AGT Building, James Dow

9718 107 Street, Alberta Legislature Grounds
(now known as the Legislature Annex)

Designed by Rule Wynn and Rule Architects
Built by Commonwealth Construction
Original Owner: Alberta Government Telephones

The AGT Building/Legislature Annex is reputed to be the first ‘curtain wall’ office building in Edmonton—basically a prototype curtain wall building. It followed closely on the development of high-rise curtain wall office buildings in other parts of North America, including the 1952 Lever House in New York that uses similar coloured spandrel panels.

Provincial Archives of Alberta WS640

The Early Modern style of this building is typified by the use of the square tower composition, horizontal emphasis in the expression of the floor levels, the use of green Aklo spandrel glass and integral screens for sun control. The windows did not open which was a result of the development of central air handling and air-conditioning. A central core carried all utilities. Construction started in 1951, and was completed in 1953, at which time it became the head office for Alberta Government telephones. An addition in 1958 brought its height to 14 stories.

SEE ALSO:

“Celebrating the modern movement”
Lawrence Herzog
It’s Our Heritage | Vol 26 No 41 | October 16, 2008 

Edmonton Separate School Board Building, James Dow

9807 – 106 Street
(original 2 stories) and 1968 (addition) 

Designed by: Bell and McCulloch Architects
Original Owner:  Edmonton Separate School Board

The Edmonton Separate School Board Building is an example of the Early Modern style. It is an L-shaped building with structural expressionism that is quite pronounced with the use of pre-cast concrete columns and frames around the windows. The windows facing west and south have exterior, integrated pre-cast concrete sun shades. The spandrel panels below the strip windows are clad in a composite pre-cast concrete material that was commonly used during this period. The entrance is located in the recess where the two wings meet, adjacent to a landscaped courtyard. A tall decorative metal screen provides additional emphasis to the entrance.

Northwest Utilities Building. James Dow

10030-10040 104 Street
(now known as the Milner Building)

Designed by: Rule Wynn and Rule Architects
Built by: Christensen and MacDonald
Original Owner: Northwest Utilities (now Atco)

Provincial Archives of Alberta WS267

The Northwest Utilities Building (now the Milner Building) is a hybrid example of the International Style inspired by Le Corbusier, with its raised podium and the Structural Expressionist style of the tower. The perimeter columns, clad in stone, are emphatically pronounced. The exterior of the tower is not a true curtain wall but a hybrid design, maintaining many of the principles of International Style towers but retaining significant visual solidity. This building is not as unabashedly ‘modern’  as the earlier Rule Wynn and Rule AGT Building on the Legislature grounds with its innovative curtain wall cladding that produces a much lighter appearance. This building was innovative in many ways: it was the tallest office building in the capital, the first building in Alberta to use styrofoam insulation, and also featured an automatic sprinkler system. An off-set two-storey podium completes the modern composition that includes a recessed garden at street level. The podium is designed as a “floating” box clad in limestone on prominent black granite columns, providing a ground-level covered walkway with storefronts recessed from the facade. The box acts as a frame for tall, adjustable sun louvers that face east. The vertical louvers, a direct International Style influcence, were not an uncommon element in 1950s Edmonton architecture, and could be seen in the 1957 Edmonton City Hall, the International Airport and a few other buildings from the period.

SEE ALSO:

“Celebrating the modern movement”
Lawrence Herzog, It’s Our Heritage, Vol 26 No 41, October 16, 2008 

Baker Clinic, James Dow

10004 – 10010 105 Street

Designed by: Dewar Stevenson Stanley Architects
Built by: 1953 Mill and Olson, 1959 Poole Construction
Developer: 1959 Polo Developments (later known as Oxford Investment Group)

The Baker Clinic was designed and constructed in two stages. The first stage, designed in 1953, was a one-storey Prairie Style brick structure designed to be a health care centre and clinic. The entrance portico incorporates heavy, vertical, brick fins for contrast.

Provincial Archives of Alberta WS75.2

The 1959 3-storey addition is an early example of curtain-wall construction using two colours of metal spandrel panels that tend to diminish the apparent mass of the tower. Its massing seems inspired by the Bauhaus. An elaborate sunscreen system has been added to the south elevation to contribute to the design. Although separated by seven years, the 1953 building with its solidity serves as a suitable podium for the 1959 addition which is very light in appearance.

