104 - 108 Princess Street - Robinson & Webber Block

Place: Robinson and Webber Block
Address: 104 - 108 Princess Street (Map)
Built: 1885, 1950
Architect: Unknown

Background:

July 20, 1885, Manitoba Free Press

The Confederation Life Insurance Co. had this building constructed in 1885 as an investment property. The main contractor was building supply firm Brydon - Robertson, a short-lived company, (ca. 1882 to 1885), that supplied much of the stone for the 1884 "Gingerbread" city hall.

Though built as one building, there was a dividing wall separating the north and south sections so that it could be rented to two separate tenants.

Above: ca. 1886, Historic Buildings Committee

Below: ads from 1885, 1886

Dozens of tenants have come and gone from this building over the decades.

The first two were Sutherland and Campbell, wholesale grocers, and Hodgson and Sumner, dry goods wholesaler. Their presence was short lived as a January 1886 classified ad listed both sides of the the building for rent.

In 1904 - 05, the building was expanded by two floors and in the decades to come was home to wholesalers such as Robin Hood Mills, Consolidated Stationery Ltd. and the Ottawa Fruit and Produce Exchange.

Main floor retailers included Maple Leaf Paints (1910s) and a P and B Grocery Store (1920s). the Ontario Wind Engine and Pump Co. had temporary offices there in 1904 while their Logan Avenue building was being constructed. Universal Signs occupied space here in the 1930s.

February 13 1939, Winnipeg Free Press

In 1937, the third floor of 104 Princess became home to the offices and workshop of the Single Men's Relief Commission which needed smaller premises for their administrative and training centre as the Depression wound down.

During that time, building was the scene of a few protests by men angry at being cut off of relief.

In the mid 1940s, the building was purchased by Mr. Alison Baldner. He was the outgoing president of Robinson and Webber, a wholesaler and re-packager of chemicals ranging from antifreeze and cleaners to insecticides.

Baldner retired in 1944 and his son, John, took over. Alison retained ownership of the building and leased most of it back to the son's company and the top two floors to Midwest Storage Co..

March 24, 1945, Winnipeg Free Press

On the night of March 23, 1945 at around 10:50 pm, the north portion of the building caught fire. Because of the stores of chemicals on site, it created an intense three-alarm blaze that burned for more than twelve hours.

Fireman struggled to contain the blaze so that it would not spread to neighbouring buildings in the densely packed Exchange District. They finally put it out twelve hours later, though numerous hot spots flared up in the days that followed.

March 24, 1945, Winnipeg Tribune

The fire took a heavy toll on the men who fought it.

Firefighter Frank Sandison, 48, of 107 Olivia Street was killed when the fourth floor of the building collapsed from beneath him. Fireman James Smith, 40, of 339 Lipton Street was killed trying to rescue Sandison and other colleagues buried in the rubble.

Four other firemen who fell during the cave-in were rescued, some hours later, and brought to hospital in fair condition.

The 104 Princess (north) portion of the building had to be torn down. The south portion, 108 Princess, was saved from destruction due to the dividing wall between the two. The neighbouring Fairchild Building also survived.

April 10, 1945, Winnipeg Free Press

The cause of the fire was never determined.

An employee of the company plead guilty to break and enter the night before the fire during which he stole about 300 empty sugar bags. At the coroner's inquiry into the death of the firemen, he said that he did not light a cigarette or do anything else inside the building that could have caused the fire. 

The city contended that the upper floors of the building, the ones used by the storage company, were grossly overloaded with stock, which led to them caving in. There was competing testimony from various engineers and architects as to how much weight the floors could hold and, in the end, there was no agreement on what that number should have been.

A month after the fire Robinson and Webber applied to build a new, steel reinforced building at number 104 that would be used for the storage of approximately 6,700 gallons of methyl hydrate, 1,350 gallons of turpentine, 250 gallons of floor cleaner and 50 gallons of fly spray in jars, bottles and barrels.

