Regina's historic buildings and precincts
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 is being transformed into an interesting shopping 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. Significant historic buildings and precincts include the following.
Government
Federal
The Old Post Office has now been converted to commercial use in connection with the ongoing revitalisation of downtown Scarth Street as a pedestrian mall. 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).[1]
Territorial
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 houses an entertainment troupe.[2]
Government House on Dewdney Avenue was completed in 1891 as the vice-regal residence for the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West (sic) 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.[3]
The Supreme Court of the North-West (sic) Territories and then of Saskatchewan was built on the northwest corner of Hamilton Street and Victoria Avenue.[4] At that time the North-West Territories and later the province of Saskatchewan's superior court was the Supreme Court itself: the appellate court was not separately constituted but consisted of an ad hoc "full court" of the Supreme Court, comprised of a panel of Supreme Court justices struck from time to time for the purpose of hearing appeals from the trial court. 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 as the Court of Kings Bench as a trial court without appellate jurisdiction.[5] The 1918 building was replaced in 1965 by the current courthouse on Victoria Avenue between Lorne and Hamilton Streets. The Avord Tower now stands on the site at the corner of Scarth Street and Victoria Avenue. As with the 1962 Regina Public Library, the keystone of the original Supreme Court building is on the front lawn of the current courthouse as a decorative feature.[6]
Provincial
The Beaux-Arts Saskatchewan Legislative Building on the south shore of Wascana Lake was constructed 1908-12; originally intended to be built of red brick, Premier Walter Scott insisted on Manitoba tyndall stone being substituted after construction had already commenced.[7] It of course immediately became and remains the dominating architectural presence in Regina.
Civic
The 1908 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. In an ill-conceived effort to revitalise the city centre it was demolished in 1965 and replaced by a now-failed shopping mall — it has now been taken over the federal government as office space.
City Hall was not only the locus of the city bureaucracy; it also contained a large theatre and ballroom (see below). It temporarily relocated for some years to the the 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 from the wrecker’s ball.[8]
City Hall was ultimately moved in 1976 to an undistinguished modern office block on the western periphery of the city centre.
Education and culture
Historic private schools
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At one time Regina was replete with private as well as public school secondary and junior college education. Regina College, originally a private residential high school, was built by the Methodist Church of Canada in 1913 in response to the award of the University of Saskatchewan to Saskatoon rather than 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 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, on the site of the original Government House next to the RCMP Academy, Depot Division, is the one remaining private school in Regina. The United Church's Regina College became the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus; Campion College no longer operates a high school but is now a federated college at the University of Regina, as is Luther College (which, however, continues also to operate as a high school on its original site at the old Government House on west Dewdney Avenue; the Anglican St Chad's Qu'Appelle Diocesan School (see below, "Germantown and the East End") closed in 1970 and the Anglican missionary Sisters of St John the Divine vacated western Canada, but it maintains a notional historical existence in the College of Emmanuel and St Chad at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.
Theatres and concert halls
Darke Hall, adjacent to Regina College, was donated to the United Church by Francis Nicholson Darke. Regina had urgently sought to be awarded as the site of the University of Saskatchewan but ultimately failed in favour of Saskatoon. In response, Darke was instrumental in persuading the Saskatchewan Conference of the Methodist Church of Canada (later to become, in union with the the Presbyterian and Congregationalist Churches, the United Church of Canada) to establish Regina College as a local junior college in 1911. (Regina College, later ceded by the United Church to the University of Saskatchewan as a local junior college, later became the Regina Campus of the University of Saskatchewan and, ultimately, in 1974, the autonomous University of Regina.) Darke also provided a carillon of bells for Metropolitan Methodist Church. Darke Hall was for many years Regina’s principal concert hall and theatre, particularly after
- (a) the destruction by fire in 1939 of the 800-seat Regina Theatre on the corner of 12th Avenue and Hamilton (now the site of the old Hudson's Bay department store building) — home from 1910 to the Regina Operatic Society, the Regina Orchestral Society and travelling vaudeville and stage plays[9] — and
- (b) the demolition of Old City Hall in 1965, whose ballroom had provided a multi-purpose space used for civic receptions, concerts, theatre, balls and indeed boxing.
