Description of Historic Place
Solid and sturdy, the three-storey Scott Fruit Warehouse stands in a transitional area between a residential neighbourhood to the west and Winnipeg's downtown warehouse district to the south and east. The reinforced concrete, steel and brick structure was completed in 1914 just west of Princess Street, one of the warehouse district's main thoroughfares. The City of Winnipeg's Grade III designation applies to the building footprint.
Heritage Value
The Scott Fruit Co. Warehouse is a representative Winnipeg example of the kind of transitional warehouse architecture that followed the more massive buildings from the turn of the twentieth century. The building combines the traditional simple form, minimal ornamentation, extensive internal structural support system and large, numerous windows with the latest in construction technology - reinforced concrete and steel in place of wood beams, posts and flooring. Designed and built by the J. McDiarmid Co., the warehouse's exterior integrity, as well as some of its interior elements, are also heritage values. Located just outside the Exchange District National Historic Site of Canada, the building acts as a sympathetic contributing element to the area.
Source: City of Winnipeg Historical Buildings Committee Meeting, April 15, 2004
Character-Defining Elements
Key elements that define the heritage character of the site include:
- its location in the northern section of Winnipeg's downtown warehouse district, just outside the official border of the Exchange District National Historic Site of Canada and just west of Princess Street, one of the District's premier thoroughfares
Key elements that define the traditional design of the Scott Fruit Co. Warehouse include:
- the three-storey building's long rectangular form, with a clear expression of the structural system, and with its raised concrete base, brick walls, flat roof, northwest corner window well and one-storey addition on the west side
- the front (south) facade with its dark-hued brick cladding, four bays demarcated by pilasters, large, multi-paned, wood-framed windows with transoms and corner entrance
- the high level of finish on the east elevation (the result of the location of a railway spur line along that face)
- the modest detailing, limited mostly to the front elevation (and wrapping around to the southern-most bay on the east elevation), including brick panels between the second- and third-storey windows, brick corbelling above the third-floor windows, concrete accents such as sills, lintels and a belt course below the second-floor windows, and a modestly detailed brick entablature and parapet
- the functional, if irregular, arrangement of loading doors and windows on the ground floor of the east and north (rear) sides
- the rhythmic placement of the multi-paned, industrial-style steel windows between the brick pilasters on the second and third floors of the east and north sides
Key elements that define the building's internal structural system and internal integrity include:
- the concrete floors, ceilings and mushroom cap columns throughout, the exposed brick walls of the upper three floors, etc.
- the design of the east-side, industrial-style steel windows with hardware that allows the middle portion of the element to pivot open
- the counter-balance fire doors that separate the northwest corner freight elevator from the interior spaces
- the open freight elevator, complete with gears, that connects the main and basement levels on the east side of the building
- the curved concrete staircase at the rear of the building
- modest interior materials, finishes and features, including the marble-lined entrance vestibule on the building's west side, concrete front and rear staircases, wood partitions complete with glass and beadboard on the ground and second floors, wood moulding and a walk-in vault on the ground floor, etc.