Many historically significant buildings in Regina, Saskatchewan were lost during the period 1945 through approximately 1970 when the urge to "modernize" overtook developers' and city planners' sense of history and heritage. The old warehouse district to the north of the old CPR tracks was Regina's original commercial raison d'être once Lieutenant-Governor Edgar Dewdney had established the site of his considerable landholdings as the site of his Territorial Capital.[1] With latter-day eclipse of the railways in favour of highway trucking, the Warehouse District has lost its original purpose. In recent years the Warehouse District has incrementally been transformed into an interesting shopping and residential precinct.
The Assiniboia Club on Victoria Avenue has long since ceased to be an élite men's club and continues in use as a restaurant; the former Anglican Diocesan property is now being intelligently developed along commercial lines with the historic buildings jealously retained. Significant historic buildings and precincts include the following.
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The Old Post Office has now been converted to commercial and cultural use in connection with the ongoing revitalisation of downtown Scarth Street as a pedestrian mall and houses the Globe Theatre. It was completed in 1907; its 1912 clock tower was for many years locally regarded as Regina’s Big Ben. The building was replaced as a post office in 1956 by the current post office on Saskatchewan Drive (formerly South Railway Street).[2]
Regina's second multi-story office block after the venerable and now-demolished McCallum & Hill Building, the Motherwell Building at the corner of Victoria Avenue and Rose Street, was constructed in 1954-56 to a design by local Regina architects in the typical "international style" and faced in Tyndall stone to house, inter alia, Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA)[3] and Western Canadian Engineering Projects.[4] It has official heritage status in recognition of its architectural significance[4] and has now been converted to condominium title and residential use.[5] For many years it together with the immediately adjacent Hotel Saskatchewan and the 1963 Saskatchewan Power Building, also on Victoria Avenue, were, with the Provincial Legislative Building and the spires of Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Cathedral, the only high-rise structures in the city and were visible from many miles' distance as one approached Regina by road from any direction.
The Territorial Government buildings on Dewdney Avenue, dating from 1883, consisted of the Legislative Building, the Administration Building and the Indian Office and were designed by the Dominion architect, Thomas Fuller. The mansard roofed Administration Building, a Provincial Heritage Property, remains standing; it was restored in 1979 and currently sits vacant.
Government House on Dewdney Avenue was completed in 1891 as the vice-regal residence for the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Territories, replacing the first Government House on the present site of Luther College farther west on Dewdney Avenue. It was the first electrified residence in the Territories and remained the residence of the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West (later Northwest) Territories and, after the creation of the province of Saskatchewan, of the province until 1945; latterly, with increasing historical sensibility among the general public, it has been restored to its former use as a vice-regal mansion, albeit only for public functions and not as a residence per se.[6]
The Supreme Court of the North-West Territories sat in the courthouse built in 1894 on the northwest corner of Hamilton Street and Victoria Avenue.[7] The Supreme Court was established by Parliament in 1886,[8] under its jurisdiction to legislate for the Territories.[9] The Court was the superior trial court in civil and criminal matters, and also the appellate court for the Territories. Individual judges of the court sat as trial judges, while all of the judges sat en banc on appeals. The Supreme Court of the North-West Territories continued to exercise jurisdiction in the Province of Saskatchewan for the first two years of the Province's existence, until it was abolished for Saskatchewan in 1907 and replaced with the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan.
In 1918 the The Court of Appeal Act and The King’s Bench Act abolished the Supreme Court, separately constituted the Court of Appeal and established the Court of King's Bench (or Queen's Bench during reigns of female monarchs) as the superior trial court.[10] The 1894 building was replaced in 1965 by the current courthouse on Victoria Avenue between Smith and McIntyre Streets, opposite City Hall. The Avord Tower now stands on the site of the Supreme Court building. As with the 1962 Regina Public Library, the keystone of the original building is on the front lawn of the current courthouse as a decorative feature.[11]
The Beaux-Arts Saskatchewan Legislative Building on the south shore of Wascana Lake was constructed 1908-12. The design contemplates expansion of the building by the addition of wings extending south from the east and west ends and coming together to form a courtyard. The plans originally called for the exterior of the building to be red brick but after construction had begun and red bricks were already on the site, Premier Walter Scott insisted on Manitoba tyndall stone being substituted.[12] It immediately became and remains the dominating architectural presence in Regina.