Provincial Archives of Alberta WS342

SEE ALSO:

“Celebrating the modern movement”
Lawrence Herzog, It’s Our Heritage, Vol 26 No 41, October 16, 2008 

“In defense of modern buildings“
Lawrence Herzog, Inside Edmonton, Vol 26 No 41, October 16, 2008 

Paramount Theatre, James Dow

10239 Jasper Avenue

Designed by: Stanley and Stanley Architects
Built by: C.H. Whitham
Original Owner: Famous Players Canadian Corporation

Famous Players Corporation embarked on a cross-country expansion program at the beginning of the 1950s. They intended to construct a new theatre in Edmonton as early as the summer of 1949, with land purchased on Jasper Avenue. The building permit was issued on November 2, 1950. Delays in receiving building materials (particularly steel) delayed the official opening from Christmas 1951 to July 1, 1952.

Provincial Archives of Alberta PA4232

The Paramount Theatre is an excellent example of the International Style in Edmonton. The Paramount Theatre uses a bold planar surface of Tyndale stone as the main compositional element. Luxurious materials such as Italian travertine and black marble have been used to enhance the street level entrance. Large round columns express the structure. Angled walls expose these columns and along with the angled canopy, lead patrons toward the entrance. The ladders for changing letters on the signboard have been designed to be an important compositional and functional element.

The seating capacity of the original theatre was 1,750 in 1985 much of the theatre was renovated with a new interior put in place with a reduced seating capacity of 800. In 2003 Famous Players sold the theatre to private interests.

Update:  In 2006, The City Centre Church moved from the Telus Centre to the Paramount Theatre building.

See also:

Celebrating the Modern Movement
Lawrence Herzog, It’s Our Heritage, Vol. 26 No. 41, October 2008

Edmonton’s Move to Modern
Lawrence Herzog, Inside Edmonton, Vol. 25 No. 27, July 25, 2007

A Paramount Theatre
Lawrence Herzog, Inside Edmonton, Vol. 21 No. 34, August 28, 2003

Oliver Building, James Dow

10225 – 100 Avenue

Designed by: McKernan and Bouey Architects
Built by: W.C.  Wells Construction
Original Owner: Government of Canada

The Oliver Building is a straightforward office building created in the Early Modern style. The massing of the building is rectilinear with a horizontal emphasis. It is designed to appear as a ‘floating’ box on a low podium.  The elevations are framed in Tyndall stone, which has also been used to create strong vertical separations between the horizontal bands of windows. A distinguishing feature is the exterior use of ceramic mosaic tile above and below the windows. The mosaic patterns were designed by McKernan and Bouey, and were sent to England where the tiling was created in sheets. A creamy orange coloured brick has been used to create solid walls at the ends of the building. Provisions were made in the structural design for two additional stories to be built if necessary. A structurally expressive, poured-in-place concrete canopy, visually separated from the building with skylight, covers the main entrance doors.

Toronto Dominion Bank, Edmonton, James Dow

10002 Jasper Avenue

Provincial Archives of Alberta WS441.2

Designed by: W.G. Milne Architect
Built by: Dominion Construction
Original Owner: Toronto Dominion Bank

The Edmonton Journal reported  construction “of the new (Toronto Dominion Bank) headquarters reflects the tremendous growth of the TD Bank in Alberta. The Bank is now operating its 550th branch office with 16 new offices opened in the past five years.” Edmonton Mayor Elmer Roper called the new building a “symbol of redevelopment.” Mayor Roper was acknowledging what he saw as the renewed growth of Edmonton as he dedicated the new structure built on the site of the former Gariepy Block.

This striking 7-storey office building features one of Edmonton’s earliest commercial off-the-shelf curtain wall claddings, which faces 100 Street and uses two different colours of anodizing—clear and gold. On the Jasper Avenue facade a full height intricate gold anodized aluminum sunscreen is symmetrically flanked by white marble cladding. The entrance lobby is finished in the same marble material and Alberta historical murals hung throughout. Modern touches at the time—two elevators and air conditionings—were incorporated. At the time of its completion in 1960, the TD Bank building was considered the most modern and up-to-date office building in the city.