That replacement building did not get built until 1950. Its plain facade is in stark contrast to its neighbouring buildings.

Robinson and Webber remained here until 1955 then moved to 185 Bannatyne. The company remained in business until the early 1980s. 

After Robinson and Webber, the old building was again home to dozens of smaller retail and wholesale businesses. In 1984, it was placed on the Historic Building Conservation lists as a grade III structure. In 1990, when the Amy Street steam plan was closed, the building was left without heat and was closed down.

In 2004, the developer who purchased the Fairchild / John Deere Building (now Fairchild Lofts) also purchased 104 - 108 Princess. In 2006, an application was made to have the building demolished, but the Historical Buildings Committee recommend to city council that the property remain. Council agreed.

In 2017, the building was put up for sale and is currently being redeveloped into a mixed-use building.

Related:
Photo Gallery of 104 - 108 Princess
104 - 108 Princess Street Historic Buildings Committee
104 - 108 Princess Street Winnipeg Building Index

171 Princess Street - Civic Centre Parkade

© 2012, 2020 Christian Cassidy

Place: Civic Centre Parkade
Address: 171 Princess Street
Opened: November 1965
Cost: $1.34 m
Architects: Green, Blankstein Russell Associates
Contractors: Peter Leitch Construction

The 1960s brought massive redevelopment to the area around Main Street and William Avenue.

After exploring a number of possible locations, the city decided to build its new city hall on the site of the old one. The Civic Centre, which featured separate buildings for administration and council buildings. It later expanded to include a Public Safety Building to replace the central police station.

The province also unveiled redevelopment plans of its own in the form of a new Centennial Arts District right across the street. That complex would consist of a concert hall, theatre centre, museum and planetarium.

The least glamorous building in all of this new development was a 460-stall parking garage that would serve both sites.

Parkade's south wall at left. Sept 29, 1964, Winnipeg Tribune

It was after construction of the new city hall began that attention turned to a possible phase two.

The city was looking for a new home for its circa 1906 central police station on Rupert Avenue. The building was already considered cramped and "dysfunctional" for a modern police force and would have to be replaced by the end of the decade.

At a meeting of the city's finance committee on December 20, 1962, architects Libling Michener and Associates, (now LM Architectural Group), presented a report suggesting that the area immediately west of the new city hall would be a perfect location for a new police station. The rest of the city's administration would be just meters away and the city already owned the land, which would save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It was also suggested that the new structure could also house fire department officials who were located in a building near the city limits on St. Matthews Avenue and the signals garage that was also looking for a new home.

For the vacant land north of the news police station, the architects recommended a 500-vehicle parkade to serve the buildings.

October 28, 1964, Winnipeg Free Press

The city agreed with the plan and on April 8, 1964, ratepayers voted to spend $2.8* million to construct phase two of the Civic Centre. (Only 25% of ratepayers voted and the project barely passed with 16,404 in favour versus 12,941 against.)

Tenders were called in November and on December 21, 1964, council voted 17-1 in favour of awarding the contract to Peter Leitch Construction and its bid of $4,853,908*. Of that, $1.36 m was earmarked for the parkade and basement level.

(*The discrepancy in the numbers was partly due to higher than expected bids. The bids also didn't factor in rebates that the city would receive from the federal and provincial governments.)

Designed by Green, Blankstein Russell Associates, who also designed the council and administration buildings of the civic centre, the parkade was constructed of reinforced concrete clad in Tyndall Stone, stood four stories in height and had room for approximately 460 stalls.

The basement level was for use by police and fire administration vehicles and home to the city's repair and signals garage. A tunnel under King Street connected the parkade to the Civic Centre. (That tunnel was continued on to the Centennial Concert Hall in 1967.)

October 23, 1965, Winnipeg Tribune

In September 1965, council approved parking rates for which were said to be in line with other facilities in the city: 15 cents for the first 30 minutes; 10 cents for the second half hour; and 10 cents for each additional hour. The maximum daily rate was $1.