The 1908 "gingerbread" Romanesque Revival City Hall on 11th Avenue between Rose and Hamilton Streets provided facilities for civic government but also contained a large audience chamber, used for public lectures, balls, theatricals and even boxing matches (see below). In Regina's early days this was an alternative public venue to the Regina Theatre and other private venues. In an effort to revitalise the city centre it was demolished in 1965 and replaced by a now-failed shopping mall, subsequently taken over by the federal government as office space.
It temporarily relocated for some years to the considerably smaller Beaux-Arts old Post Office building on Scarth and 11th Avenue which had been left standing and essentially without purpose after the construction of the new Post Office on South Railway Street (now Saskatchewan Drive) after the demolition of the 1908 building, and this saved the old Post Office—now containing the stage of the professional Globe Theatre—from the wrecker’s ball.[13]
City Hall was ultimately moved in 1976 from the Old Post Office building to a modern office block in the style of the original University of Regina buildings at the new campus, on the western periphery of the city centre on Victoria Avenue, opposite from the Courthouse and across 12th Avenue from St Paul's Anglican Cathedral.
At one time Regina was replete with private as well as public secondary and junior college education. Regina College, originally a private residential high school and junior college, was established by the Methodist Church of Canada in 1913 in response to the award of the University of Saskatchewan to Saskatoon rather than Regina. It became affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan in the 1920s, was disaffiliated with the United Church in the 1930s and ceased offering high school classes; it is now the University of Regina.
St Chad's Anglican Diocesan School was operated by the Anglican Sisters of St John the Divine on the then-Anglican diocesan property immediately to the east of Regina College on College Avenue until it closed for financial reasons in 1970. (See below, "Germantown and the East End.") The Anglican diocese confronted the realities of its demographic marginality in the 1970s and sold its property to the provincial Crown: the City of Regina is now confronted with the problem of responsibly developing the former Anglican diocesan property. (See below).
The Roman Catholic Jesuit Order operated Campion College, originally a high school with junior college accreditation with the University of Saskatchewan like Regina College, on 23rd Avenue; the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions operated Sacred Heart College, later Marian High School, to the south of Campion College on Albert Street and Sacred Heart Academy in the West End immediately adjacent to Holy Rosary Cathedral. All are now closed, though the Campion and Sacred Heart Academy buildings survive with new uses: Campion as a conservative Evangelical Protestant religious school; Sacred Heart Academy as residential condominiums.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada's Luther College,[14] on the site of the original Government House next to the RCMP Academy, Depot Division, is the one remaining historic private school in Regina. Campion College no longer operates a high school but is now a federated college at the University of Regina, as is Luther College.
In the pre-television era Regina, like other comparably sized cities throughout North America, was served by legitimate theatre buildings where both touring professional productions and local amateur productions were staged as well as by numerous movie houses: such public entertainments were offered in an abundance that seems astonishing in the 21st century city which is several times larger. The 1908 City Hall, as was customary at the time, and as with the obviously substantially larger (and surviving) Town Halls of London, New York, Sydney and Brisbane, contained a large central theatre and concert hall-cum-ballroom.
Darke Hall, a civic theatre and concert hall adjacent to Regina College, was donated by Francis Nicholson Darke. Mr Darke also donated the carillon of chimes to the then-Methodist, now United Church of Canada Metropolitan Church in downtown Regina which is still heard.
Darke Hall was for many years Regina’s principal concert hall and theatre, particularly after. The Institute for stained glass in Canada has documented the stained glass at Darke Hall. [15]
Darke Hall opened in 1929.[17] It remains the recital and concert hall for the Regina Conservatory of Music and the University of Regina's Department of Music as well as the venue for amateur theatricals and public lectures.