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CN Tower, Edmonton, James Dow

100 Street and 104 Avenue

Designed by: Abugov and Sunderland Architects
Built by: Hashman construction Ltd.
Leased by: CN Rail
Original Owners: Allied Development Corporation

Provincial Archives of Alberta J97.2

The 26-storey CN Tower opened February 14, 1966 and was Canada’s tallest building west of Toronto. It was an imposing landmark, the first of a series of major high rises that were to define Edmonton’s downtown skyline. This building exemplifies the modern notion of a  tower sitting on a podium, first seen in New York’s 1953 Lever House by Skidmore Owings and Merrill. The podium rests on a glass-enclosed tall ground floor railway stations and consists of a 3-storey concrete parking structure, which is fully clad in pre-cast panels for the appearance of solidity. This solidity is countered by the verticality of the tall, thin office tower with slightly curving facades. The 22-storey tower is clad in glazed curtain wall with pre-cast fins that exaggerate the height of the building. The tower-on-podium design can be seen in other Edmonton buildings of the time such as the University of Alberta Students’ Union Building and the Campus Tower building at 87 Avenue and 112 Street.

Update:

The CN Tower is now owned by Tawa International Inc. and the last of the CN employees moved out of the building in 2008. The building suffered structural damage to the exterior on July 18, 2009 during a severe thunderstorm. Two vehicles were crushed by the falling debris at the base of the building.

SEE ALSO:

“Edmonton’s Modern Movement of the 1960s”
Lawrence Herzog, Inside Edmonton, Vol 25 No 28, July 12, 2007 

“CN vacates downtown Edmonton’s landmark CN Tower”
May 12, 2008

The Edmonton Art Gallery, John Fulker

2 Sir Winston Churchill Square

Designed by Bittorf and Wensley Architects
Original Owner: The Edmonton Art Gallery

In 1969, the year The Edmonton Art Gallery (EAG) was complete, Edmonton Journal art critic Virgil Hammock wrote “I know of no other art gallery in Northern America that has made such an impact on the international art scene in such a short time… Edmonton has proved that it now has the facilities to exhibit almost any art work in the world… None of the exhibitions would have been here without the new building. I must answer fellow critic Barry Westgate here. Yes, Barry, the art gallery is finished. It is an honest, and I might add cheap for the facilities, concrete builiding.”

Edmonton Art Gallery Interior, photo by John Fulker.

The EAG gave Edmonton a first class facility that proved to be the earliest and arguably the best example of modern Brutalist architecture in Edmonton. Brutalism was intended to exemplify the beauty and power of concrete—a foil to the light airiness of the International Style’s steel and glass. The EAG’s design was intended to convey honesty, comfort and security–a tough but beautifully detailed container intended to protect art works from the harshness of climate and light. Many overlook this building as a stumpy concrete box but as Trevor Boddy stated in his book Modern Architecture in Alberta, “both the colour and the board-forming of the concrete of the art gallery soften this building, which might have appeared like a squat bunker had it not been so carefully detailed.”

Edmonton Art Gallery, photos by John Fulker

Update:

The Gallery was retitled as the Art Gallery of Alberta in 2005. In 2010, it reopened after undergoing a $88 million renovation by Randall Stout Architects in which much of the Bittorf building was demolished, with significant portions of the existing structure incorporated into the new Stout design. 

Mayfair Park Pavilions, James Dow

9930 Groat Road

(now known as Hawrelak Park)

Designed by: Bittorf and Wensley Architects
Original Owner: City of Edmonton

In Edmonton’s early years the site of today’s Hawrelak Park was known as Mayfair and owned by the Strathcona Land Syndicate. The city obtained title to the land on November 21, 1922, through a tax forfeit. For the next 30 years, the site was used as a garbage dump and for a gravel extraction  and crushing operation. In 1954 it was proposed that the land be made in to a park and planning began two years later. Construction of the site commenced in 1959, and the adjoining 73 hectares were leased for the Mayfair Golf and Country Club. The park was officially opened on July 1, 1967. The total cost of the park structures was $275,000.

The design of the pavilions mark a distinction from the rectilinear International Style and favour the organic modernism put forth by architects such as Finland’s renowned modernist, Alvar Aalto, and the regionalism of West Coast post and beam construction shown in the early Vancouver work of Ron Thom. The pavilions are sited in a natural park setting and reflect the landscape through the organically-shaped concrete columns, the glue-laminated wood beams and wood-shingled roof.  The structures appear to emerge from the ground to shelter the extensively-glazed interior space of the pavilions. Adhering to another modernist principle, the pavilions successfully merge the interior and exterior space through the extensive use of curtain wall glazing.

SEE ALSO:

“Edmonton’s Modern Movement of the 1960s”
Lawrence Herzog, Inside Edmonton, Vol 25 No 28, July 12, 2007