Description of Historic Place

The Lilly Apartments, built in 1914-15, is a three-storey converted brick duplex on a residential side street in Winnipeg's Osborne Village. The City of Winnipeg designation applies to the building on its footprint.

Heritage Value

The Lilly Apartments, a solemn Edwardian-style structure, is significant as one of the few dwellings remaining from the era of genteel residential development that characterized its Assiniboine River neighbourhood at the turn of the twentieth century. The building, designed by H.G. Holman, relies for its exterior effect on massing, strong horizontal lines and many windows rather than ornamentation. Originating as housing for relations of W.R. Allan, son of Montreal shipping magnate Hugh Allan and a principal of Allan, Killam and McKay, a major insurance and real estate investment firm, the building also is noted for its association with two other prominent early business families: E.H. Macklin, general manager of the Manitoba Free Press and David Finkelstein, a developer and long-time mayor of the Winnipeg-area suburb of Tuxedo. Converted to a fourplex, then to apartments and commercial offices, this structure continues to be a fine example of the type of substantial dwelling built in the early 1900s in a part of central Winnipeg that more recently has undergone much redevelopment and gentrification.

Source: City of Winnipeg Committee on Planning and Community Services Minutes, February 16, 1987

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Lilly Apartments site include:
- the somewhat secluded location on the south side of the Assiniboine River at the dead-end eastern tip of Roslyn Road amongst a mix of pre- and post-1945 apartment blocks, houses and condominiums

Key elements that define the building's simple Edwardian-style domestic architecture include:
- the rectangular massing, 2 1/2 to three storeys high, with a rusticated stone basement partially above grade, solid, flat walls of dark brown brick with warm red highlights and a projecting bay on the northwest corner
- the tiered horizontal lines of the broad hipped roofs and large dormer on the front (north) elevation
- the offset main entrance featuring a bracketed wooden canopy, painted to contrast with the brick, a large panelled wood door and grand brick staircase extending to the public sidewalk
- the profusion of double-hung rectangular windows throughout, featuring soldier-coursed brick sills and lintels, save the large round-arched window in the attic
- the details, including the decorative geometric brickwork throughout, the brick belt courses, the simple metal cornices painted to contrast with the brick, the decorative chimney, the cedar shingles, etc.

Key elements that define the building's interior character include:
- the formal centre-hall plan
- the decorative fireplaces, some featuring simple classical wood carving or tiling, others with built-in flanking bookshelves with leaded-glass doors, etc.
- the intact details and finishes, including plank floors, coved ceilings, return staircases, wood trim, etc.