Darke Hall opened in 1929.[10] 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 1970s), 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.[11] 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 in the CPR train station, 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.
Carnegie Library
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.[12] It was demolished and replaced in 1962 by a large though 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 close neighbourhood libraries, including the Connaught Library in the West End (latterly dubbed the "Cathedral Area"), to general public condemnation.
Germantown and the East End
The area known as Germantown (Broad Street east to Winnipeg Street and beyond, and College Avenue north to the CPR Yards[13]) 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 [14] 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[15]), the oldest Romanian Orthodox parish in North America; St George's Cathedral (founded in 1914[16] 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[17] and now re-located to South Regina, was originally also in Germantown.
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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.[18] By the 1960s invidious past ethnic prejudice had long since passed and Ukrainian food had become pan-Saskatchewan food. Apart from German Lutheran and Roman Catholic establishments throughout Regina, however, European churches and cultural clubs remain concentrated in Germantown.[19]
Trinity Lutheran Church[20] — 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.
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) 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 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 and it remains to be seen what use, if any, will be made of the historic buildings.
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."[21]
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.[22]
The warehouse district
Immediately to the north 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 cities, the old warehouses have long since outlived their utility: in western Canada, as elsewhere, shipping by rail has been supplanted by highway trucking. The old warehouses, however, have survived long enough that their destruction is not a foregone conclusion: they are 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.[23]
Downtown and West End ("Cathedral Area") churches
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 1912 Regina "Cyclone" severely damaged the church but it was soon restored.[24] Unlike other imposing church buildings in downtown Regina, 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. Much 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; many of Knox's congregation had also adjourned to the new First Presbyterian Church after church union in 1925. Knox-Met is the major venue for downtown choral concerts, organ recitals and the annual Kiwanis Carol Festival. The Darke Memorial Chimes are heard every Sunday morning and on other special occasions.[25] The church has a large 3-manual Casavant Freres organ, the gift of Isabel Willoughby.
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.
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.[26] 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.[27]
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.[28] 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[29] — which is much prized by musical and cultural groups in the city as an auditorium.
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.[30] Westminster Presbyterian, now United Church, immediately to the east of Holy Rosary on 13th Avenue, was also completed in 1913. Wascana Methodist, later United Church, a fine, elegant wooden structure in plain vernacular style on 13th Avenue at Pasqua, was sold and demolished 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 of Regina, where the Cathedral is located and which has a somewhat bohemian air, has in recent years increasingly attracted the sobriquet "the Cathedral Area."
The oldest remaining building in Regina is the RCMP chapel at the RCMP Academy, Depot Division, dating from the earliest establishment of the then- Northwest 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 (sic) 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.[31]
Notes
- ^ "The First 50: 1990–1959" (brochure), Regina Public Library, 1959. Regina Public Library: History. Online at www.rpl.regina.sk.ca.
- ^ Nilson, Ralph. Discover Saskatchewan: A Guide to Historic Sites. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1998).
- ^ Hryniuk, Margaret. "A Tower of Attraction": An Illustrated History of Government House, Regina, Saskatchewan." Regina: Government House Historical Society/Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1991).
- ^ Drake, Earl G. Regina, the Queen City. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1955.
- ^ Courts of Saskatchewan website. Retrieved 13 June 2007.
- ^ Regina Court House Official Opening (brochure), 1961.
- ^ Barnhart, Gordon L. Building For the Future: A photo journal of Saskatchewan’s Legislative Building. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2002.
- ^ Regina Leader-Post, June 11, 1976, June 18, 1963).
- ^ Regina Leader-Post, July 27, 1942, December 16, 1966. Stuart, E. Ross. The History of Prairie Theatre. Toronto: Simon & Pierre Publishing Co., 1984.
