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Robert W. Galston, The Rise & Sprawl
Fresh from fighting to save the footprint of Upper Fort Garry—a structure demolished in 1882—Heritage Winnipeg has just given the thumbs up to the demolition of the Albert Street Business Block (and the 130 year-old house that stands adjoined to it) because Ken Zaifman, the developer who has sought [...]

Robert Galston, Winnipeg Free Press
A drawing was released this month of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s future offices at Logan Avenue and Main Street, which is part of Centre Venture Development Corporation’s “cluster developments” for downtown. A 200-car parkade will adjoin the building, and up the street close to Higgins Avenue, a new surface [...]

Robert W. Galston, The Rise and Sprawl
The nature of large publicly driven urban revitalization schemes in poor cities is to make the project take up as much room, and take out as much blight, as possible. Thus, 200 office workers and their parking spots take up an entire city block where a dozen buildings and [...]

Robert W. Galston, The Rise and Sprawl
Last winter, when City Hall said they were not interested in letting Mr. Zaifman bring the suburbs to the finest little street in the city’s most distinct and important neighborhood by demolishing a strip of businesses and the remnant of a 130-year-old house for a parking lot, Zaifman warned [...]

When it was announced in 1881 that the Canadian Pacific Railway would cross the Red River at Winnipeg, the young city’s future as Western Canada’s pre-eminent centre of trade, finance, and culture was secured. As a result, the already briskly growing city experienced a real estate boom of such stupendous proportions, that it would make [...]

Robert W. Galston, The Rise and Sprawl
Walking down its streets today, it’s hard to imagine that Point Douglas, the neighborhood I call home, once faced the threat of demolition in the name of urban renewal.
In a 1959 story, the Winnipeg Tribune quoted a Mrs. Olga Fedink of Stephen St: “[P]eople don’t know whether their houses [...]

One of these houses was built in the mid 1880s. The other, the mid 2000s. Can you tell which is which?

The idea that a new building should resemble the older ones surrounding it isn’t new, but it has enjoyed a revival in popularity during recent years. Winnipeg, unfortunately, hasn’t yet caught on to this trend. [...]

The difference between 1979–when the McIntyre block was razed–and the present day, is that a property owner can not just demolish a building in a week; he must gradually demolish it. In the case of Ken Reiss, the owner of the Ryan block at King and Bannatyne, it’s a 17-year process that seems to be [...]

There is a misconception that Winnipeg is not a city of mixed-use buildings, where people reside in apartments and rooms above shops or services. And while Winnipeg has historically been, first and foremost, a city of houses, the city’s faded wealth of mixed-use buildings–the most urban of all building typologies–is either unknown or poorly understood [...]

The ’80s were a great decade in Winnipeg’s history. No, not the 1980s–an era of wholesale demolitions of historical structures–but the 1880s: an era of unbridled optimism and the erection of a smattering of architectural gems, many of which are unappreciated today.
Recently I was walking through the Exchange District and I happened upon 88 Adelaide [...]