Monday, April 13, 2009

225 Vaughan Street - Former Dental Arts Building

225 Vaughan

Project: Former Dental Arts Building / 225 Vaughan
Address: 225 Vaughan Street (Map)
Architect: Lloyd Finch and Associates
Contractor: Benjaminson Construction
Officially Opened: January 1966


The Dental Arts Building was constructed in 1965 at a cost of $600,000.

The architects were Lloyd Finch and Associates, which had built a number of small office buildings in the downtown.
The builders were Benjaminson Construction.

Standing at six-storeys tall,
the Dental Arts Building was designed so that four more storeys could be added at a future date, but never were.


Unlike the nearby Medical Arts Building or Winnipeg Clinic, the developer and owner of the building was not a consortium of doctors. Rather, it was Carlisle Builders, a division of the building management company Smith Agency.

They saw a gap in the market for a building dedicated to dental practitioners and had been planning such a building for a number of years. When it had its official opening in January 1966, only one-third of the floor space had been leased.


225 Vaughan

In 2004, the building underwent extensive renovations both inside and out and the Dental Arts name disappeared.
The main floor space has a separate entrance to the street.

Originally, it housed a dental lab. From the mid-1970s until about 1990, the Winnipeg-based national optical chain Stewart N. King was there. The current main floor tenant is Whitworth Opticians, which has had a presence in
the building since it opened in 1965.

A tenant of particular note is
David Matas, internationally renowned human rights lawyer and Member of the Order of Canada.

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