366 Qu'Appelle Avenue - The Warwick Apartments

© 2010, 2022 Christian Cassidy

Place: The Warwick Apartments
Address: 366 Qu'Appelle Ave (Map)
Opened: 1909
Architect: William Wallace Blair
Contractor:
Cost: $225,000 (estimated)

Background:

Interior of slum home, Winnipeg, ca. 1915.
Archives of Manitoba, L. B. Foote Collection

There was a time when residing in an apartment block was seen as the lowest form of urban living.

Sometimes referred to as tenement blocks, (though this term was not used so much in Winnipeg media), they were cheaply built, multi-storey buildings intended to house the city's poorest people in the smallest amount of space possible.

Large families or groups of immigrant labourers might share just two or three rooms with one or two windows that offered little ventilation or natural light. (For a glimpse inside tenement blocks in a North American city, check out these photos from New York City.)

February 15, 1910, Winnipeg Free Press

These early apartments were firetraps and a breeding ground for disease or death. With little political will to do something about the conditions, some tried to make change by temporarily removing the residents most at risk.

The Salvation Army operated a "rescue home" on Young Street for women and children by 1890. Part of its mandate was to take sickly children from tenements and nurse them back to health in more suitable surroundings. 

In a June 1900 letter to the editor, city health officer M.S. Inglis wrote that he was worried by the increasing number of "young children living in crowded tenement blocks in the city suffering from infantile diarrhea." He called on charitable-minded people to support him in "...having a number of tents pitched in one of the cool groves adjacent to the city, and the supplying to some of these innocent sufferers with good food and nursing for a month or two." It does not appear that his plan was carried out.

Dr. R. M. Simpson, chair of the Provincial Health Board, wrote a scathing indictment of the condition of tenement blocks in his 1909 annual report: "I know no better breeding spots for the propagation of disease germs than in many of our so-called apartment houses at present doing service in the city of Winnipeg.... These places are a positive menace to the public health, a lowering of human vitality, and should be condemned as a gross nuisance."

To his credit, Simpson's report influenced a new city public health omnibus by-law passed the following year that required improvements to apartments, such as the size of yard they had to have, some basic fire protection measures and the need for each suite to have windows at each end to promote proper ventilation.

It was during this era that a group of businessmen formed a partnership that hoped to forever change the perception of apartment blocks in Winnipeg

They were William Pitt Alsip and Arthur A. Alsip of the Alsip Brick and Tile Company, today known as Alsip's Building Products and Services. Sigfus and Sveinn Brynjolfson, the latter one of several Icelandic-born contractors who began constructing small, middle-class apartment blocks around this time.

Rounding out the group was architect William Wallace Blair (also see). Born and trained in Northern Ireland, he practised in Ireland, Ontario and Manitoba.

Their ambitious plan started with the location of their new block. They purchased land, some of which contained large homes, along the south side of Central Park. Established in 1894, the park had been transformed from a passive greenspace into a centre of activity with tennis courts, a band shell and formal gardens.

June 27, 1908, Winnipeg Free Press

Blair designed a luxury apartment block - the exact opposite of what apartments in the city had been to this point.

The building would contain 66 suites, many with quarters and entrances for maids and nannies, and featured an elevator manned by an elevator boy. There would be no issue with a lack of natural light or ventilation, especially for the suites facing the park which featured wide balconies out front and backed onto a glassed-in central courtyard. Other suites features small bay windows to maximize light.

Construction began in June 1908 after the demolition of the homes on the site and by April 1909, the Warwick Apartments was advertising suites for rent.

The original building permit amount was $150,000, though later newspaper reports say that it cost either $225,000 or $250,000, which is about $6.5 million in 2022 dollars.

April 30, 1909, Manitoba Free Press

The average monthly rent was $60 for the upper suites facing the park, with a lower price for those facing other directions. There were bachelor apartments in the basement and main floor that ran from $15 to $25 per month.

For the suites facing the park that did not rent right away, the company created by the partners to manage the building, Warwick Apartments Ltd., rented them out on a short-term basis for locals to come and take 'staycations'.

Street directories show that it contained the types of tenants one would expect in such a building, including doctors, businessmen and lawyers.

It appears that the gamble made by the partners to introduce luxury apartment living to Winnipeg was a success as they sold the block for $275,000 in June 1912.

Another sign that it was likely a success was that Blair would go on and design other luxury blocks on the heels of the Warwick. A building permit for his Roslyn Court, an even larger and grander building, was issued in March 1909. The Kenmore (now Princeton Apartments) on Broadway began construction in June 1909.

The Warwick, circa 1911 (source)

The Warwick's stature as the pinnacle of luxury apartment living did not last long.

It may have been a victim of its own success as the other high-end apartment blocks it encouraged in the years after it opened were located further from the noise and pollution of the core area. Potential Warwick residents could have the amenities of the Warwick but in more peaceful surroundings south of Portage Avenue or even across the river in neighbourhoods like River Heights and Fort Rouge.

According to the city's heritage report, even by the 1940s the process of subdividing the Warwick's suites into smaller units so that lower rents could be charged had already begun. By the 1970s, the Warwick's 66 suites had expanded to 120.

After World War II, the core area in general faced a decline as those with means moved out to new suburbs being developed on the outskirts of Winnipeg. The Central Park area in general was caught up in this and became a working-class neighbourhood.

With lower rents came less maintenance to the building and by the 1980s the Warwick was a troubled building where small building fires occurred frequently and there was racial tension and violence between recent Vietnamese refugees and Aboriginal people who lived there and in the surrounding neighbourhood.

December 20, 1986, Winnipeg Free Press

In 1986, the Warwick received a $3 million renovation, $300k of which was a grant from the Core Area Initiative that targeted the Central Park neighbourhood for revitalization.

The building's interior and exterior were carefully renovated and Penner Properties Western Ltd., and Marshall Haid Associates Ltd. won a Heritage Preservation award for their work.

The building reopened in 1986 as a housing co-op. In 2019, it was taken over by Manitoba Housing. 

UPDATE: On Christmas morning 2022, the building suffered a major fire that injured six people and caused the block to be evacuated. (For fire footage.)

Related:
My photo album of the Warwick Apartments
Central Park Winnipeg Downtown Places 
Warwick Apartments Historic Buildings Committee Report (1983)
Warwick Apartments Winnipeg Architecture Foundation