1904 – Post Office / Federal Building, Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Built to replace an earlier post office building on Main Street at McDermot Avenue, which was demolished in the early 1960s. This fine post office was also demolished and replaced with a terrible building including offices and a multi-storey carpark.

One of Winnipeg’s most imposing structures is the new Federal building, completed a little more than a year ago. It is located on Portage Avenue, and was designed by Messrs. Darling & Pearson. Although the facade is good and has been so designed as to suit the location, it is most unfortunate that a sufficiently large site could not have been provided to have permitted of some ground space around the building, that would not only have given the architects a better opportunity to do justice to an expenditure of $750,000 in the way of architectural treatment, but would have allowed for future extensions.

The design might be called English Renaissance. The base of the front is constructed of Tyndall stone up to a height of four feet, while Ohio sandstone is used above the basement walls. The building has a steel frame fireproofed with concrete, concrete floors reinforced with expanded metal, brick clothing walls and terra cotta partitions. The rotunda is wainscotted with Italian marble, while Missisquoi marble is used for the base of the counterfittings. The interior woodwork and furniture is of light finished quarter cut oak and the color scheme carried out in the rotunda is not only very pleasing but everything is light in color, thus utilizing to the best advantage all the light that pours in through the large front windows.
Construction, December 1909

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