A recent acquisition -- Portage Avenue looking east from Smith Street, likely late 1911 or sometime in 1912, at the peak of the boom times:
The detail in the large size is excellent:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3387/...5ac9ecaf_o.jpg
You can see, among other things, the Manitoba Free Press Building at Portage and Garry, with news bulletins on the front wall attracting a crowd, as usual. Along the Garry wall two people are looking at a poster that can be read -- it is advertising a performance by the English singer and actress
Alice Lloyd, who according to this
New York Times article (scroll down to bottom) was starring in a touring production of "Little Miss Fix-It" that toured through Winnipeg in February 1912. If the poster is advertising that performance, the photo could be from October or November 1911, taking into account that the clothing that people are wearing seems like late fall or early spring clothing, not winter clothing.
Other things of note include the seven-storey Grain Exchange, numerous tobacco advertisements at Portage & Main, the man driving his right-hand drive car up Portage, the image of the Corydon Streetcar with its immaculately uniformed conductor, and at far left the Olympia Cafe, owned by the Sicilian immigrants who parlayed their profits into building a new hotel, the Olympia, a half-block up Smith Street, a couple of years later. That hotel was a financial bust when World War I broke out, and later became the Marlborough. The Cafe is in the old pre-70s-fire Kensington Building, next to which is the existing Hample Building and then the red-brick Avenue Building prior to the fire in February 1913 that necessitated its reconstruction in its current form. There is no Paris Building or Curry Building yet, but the McArthur (Childs) Building (1911) is complete and towering over the avenue as it did for over 75 years.
Prev
how fun.
Linear Mode