Like other downtown cinemas (including the Regina, the Grand and the 1000-seat Metropolitan), the 1500-seat Capitol Theatre doubled as a movie house and live stage venue and after the Regina Theatre burned to the ground the Capitol was Regina's principal downtown venue for "legitimate" theatre: the famous annual Canadian travelling revue "Spring Thaw" was staged here through the 1950s.
By the 1980s, Famous Players, which had acquired the Capitol, by now the last historic legitimate theatre and even cinema in the central business district (the Grand, the Rex, the Broadway, the Roxie and the Met had closed by the end of the 1981), was in financial trouble and desperately divided the Cap in half to make a poor-man's multiplex; ultimately the Cap itself was closed. By the time of its demolition in 1992 it was the last of many downtown movie theatres which had once thrived — the Regina Theatre, the Rex, the Grand, the Unique, the Roseland, the Elite, the Princess, the Lux, the Gaiety, the Broadway, the Roxy, the 1000-seat Metropolitan and the Cap itself.[18] An office tower now occupies the site; the old Hudson's Bay Department store building, on the site of the Regina Theatre, is now also occupied by offices.
With the building of the Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts in Wascana Centre on the south shore of Wascana Lake immediately adjacent to the new campus of the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus and well outside the Regina Central Business District, both highbrow and mainstream entertainment were comprehensively removed from the city centre, completing the process begun with the destruction of the Regina Theatre and the demolition of Old City Hall. The Globe Theatre has moved downtown from the Centre of the Arts into the Old Post Office building, and nowadays is the only entertainment venue in the city centre apart from the Casino Royale in the former CPR Union train station [19], and city planners seeking to revitalise the downtown business district must contend with the consequences of decisions by predecessors who directed the city's entertainment facilities away from the city centre.
The Carnegie Library, built as in many cities of North America and the United Kingdom with a grant from the Carnegie Foundation, was destroyed in the 1912 Regina "Cyclone" but quickly rebuilt with the help of a further Carnegie grant.[20] It was demolished and replaced in 1962 by an impressively large though architecturally undistinguished building on the same site at Lorne Street and 12th Avenue which, like the Court of Appeal and Queens Bench building on Victoria Avenue, preserves remnants of its predecessor in its forecourt.
The institution of amply-endowed public libraries became well established in Regina and Regina burgesses quickly became inured to the idea of such facilities being worthwhile public facilities and worthy of substantial public endowment. Latterly the Regina City Council has sought to cut costs by proposing to close neighbourhood libraries, including the Connaught Library in the West End (latterly dubbed the "Cathedral Area"), to general public condemnation.
The area known as Germantown (Broad Street east to Winnipeg Street and beyond, and 13th Avenue north to the CPR Yards[21]) was settled by continental Europeans — Germans, Romanians, Hungarians, Serbs, Ukrainians, Poles, essentially anyone neither British Isles, French nor aboriginal in ancestry. In the early-predominant Anglo-Celtic mainstream non-francophone continental Europeans whatever their origin were generally referred to either as "Galicians" (Galicia at the time actually being Austrian Poland) or as "Germans."
Europeans became established around the former Market Square (now the location of the Regina city police station [22] on Osler Street between 10th and 11th Avenues) by 1892.
German, Ukrainian, Romanian and Serbian religious, secular and educational institutions and services were early established in the neighbourhood — including St Nicholas's Romanian Orthodox Church (established in 1902[23]), the oldest Romanian Orthodox parish in North America;[24] St George's Cathedral (founded in 1914[25] though the present building dates from the early 1960s), the episcopal seat of the Romanian Orthodox Bishop of Regina; and the now long-demolished Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Descent of the Holy Ghost, both formerly on Winnipeg Street. Beth Jacob Synagogue, originally established in 1905[26] and now re-located to South Regina, was originally also in Germantown on Victoria Avenue at Osler Street, immediately to the east of Broad Street Park (since the 1960s occupied by a shopping mall and the Regina Inn)..
