't get to explore Winnipeg's nieghbourhoods that much, but from what I saw, much of the housing is very plain wooden houses. There is very little Victorian housing, there is a lot of Craftsman and some upper middle class neighbourhoods in Revival styles (which all Canadian cities seem to have). One place where Winnipeg shines is with their old apartment buildings, there are lots of great brick apartments from the 1910s and 20s.

 

[Hipster Duck]

In response to Tewder,

It's all pretty subjective. My personal preference for the Winnipeg buildings might be coloured by the fact that a) they're all intact b) they're all concentrated - and when good things are clustered they always make more of an impact than when they are physically separated, and c) the buildings are not only intact, but have not been compromised by shoddy additions like they are in Toronto. Regarding point (c), I think this is the biggest problem facing historic buildings in Toronto and contributes to us thinking of them as expendable. I mean, I don't blame Torontonians for not recognizing the architectural beauty of a heritage building when its cornice has been shorn off and replaced with cell phone transmitters, the facade is obscured by giant, backlit commercial signage and they've planted a billboard on top.

 

[junctionist]

Had Toronto's Financial District been preserved from the same era, it would have topped Winnipeg's. In comparing the two cities' overall built form, it's no contest, especially with Ontario's elites and their neighbourhoods, educational institutions, and churches. Ultimately, this is a comparison of the fruits of a western boomtown's New Money versus the more understated yet highly-detailed buildings of a more established group in Toronto. The Temple Building, for instance, was stunning and hardly a one-off, but rather a pinnacle of E.J. Lennox's career of brilliant and often bold architecture, and that of the Financial District. The Front Street streetscape in front of the present Union Station would find no comparison point. Toronto ducked the City Beautiful movement whose legacy is typically bombastic urban design and dead, overly ceremonial streets, yet maintained its legacy of grand vistas, of which there are many in the cities in spite of recent developments.

Hipster Duck makes a good point about the erosion of heritage architecture that's still standing. When beautiful buildings are stripped of their details over time and littered with trash like nasty cell phone transmitters and the cheapest signage, it's no surprise that many Torontonians struggle to find passion for what is, in reality, a great architectural heritage that should be promoted and celebrated. Compounding the problem is that the underinvested public realm further undermines perceptions. Both need to be addressed,

 

[egotrippin]

Winnipeg looks far more impressive than I give it credit for, and Duck is right, it's the intact blocks of older buildings that really make the difference.

However, I still think Toronto wins out for grand downtowns in Canada, pre-war. http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=2244929&postcount=38. The historic shots here show a city that rivalled, but began to take over Montreal in terms of significant commercial development in the 1930s. If we had more of our original CBD intact it'd look something like Winnpeg's Exchange District no doubt. Similarly, if our old town was preserved (St. Lawrence/east downtown), it'd give Old Montreal a good run for its money as well. Winnipeg appears to have been built up in a neater and more planned matter however, and I agree it's likely a result of being built up so much during the City Beautiful movement.