Description of Historic Place

The 1905 Alloway and Champion Bank, a three-storey brick building with a limestone facade, is part of a cluster of commercial structures of similar size, age and style on Main Street near Winnipeg's historic Canadian Pacific Railway Station. The City of Winnipeg designation applies to the building on its footprint.

Heritage Value

The Alloway and Champion Bank, a restrained Neo-Classical-style business block and one of the early branch banks opened outside Winnipeg's primary financial district, recalls an enterprise that grew from a loan business in 1879 into one of Western Canada's largest private banks and foreign currency dealers. The firm, operated by W.F. Alloway and H.T. Champion, became known for its wide range of services and the investment acumen of its principals. Alloway also is celebrated as a philanthropist who in 1921 endowed the Winnipeg Foundation, Canada's first charitable community foundation. The partners' handsome North Main branch, strategically located in a bustling commercial area near a major railway depot, was designed by architect J.H. Cadham to exude an image of solidity and confidence, typical of bank buildings of the period, and to combine revenue-generating rental space with the bank's own offices. The structure, a local landmark that continued in bank use until the early 1930s, remains substantially intact on the outside and is an important component of a streetscape containing several turn-of-the-twentieth-century buildings.

Source: City of Winnipeg Committee on Environment Minutes, July 28, 1986

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Alloway and Champion Bank site include:
- its mid-block location on the east side of Main Street between Logan and Henry avenues
- the building's placement within a row of commercial structures of similar age and size, flush to the sidewalk with its front facing west

Key exterior elements that define the building's restrained Neo-Classical design and commercial function include:
- the deep, narrow three-storey form with a flat roofline and brick walls on a rubble-stone foundation
- the Neo-Classical elements, formally arranged, including the symmetrical composition of the upper primary facade with its evenly spaced openings divided by Tuscan columns, an entablature with a modillioned cornice and a plainly decorated parapet
- the large main-floor storefront window and offset entrance with a transom and plain surrounds
- the rich limestone facade, and other materials and details, such as the plain brick side and rear walls, the mostly segmental-arched rear openings with rough-cut stone sills, the tall brick south chimney, etc.

Key internal elements that define the building's heritage character and banking features include:
- the deep main-floor plan with high ceilings and a side stairwell to the basement and upper levels
- the utilitarian upper-floor layouts with rooms organized around central hallways
- features and details such as pressed metal ceilings on all levels, the finely crafted wood staircase, etc.
- the main- and second-floor vaults with heavy steel doors and the basement vault with thick brick walls