- ^ The First 50: 1990–1959 (brochure), Regina Public Library, 1959. Regina Public Library: History. Online at www.rpl.regina.sk.ca.
- ^ Regina Leader-Post, July 27, 1942, December 16, 1966. Stuart, E. Ross. The History of Prairie Theatre. Toronto: Simon & Pierre Publishing Co., 1984.
- ^ "The First 50: 1990–1959" (brochure), Regina Public Library, 1959. Regina Public Library: History. Online at www.rpl.regina.sk.ca
- ^ See aerial photograph with Germantown shaded in City of Regina Archives project "Regina: The Early Years" at http://scaa.usask.ca/gallery/regina/central/central.html. Retrieved 10 June 2007.
- ^ Trevor Harle, "Regina History Tour," Saskatchewan Genealogical Society - Regina Branch. Retrieved 13 June 2007
- ^ Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America parish directory, retrieved 10 June 2007.
- ^ http://www.roea.org/ParishDir/ParishesCAN/pardir-SKReg-SG.htm Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America parish directory], retrieved 10 June 2007.
- ^ Beth Jacob Synagogue website Retrieved 10 June 2007.
- ^ City of Regina Archives. "Regina: The Early Years. Germantown."
- ^ Brennan, J. William. Regina, an illustrated history. Toronto: James Lorimer & Co., 1989. "Germantown" 11th Avenue East. Regina’s Heritage Tours, City of Regina, 1994).
- ^ Trinity Lutheran Church website, retrieved 9 June 2007
- ^ Qu'Appelle Diocesan School alumnae website including 1940 promotional brochure Retrieved 12 June 2007.
- ^ [www.regina.ca/pdfs/meeting_agenda/2006_2006-1A_2006-1_Policy_Plan.pdf Regina Development Plan: Official Policy Guide for the Use and Development of Land pp.86-87.] Retrieved 13 June 2007.
- ^ See City of Regina Archives. Regina: The Early Years - Warehouse District. http://scaa.usask.ca/gallery/regina/north/warehouse.html. Retrieved 17 May 2007.
- ^ Regina Leader-Post, November 9, 1959, April 30, 1992.
- ^ Hayden, Dorothy. Let the Bells Ring. Regina: 100th Anniversary Committee, Knox-Metropolitan United Church, 1981.
- ^ Regina Leader-Post, August 1, 1970. Historic Architecture of Saskatchewan. Regina: Focus Publishing, Saskatchewan Association of Architects, 1986.
- ^ "Church Maps Could Be Re-Drawn," Anglican Journal, 1 April 2007 http://www.anglicanjournal.com/issues/2007/133/apr/04/article/church-maps-could-be-redrawn/ Retrieved 28 April 2007.
- ^ Under the agreement among the Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational Churches of Canada to form the United Church of Canada, a mounting backlash among Presbyterians against the proposed union — it had been the Presbyterians who initially proposed the union to the other denominations — threatened to abort the project and individual Presbyterian congregations were accordingly permitted to vote on whether to enter or remain outside the United Church; those which voted to remain outside, largely concentrated in southern Ontario and a substantial minority of the pre-Union Presbyterians, reconstituted themselves a continuing Presbyterian Church in Canada, although those who entered the union nevertheless constituted the largest of the three constituents: see John Webster Grant, The Canadian Experience of Church Union, London: Lutterworth Press, 1967.
- ^ Marion MacRae and Anthony Adamson, Hallowed Walls: Church Architecture of Upper Canada (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1975).
- ^ Holy Rosary Cathedral. Regina: Holy Rosary Cathedral, 1985. Argan, William P. Regina, the First 100 Years. Regina: Leader Post Carrier Foundation, 2002.
- ^ Neal, May. Regina, Queen City of the Plains: 50 Years of Progress. Regina: Western Printers. 1953. Chapel Royal Canadian Mounted Police "Training Academy", Regina, Saskatchewan (brochure), 1990. Regina Leader-Post, December 11, 1995.