Description of Historic Place

The Gregg Building, situated mid-block on a side street in Winnipeg's historic warehouse district, is a five-storey brick structure built in 1902 and later expanded by one floor. The City of Winnipeg designation applies to the warehouse on its footprint.

Heritage Value

The Gregg Building, a sturdy, attractive structure in a modest Romanesque Revival style, typifies the history of commercial growth in Winnipeg's central warehouse district. Designed by J.H. Cadham for G.R. Gregg and Co., importers of silk, other textiles, chinaware and novelties from the Orient, this warehouse was one of many erected at the turn of the twentieth century to supply a rapidly growing population in Western Canada. Its occupants' need for more space was met in 1922 with the addition of a fifth floor designed by Frank Evans with such sensitivity that it is barely discernible. The building's heavy masonry construction and demonstrated adaptability attest to the quality of its design, while its handy location, near major shops and services, have enabled it to remain an important component of an historic mixed-use streetscape in what is now the Exchange District National Historic Site of Canada.

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

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Gregg Building site include:
- its location mid-block on the west side of Albert Street between Notre Dame and McDermot avenues in downtown Winnipeg, with the building's front elevation angled to conform with a bend in the street
- the building's occupancy of its entire lot, stretching from the public sidewalk to a rear lane
- the physical and visual connections with other buildings of similar scale, massing and age

Key elements that define the warehouse's fine Romanesque Revival style and enduring, adaptable construction include:
- the five-storey height and massive rectangular shape, composed of a concrete foundation and walls of buff-coloured brick around a frame of cast-iron columns and heavy wooden joists
- the flat roof with a modest brick parapet decorated with simple corbelled courses
- the symmetrical front (east) facade, divided into three bays of openings by tall brick pilasters that stretch from a raised rusticated limestone base to three segmental brick arches atop the fifth storey
- the generous front fenestration, including large rectangular basement and main-floor display windows and paired upper-storey openings with transoms, wooden frames and rusticated stone sills and lintels
- the heavy, Roman-inspired arch of rusticated stone around the central raised entrance, including a single doorway with sidelights and round-arched transom
- the plain brick massing of the north and south facades interrupted by a variety of rectangular industrial windows, painted advertising and the building's name painted in large, vertically arranged letters
- the rear facade with a central loading dock and five rows of paired rectangular windows, double-hung and multi-paned, with rusticated stone sills, segmental-arched brick heads and wood frames

Key interior elements that define the building's durable construction and warehouse function include:
- the cast-iron columns, cast-iron stairs and some remaining pressed tin ceiling panels
- the cage elevator