Description of Historic Place

The Assiniboine Park Pavilion is a large wood and stucco-clad structure erected in 1929-30 in Winnipeg's largest public park. The City of Winnipeg designation applies to the building on its footprint, the original interior features of the main and second floors, and the pergola and lily pond.

Heritage Value

The Assiniboine Park Pavilion, a Winnipeg icon, is a broad, sweeping structure with a prominent roofline and dramatic tower that rises above nearby trees to form a striking visual focal point within the lush grounds of its century-old regional park. The pavilion's eclectic style, with prevailing Tudor-influenced English cottage overtones, is stately yet inviting, incorporating many windows, doors, balconies, a broad terrace and pergolas that interconnect the structure with its recreational surroundings. Designed by Northwood and Chivers after fire destroyed the previous pavilion on the site, the building has served as a hub of social life for generations of park visitors, evolving from a banquet and dance hall and refreshment bar to its current restored state as an art gallery, restaurant and backdrop to the many public events held on its north lawn. Because of its functional, aesthetic and historic significance, the pavilion continues to be an integral component and widely appreciated symbol of Assiniboine Park.

Source: City of Winnipeg Committee on Environment Meeting Minutes, April 5, 1982

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements defining the heritage character of the Assiniboine Park Pavilion site include:
- its prominent location in Winnipeg's spacious Assiniboine Park on slightly rolling, well-groomed grounds composed of formal and informal walkways, grassed expanses, stands of trees, etc.
- the building's prominent placement, visible along most of the length of Conservatory Drive

Key elements that define the pavilion's exterior heritage character and eclectic styling include:
- the impressive 2 1/2-storey form composed of a rectangular centre section under a steeply pitched gable roof with hipped dormers, crossed by projecting end wings with truncated gable roofs, hipped dormers and jettied attic storey
- the square tower rising from the centre of the north roof, looming above its surroundings, with French windows opening on to small wooden balconies on all four sides, half-timbering below the eaves and in the gable ends, banks of rectangular windows, a steeply pitched, truncated gable roof with hipped dormers, a flagpole rising from the top, etc.
- the facades of rough-cast stucco with mock Tudor half-timbering on the upper levels
- the multi-paned rectangular openings throughout, highlighted by dramatic glazing bars, mullions and transoms, often in large banks flanking French windows or featuring half-timbered framing
- the details, including wooden shingles on all roof surfaces; the second-level balcony stretching the length of the central volume, projecting over the main entrance and supported by simple round columns; the bargeboards on the gable ends; the decorative wooden panels featuring quatrefoil cut-outs below the attic windows; etc.
- the wings of the pergola, composed of large round columns supporting wooden members, leading north away from the pavilion to flank a rectangular lily pond and form a semicircular end; also, the similarly covered walkways on the east and west sides

Key elements that define the pavilion's interior character include:
- the informal H-shaped plan
- the details, including the intact maple flooring of the second floor, some intact moulding, staircases with wooden balustrades, etc.