Regina's Anglo-Saxon élite grievously neglected Germantown in the early days and basic services of water and sewerage came scandalously late to the precinct. Many residents of the Germantown quarter of Regina lived in squalid shacks without basic services till well into the 20th century, when issues of loyalty to the British Crown during the First World War were comprehensively resolved in the favour of the residents' complete Canadian-ness.[27] By the 1960s invidious past ethnic prejudice had long since passed and Ukrainian food had become pan-prairie cuisine, with sour cabbage and frozen perogies amply available in Regina supermarkets. Apart from German Lutheran and Roman Catholic establishments throughout Regina, however, European churches and cultural clubs remain concentrated in Germantown.[28]
Trinity Lutheran Church[29] — now occupying a large but undistinguished A-frame building on Ottawa Street in the heart of Germantown — remains the centre of Regina's Lutheran constituency, though Canadian Lutheranism, while maintaining the historic episcopacy and indeed being in full communion with the Anglican Church of Canada, does not designate metropolitan churches as cathedrals. Trinity for many years maintained a traditional German parish church in Germantown; in due course, when it had built its new modern building, it sold its impressive German pipe organ to an Anglican parish church.
At the southern periphery of Germantown is an Anglo-Saxon-Celtic neighbourhood. St Matthew's Anglican Church remains on 14th Avenue and Winnipeg Street [30]; Carmichael United Church on 13th Avenue immediately adjacent to Regina General Hospital, built in 1920 as Carmichael Presbyterian and later together with the neighbouring Wesley Methodist Church becoming a congregation of United Church,[31] closed in 1996. Its chancel furniture was acquired by the University of Regina for use at convocation ceremonies,[32] a little-noted historic link with the university's origins as a United Church denominational college.
Immediately adjacent to Germantown, to the south of College Avenue, is the former Anglican Diocesan property, containing the former Qu'Appelle Diocesan School and Anglican nunnery (with the historic St Chad's Chapel), a former theological college, administrative buildings, old people's home and bishop's palace. The property had been acquired by the Church of England (as it then was) as a mission field of the English Diocese of Lichfield. When it became apparent that the original see "city" of Qu'Appelle had been passed over as the metropole for the new District of Assiniboia and Province of Saskatchewan and that Regina would be the principal city of southern Saskatchewan the Diocese relocated its headquarters. The once-mooted Anglican cathedral is outlined in caragana hedges diagonally at the corner of Broad Street and College Avenue.
The property was sold to the provincial crown in the 1970s by way of finally obtaining fiscal self-reliance: the Anglican Diocese of Qu'Appelle was originally a mission field of the English Diocese of Lichfield and this was increasingly anomalous. For a time the Diocese leased back the property; it has now been sold for commercial and residential redevelopment; the current Regina Development plan mandates that it be "[ensured] that new development allows for views into the site from Broad Street to significant heritage features, especially the tower of St. Chad’s."[33]
On the southeastern periphery of Germantown, where British Isles-descended Canadians settled after the turn of the century is St Matthew's Anglican Church, one of only three substantial historic Anglican parish churches in Regina; across College Avenue immediately to the South of Germantown, is the former Anglican Diocesan property. It contains the former Qu'Appelle Diocesan School (whose premises were originally a theological seminary for the training of clergy) and Anglican nunnery (with the historic St Chad's Chapel), diocesan administrative buildings, an old people's home and the bishop's palace. The property had been acquired by the Church of England (as it then was) when it became apparent that the original see "city" of Qu'Appelle had been passed over as the metropole for the new District of Assiniboia and Province of Saskatchewan.