The issue of monthly rates was a bit more contentious. The city first proposed $9 per month which was well below the $11.35 it was estimated to provide the stalls. After some outcry about providing city employees with "below cost" parking the rate was boosted to $12 per month.

At that same meeting, the city's solicitor was asked to draw up an agreement with the city's five-member parking authority, a body created in August 1956 to oversee off-street city parking lots, to run the facility.

The Civic Centre Car Park began operations on November 1, 1965. The adjoining Public Safety Building opened on May 18, 1966.

By the 2000s, the Civic Parkade was in poor condition. An October 2007 Winnipeg Parking Authority study claimed that the structure needed more than $6 million in immediate repairs.

On August 24, 2012, the city ordered that the Civic Centre Pakade be closed indefinitely after the results of an engineering study found that it was in serious need of repairs to prevent the concrete from crumbling onto cars.

The decision was made to tear down rather than repair the structure and demolition got under way in January 2020. This will soon be followed by the demolition of the old Public Safety Building. The site, which has been rechristened Market Lands, will be redeveloped.

743 Jarvis Avenue - Dominion Tanners Building

Place: Dominion Tanners Building
Address: 743 Jarvis Avenue (Map)
Built: 1913 
Architect: Unknown

1915 ad

This building was constructed at a cost of $70,000 for Dingle and Stewart, a Winnipeg-based produce wholesaler and food manufacturer. Their signature product was Melba Chocolates, sold across Western Canada.

The company was created ca. 1899, a partnership between Dudley Dingle, Guy Dingle and Duncan D. Stewart. By 1912 they had 200 employees and had outgrown their existing premises at 263 Stanley Street.

This building, which originally had a Parr Street address, was built as their confectionery manufacturing and canning facility. They retained the Stanley Street building for their fruit and vegetable wholesale business.

October 7, 1925, Winnipeg Free Press

In 1924 - 25 a national fruit price-fixing scandal rocked the nation. It involved a company called Nash, and allegations that they gave kickbacks and artificially inflated the wholesale cost of fruit to consumers. Dozens of distributors across the country were fingered as accomplices, including ten firms in Winnipeg. Dingle and Stewart was one of them.

Charges of conspiracy were laid in October 1925 and it appears that soon after, Stewart and Dingle closed. In 1926 Dudley Dingle moved to Toronto.

Lyall, ca. 1926

Dominion Tanners was created ca. 1933 by Hugh Buxton Lyall, also see. The Ontario native was already well known for his key involvement in a number of large Manitoba businesses, including Dominion Bridge in Winnipeg and the Manitoba Rolling Mills in Selkirk.

Within a year, Dominion Tanners' Talbot Avenue plant with its ten workers was bursting at the seams and Lyall decided to lease the Dingle and Stewart Building for a huge expansion that would more than triple their workforce.

Tanning leathers was a dirty, smelly job and there was great opposition to having a tannery nearby, even in a largely industrial area.  A number of surrounding businesses went on the record as being opposed to the relocation and a long petition was presented to council to stop it.

Dominion's defence was that people had the wrong idea of what they did. Tanning raw leather was a very small part of their business. Their main work was manufacturing leather for shoes, boots and gloves.

Circa 1937 (source)

Council was invited to inspect - and sniff - their Elmwood facility to see what a "smell nuisance" it created.  They agreed the odour was no worse that from other manufacturing plants and in June 1934 an occupancy permit was granted.

Dominion then spent about $40,000 to renovate the building and add new equipment.

The move was a good one for the company as business boomed. In 1936 they purchased the building outright and by 1941 had 60 full-time employees on the payroll.


On August 24, 1944, the building and business was nearly destroyed. Three firemen were injured when fire, fulled for hours by the barrels of wax, fish oil and tallow stored there, gutted the top floor. Water damage to the stock and equipment on the other floors was extensive.

A Tribune story noted: "Hundreds of people who packed the Arlington Street bridge had a grandstand seat. The scene from the bridge was breathtaking."

