225 Vaughan Street - Former Dental Arts Building

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.

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.