The site of the once-mooted but never-begun Anglican cathedral is outlined in caragana hedges diagonally at the corner of Broad Street and College Avenue. Qu'Appelle Diocesan School promotional brochures referred to the entire diocesan land and premises as "the Cathedral property."[34] The original grand scheme of building a Regina cathedral on the Qu'Appelle Diocesan property was comprensively abandoned in 1974 when the modest downtown parish church of St Paul's (the pro-cathedral since 1944) was designated the cathedral of the Qu'Appelle Diocese. The Anglican Church of Canada is presently considering a regrouping of its ecclesial structure and the future cathedral status of St Pauls and the diocesan status of the former District of Assiniboia as the Diocese of Qu'Appelle may well be in doubt as the church deliberates over its increasingly top-heavy structure. The Institute for stained glass in Canada has documented the stained glass at St Paul's Anglican Cathedral [35]
The property was sold to the provincial Crown in the 1970s by way of finally obtaining fiscal self-reliance: the Anglican Diocese of Qu'Appelle was originally a mission field of the English Diocese of Lichfield and this was increasingly anomalous. For a time the Diocese leased back the property from the Crown; it has now been sold for commercial and residential redevelopment. According to the City of Regina’s 2006 official Regina Development Plan,
The specific planning considerations for this site [include]: To support the preservation of significant heritage buildings on the site where feasible, and to ensure they remain as viable as possible….To ensure a new development that is sympathetic to the style of the heritage….To provide landscaped open areas which are conducive to pedestrian use and enjoyment and that will provide focal points for vistas to significant aspects of the site, such as to specific heritage features….To ensure that building height and massing surrounding the heritage buildings…does not overpower the existing heritage buildings and that the heritage buildings maintain their prominence….To ensure that new development allows for views into the site from Broad Street to significant heritage features, especially the tower of St. Chad’s….[And] [t]o ensure that architectural styles and materials used in the construction of new building façades and roofs are complementary to the original buildings.[36]
Immediately to the north and east of the downtown central business district, beyond the CPR rail line, is the warehouse district. Before the highways were upgraded to the extent that they permitted trans-Canada commercial shipping by road within Canada, and did not require trucking companies to dip below the 49th parallel to traverse the Great Lakes, the railways knit the country together. In particular the mail-order companies of Eaton's and Robert Simpson enabled inhabitants of now-defunct rural communities to shop by post.
Nowadays, as in other western Canadian cities, the old warehouses have long since outlived their utility as the railways have given way to the trucking on the highways as the preferred mode of commercial transport: in western Canada, as elsewhere, shipping by rail was supplanted by highway trucking once the Trans-Canada highway was extended from Ontario to the West and transport from eastern to western Canada no longer needed to dip into the United States below the Great Lakes. The old warehouses, however, have survived long enough that their destruction is not a foregone conclusion: they are, in Regina as in other North American cities, being turned into residential condominiums, tony restaurants and shopping precincts. However, at one time the warehouse district (together with the grain elevators adjacent to the CPR line) was Regina’s tenuous commercial raison d’être.[37]
First Baptist Church on the corner of Victoria Avenue and Lorne Street, was opened in 1911 and its gold organ pipes first heard in 1912. The church was renowned for its large domed ceiling and chandelier. The Institute for stained glass in Canada has documented the stained glass at First Baptist Church. [38] The 1912 Regina "Cyclone" severely damaged the church but it was soon restored.[39] Unlike other imposing church buildings in downtown Regina and the East End,[40] First Baptist survives as a major landmark.
Knox-Metropolitan United Church is the current manifestation of a Presbyterian congregation that dates back to 1885. Knox Presbyterian and Metropolitan Methodist churches were destroyed by the "Cyclone"; both were soon rebuilt but in 1951 the two congregations of the now-United Church of Canada merged and occupied the Metropolitan building with Knox being demolished. Many of Knox's congregation had dissented from the 1925 church union and adjourned to the new First (non-concurring) Presbyterian Church on Albert Street, built in 1926; more members of Knox's congregation had relocated to the new post-World War II residential subdivision of Lakeview and when Knox United was demolished its impressive pipe organ was moved to Lakeview United Church. Knox-Met is the major venue for downtown choral concerts, organ recitals and the annual Kiwanis Carol Festival. Like First Baptist and Westminster United, Knox-Met has its interior arranged in the Akron Plan, a square auditorium the pews arranged in a fan shape radiating out from the pulpit and portable communion table, making it ideal for such uses. The Darke Memorial Chimes are heard every Sunday morning and on other special occasions.[41] The church has a large 3-manual Casavant Frères organ, the gift of Isabel Willoughby. Carmichael United Church in the East End, on the periphery of the central business district, was a congregation formed out of the previous Wesley Methodist and Carmichael Presbyterian churches in the immediate vicinity. Once one of Regina's most vibrant United Church congregations and the first church to have its services broadcast by radio, it was demolished in 1996. It had a substantial Casavant Frères organ and fine chancel furniture which has now been resumed by the originally United Church-affiliated University of Regina for use in convocation ceremonies.
Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church at 2049 Scarth Street Scarth Street was built in 1905 as St Mary's: it was renamed "Blessed Sacrament" in 1935 when the "Saint Mary" patronage was transferred to a new parish in Germantown. It replaced the original St Mary's Roman Catholic parish church to the north of what was then Victoria Square. [42]
St Paul's Anglican Cathedral, built in 1894 and the oldest church building in the city still in use, is a modest parish church on the periphery of the central business district whose parish dates from 1883.[43] It has been the designated cathedral church of the Anglican Diocese of Qu'Appelle, comprising most of Southern Saskatchewan, since 1944 when it supplanted the original pro-cathedral of St Peter's in the eponymous town of Qu'Appelle; its future cathedral status, however, is somewhat in doubt as the Anglican Church of Canada considers rationalising its increasingly top-heavy episcopal structure.[44]
First Presbyterian Church on Albert Street was built in 1926 by non-concurring dissidents from the various Presbyterian congregations in the city of Regina — notably from Knox United, led by Judge W.M. Martin, and from Westminster United — which had universally opted to enter the United Church of Canada in 1925.[45] They built a fine, determinedly traditional church structure — with chancel, transepts and nave, as distinct from the Akron plan of Knox, Metropolitan, Westminster and First Baptist with pews fanning out from a central pulpit backed by choir benches[46] — which is much prized by musical and cultural groups in the city as an auditorium. The Institute for stained glass in Canada has documented the stained glass at First Presbyterian Church. [47]
Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Cathedral, a grand neo-romanesque structure on 13th Avenue in the West End, was completed in 1912 and consecrated in 1913; at the time, its 235-foot twin spires were the tallest structures in Regina. Its Casavant Frères pipe organ, originally installed in 1930, repaired after a disastrous 1976 fire, and extensively refurbished and enlarged in 1992–1993, remains the largest organ in Regina.[48] When it suffered its disastrous 1976 its congregation repaired next door to Westminster United, which gladly offered its worship space to Holy Rosary for the duration.
Westminster Presbyterian, now United Church, immediately to the east of Holy Rosary on 13th Avenue, was also completed in 1913 and designed by architect Neil R. Darrach. Wascana Methodist, later United Church, a fine, elegant wooden structure in plain vernacular style on 13th Avenue at Pasqua, originally stood on 14th Avenue as Fourteenth Avenue Methodist Church, was moved in 1925 to its new site at 13th and Pasqua and later sold by its congregation when they built a new church in the West End; the congregation was subsequently dissolved and merged into Westminster. The West End, where the Cathedral is located, has acquired a somewhat bohemian air, and has in recent years increasingly attracted the sobriquet "the Cathedral Area." [49]
The oldest remaining building in Regina is the RCMP chapel at the RCMP Academy, Depot Division, across the CPR tracks and to the west of the "Cathedral Area" on Dewdney Avenue, dating from the earliest establishment of the then- North-West Mounted Police as a guardhouse in 1885. It subsequently served as a mess hall and canteen and became a chapel in 1895. At the time Lieutenant-Governor Edgar Dewdney designated Regina as the Territorial Headquarters for the North-West Territories the CPR had not yet reached Pile of Bones: the now-RCMP chapel, constructed in Ontario, was accordingly moved by flat-car, steamer and ox team to Regina.[50]
The Mountie chapel is a favoured venue for RCMP weddings and funerals; most historic visitors to Regina have been taken to visit there and among the postcards on sale at the Mountie museum are photos of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the chapel during their 1939 tour of Canada and the USA when they visited virtually every town and city along the CPR and CNR lines garnering enthusiasm for the imperial connection in anticipation of the inevitable war with Germany. The RCMP (then the NWMP) barracks was where Louis Riel was detained after his arrest in 1885 and ultimately hanged. The RCMP museum formerly contained a rather macabre display of the noose which hanged Riel though modern sensibilities have caused it to be retired from display.