1919 – Former Bank of Commerce, Winnipeg, Manitoba

In Winnipeg the main banks had been clustered on Main Street. As Portage Avenue developed into a shopping area, the banks started to open up branches to cater for consumers. In 1920 the Bank of Commerce was amongst the first branches on the street. This structure originally was built in 1906 as the Kennedy Block (after owner C.W.N. Kennedy), a three-storey brick retail and office building with shops at streetlevel. With conversion to a bank in 1919, a new Tyndall stone façade was added as well as other structural and ornamental features. To provide increased light, a steel-trussed, double-pitched roof allowed for skylights. Bearing a close resemblance to the bank’s Main Street headquarters, the new Portage Avenue branch displayed a rusticated Tyndall stone base leading to two massive fluted Doric columns and capped by a complete entablature and highly ornamented pediment. The columns enclosed a recessed area that included the main entrance and a round-headed window. was flanked by two small, steel-framed windows, two unfluted Doric columns and a complete entablature.

Described in the architecture press as

“The first subject, the Portage Avenue branch, Winnipeg, represents the solution of an interesting problem in planning which the peculiarities of the site entailed. It was necessary to design a building of a character suitable for the important position it had to occupy, and to contrive an interior adequately lighted in spite of the fact that only one end was available for windows. The safety deposit business, too, required a prominent and accessible position, and the rear wall of the banking hall had to be removable for extension without involving any important feature, such as a vault or manager’s room. These requirements located the vault at the front of the building, and, as the manager’s room had also to be placed there in accordance with the bank’s practice, and must communicate with the working space, the entrance to the banking hall had obviously to be to one side. The matter was further complicated by the fact that the main axis of the site is not at right angles to the street line. The solution finally adopted provided a graceful central portico, from which one passes through a circular vestibule at its eastern side, into the bank proper, the circular form of this vestibule effectively masking the oblique angle between the front wall and the main lines of the bank. Internally this obliquity is disguised by a double front wall and outer and inner windows, the outer and inner walls being several feet apart at one side but meeting at the other.

The building is lighted from the large arched window on Portage Avenue and a semi-circular cupola which forms a most effective feature of the interior. An extension to the rear can be carried out when required without interruption to the business which would be entailed had the front been devoted to a central entrance and the vault forced to the rear. The building as a whole is a notable and distinctive addition to the architecture of the city, giving as it does a logical expression of the strength and stability rightly associated with a successful banking institution, and at the same time possessing grace and refinement of a carefully studied architectural composition.”
Construction, January 1921

All but the facade to Portage Avenue was demolished in 2012, although the interior had previously being gutted. The facade is now an adornment on a glass and steel mixed-use building.

Share!

More!