The company survived the fire and continued in business for six decades more. In 1948 Lyall sold the business to Conrad Sanford Riley. In 1967 the company moved to a newly-built, $2 million facility in the Inkster Industrial Park. It went bankrupt in 2003.

July 17, 1970, Winnipeg Free Press

The building was sold in 1970, after which it it has had numerous tenants. Mymor Industries made sheepskin products in the mid 1970s. In the 1970s and 1980s it was also home to a newspaper recycling firm.

In the late 1970s a series of insulation companies operated from this address, starting with Ray's and in the 2010s, Sure Save.

Related:
My Flickr album of the Dominion Tanners Building

UPDATE - July 2016: The building is being prepared for demolition.

666 Main Street - Weir Hardware Building

© 2013, Christian Cassidy

Place: The Weir Block
Address: 666 Main Street (Map)
Built: 1899
Architect: Unknown

Background:

Main Street ca. 1910

The F. W. Weir Company hardware store was created in 1893 by Frederick William Wooler Weir who came to Winnipeg from his native Peterborough, Ontario. In June 1899, he purchased a 23-foot lot on Main Street at Henry Avenue and had this building constructed. The architect is unknown.

The main floor housed the store and the upper floor was office space. For much of its first four decades, it housed medical practitioners, including A. J. Slater in the 1900s and Dr. Wilson Graham in the 1930s.

September 14, 1900, Manitoba Free Press

1905 Henderson Directory

In April 1905, Weir joined forces with John M. Wilson, a former manager at J. H. Ashdown Hardware, and the firm was renamed Weir and Wilson.

Frederick Weir married Mary Georgette Wilson, (not sure if she was related to his business partner), on May 16, 1889. She was from a pioneer family that came to Red River by paddle boat in 1876. The couple had seven children, four sons and three daughters.

Sons Morley and Stanley were sportsmen in the early 1920s. They were teammates on both the Elmwood Giants baseball team and the Assiniboines hockey club. They worked at the family business and when Weir and Wilson retired, they took over and renamed it the Weir Hardware Company.

F. W. Weir died in 1933 at the age of 75. His wife, Mary, died in 1939. John M. Wilson died in 1936.

A second Weir Hardware location opened in the former Corydon Meat Market building at 838 Corydon Avenue in 1938. The store lasted a dozen years then was sold off to become Corydon Hardware.

The Weir brothers sold the Main Street business in 1951.

March 5, 1953, Winnipeg Free Press

It appears that Stanley Weir retired to Petersfield Manitoba, though I can find no record of his death.

Morley's life after Weir hardware was short and tragic.

He and his wife Evelyn moved to Aransas Pass, Texas where she died in July 1951 at the age of 48. Her brief obituary does not hint at a reason for hear early death. The body was returned to Winnipeg for burial.

Morley returned to the States and purchased the Park Hotel in downtown Houston, Texas.  Early on March 4, 1953 he got into a dispute with a customer over an unpaid hotel bill. The customer struck Morley who fell and hit his head on the pavement and died hours later in hospital. He was 55 years old.

Main Street, early 1980s (source)

The Weirs had sold the business to James Rosenstock, a long-time merchant in Winnipeg and Beausejour. He renamed it Bell Hardware for its proximity to the Bell Hotel.

Rosenstock ran Bell Hardware until around 1986 and died in 1994. The building, for the most part, has been vacant since that time.

CentreVenture, the downtown development agency, purchased a group of buildings in the 600 block of Main Street in 2007 for redevelopment. This included number 666. All were demolished except for the Bell Hotel which has become a supportive housing complex.

In October 2011, CentreVenture announced that JMT Holdings, a division of JC Paving, purchased 666 and 668 Main Street to construct a three storey commercial building with a pharmacy on the main floor. In August 2012 a "coming soon" sign for the new development was hung from the building.

UPDATE: The building was demolished in February 2013:

Related: 
Photos of 666 Main Street
666 Main Street Historic Buildings Report