Tallest buildings (Top 25): Winnipeg & Buffalo comparison
 

As some of you may know, I wrote a comparison piece on Buffalo and Winnipeg a few years back and there were a surprising number of similarities between the two cities.
Anyway, it's also interesting (imho) that the tallest buildings are generally in the same range in height. So using the diagrams database, I compiled a comparison of the Top 25 buildings in each respective city. Of course, Winnipeg rules the high-rise apartment/condo category.

cheers to the unofficial sister cities! :cheers:

http://i.imgur.com/ReFphyV.png

Buffalo has an impressive stock of tall, early twentieth century buildings.

In comparison, nothing from that era in Winnipeg got much beyond 10 stories.

yes it does :tup:
both Winnipeg and Buffalo were boom towns. Buffalo just boomed earlier and with a lot more population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larges...by_decade#1900

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ties_by_census

I wish we had a couple of those nice art deco towers. Buffalo's buildings seem to tend to be better looking in general, probably because they are office buildings.

Buffalo has an amazing stock of pre WWII and then early modernist towers.

Considering what a boomtown Winnipeg was in the pre WWI era, I find it somewhat surprising that there was never a signature skyscraper of at least 20 storeys built in those days, something kind of like the Sun Tower in Vancouver. Even the dear departed Childs Building at Portage and Main was only a dozen storeys.

Back then, was the reason not the ground conditions?

I too wish Winnipeg had a couple of 20+ art deco towers. Almost every US has them: OKC, Tulsa, KC, Toledo, etc etc.

^ Nah. The still do basically what we do today. Hotel Fort Garry is on caissons on bedrock, as is the Leg.

The closest Winnipeg would have got to a nice art-deco tower was the stalled Richardson building. IIRC the Great Depression stopped that one getting out of the ground.

^ One of the more unfortunate 'never builts' in Winnipeg history

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nCXsPDdsjV...%2BTribune.bmp
source: West End Dumplings

^ look at all those pedestrians disrupting traffic!

Sigh.

You can thank the general strike for that. The '20s were a good time for skyscraper building everywhere but Winnipeg. It took 10 years for people to decide this city wasn't just a bunch of irate commies ready to sink any investment (a real concern in those days) and by the time the paleo-Richardson building above came along, the Great Depression was just around the corner.

shame :(

that would have been like an equivalent to The Electric Tower in Buffalo


instead the Richardson building built looks kinda like One Seneca (formerly One HSBC-before the bank vacated)

I prefer the Continental Insurance Building in St. Louis...

https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2088/2...17dbec0f_z.jpg
Continental Insurance Building by (HomeInMyShoes), on Flickr

Winnipeg has a great selection of buildings, but it would have been nice to have something poking up in the skyline a bit more from that era. The US was just ahead of Canada, especially Western Canada when it comes to built form and population at that point in time. We have to remember that Buffalo around 1930 was over half a million people. Winnipeg was a quarter of that and St. Louis city was over 800,000.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...C_OH%2C_US.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeVeque_Tower

We did get this:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.89405...e0!7i13312!8i6

This has all the potential to turn into yet another self-loathing thread, where people whinge and lament about how things could have been, or should have been, or could and should be, etc.; very depressing and negative in nature to read.

Let's hope it doesn't get to that point.

^ yeah, I get that feeling. If posters want a comparison thread we'll let it ride. Keeping it all in one place, all the better.

I don't think it's necessarily negative, just commentary on how Winnipeg could have ended up looking even more like Buffalo than it already does. I don't see how you can draw self-loathing from that.

I think we all know by now, speaking from past history on this forum, that there are quite a few posters that will take it to the next level and go off on very negative tangents and primarily focus on the negative and ONLY the negative. It's all fine and dandy to compare the two, but it's when people go off on their "how shitty and pathetic Winnipeg has turned out" vitriolic rants that really turns these kinds of threads (which I do find interesting btw) sour. And it has happened many times in the past.

Anyways, like I said earlier; let's hope it doesn't go down that path.

I don't see how anyone can be negative towards Winnipeg with all the development currently taking place.
Peg City is light years ahead of the Queen City when it comes to high rise living and new build high rise residential :cheers:


I made another comparison of buildings constructed (or under construction) since 2000.
http://i.imgur.com/O7cG2Mz.png

Plus, Winnipeg has 300 Main, SkyCity, Sutton Place Hotel and other developments in the pipeline.