Note to moderators: I posted this as a separate thread as I feel it is more important than the regular heritage chit-chat. Let me know if you feel it should go in the heritage thread.
Demolition application in for Brewery site in Inglewood
It has come out that a demolition permit has been applied for at City Hall for demolition of a 'substantial' portion of the former Calgary Brewing & Malting Company site in Inglewood. This is a site of great historic significance, going back to 1892, and indeed there to this day remain historic structures from 1892 through the 1960's. As Inglewood is the birthplace of Calgary, so it must be said that the Brewery is one of the key birthplaces of Calgary industry, established by one of the "Big Four", AE Cross. The information about the extent of the demolition applied for is vague, sources have indicated it is 'substantial' and perhaps involving 2/3 of the built structures on the site, including many of heritage value. The Brewery is a Category A site on the city's Inventory of Evaluated Historic Resources. Due to this the city has asked the Province to formally designate the site, and indeed today May 8, 2009
the Ministry of Alberta Culture and Community Spirit issued a Historic Resource Impact Assessment Order to evaluate the site to determine its significance and integrity and to provide recommendations for the documentation, salvage and/or preservation of the site based upon the analysis of its significance and condition. This work must be completed prior to the start of any interventions that may impact the site or its setting.
The Calgary Heritage Initiative Society will be following up with information on action the public can take in the near future.
Statement of Significance prepared by the Province:
"
Calgary Brewing and Malting Co./Molsons Brewery
Description of Historic Place
The Calgary Brewing and Malting Co./Molsons Brewery is a cultural landscape comprising roughly 3 hectares in Calgary’s Alyth/Bonnybrook neighbourhood and encompassing 16 significant buildings, structures, landscape elements, and structural remains. The important structures still extant on the site were erected between 1892 and the early 1930s and include beer-making and storage facilities, office space, and a historic garden.
Heritage Value
The heritage value of the Calgary Brewing and Malting Co./Molsons Brewery lies in its association with the early industrial development of Calgary and in the varied architectural design of its buildings. The site also possesses heritage value for its association with prominent Calgary entrepreneur and politician Alfred Ernest (A.E.) Cross (1861-1932).
In 1875, the North-West Territories Act was passed mandating, among other things, the prohibition of alcohol across the vast reaches of western Canada. Seventeen years later, in 1892, the Territorial Government repealed prohibition. At the time, Calgary was rapidly emerging as a bustling social and economic centre in southern Alberta, and local entrepreneurs believed robust profits could be found in slaking the community’s (now legal) thirsts. In the same year prohibition was repealed, A. E. Cross - one of Calgary’s first modern industrialists and an ambitious entrepreneur - assembled a cadre of financiers to establish the Calgary Brewing and Malting Company, Alberta’s first brewery.
Operations began in 1893 and the enterprise quickly proved successful. Over the succeeding two decades Cross re-invested the company’s profits into growth and diversification. New buildings were constructed, trade was expanded to other provinces, smaller breweries and hotels were acquired, and the company introduced soft drinks and aerated water into its product line. A confident expansionist, Cross was also a relentless modernizer; the Calgary Brewing and Malting Company was one of the first industrial users of natural gas in western Canada.
Between the 1910s and the 1950s, the company’s fortunes ebbed and flowed with World Wars One and Two, Prohibition between 1916 and 1923, and the Great Depression. By 1961, however, the company was beset by insurmountable challenges and was sold to Canadian Breweries. The site would subsequently pass through other owners and operators before ceasing production in 1994.
The significant buildings and structures of the Calgary Brewing and Malting Co./Molsons Brewery date from 1892 until the 1930s and feature an array of architectural visions. The earliest extant building, the 1892 Brew House and Ale Cellars , was designed by Otto Wolf, a Philadelphia-based architect and engineer. Comprising a post and beam structure with timber capitals and an exterior of rusticated sandstone and brick, the building is one of the earliest and most impressive industrial designs and constructions in Calgary.
It was significantly expanded in 1900. In 1904, the company initiated a major expansion. Bernard Barthel, a well-known architect of breweries throughout North America, visited Calgary in that year and provided designs for several new buildings. Though it has undergone significant alterations, the 1905 Brew House reflects Barthel’s aesthetic sensibility: simple and functional with enormous windows, the new building was distinguished by its lack of embellishment and its emphasis upon natural lighting. Its simplified architecture may reflect both Cross’ utilitarian ethic and the influence of the architectural styles of Chicago upon Barthel’s work. The 1905 Smokestack designed by Barthel is also distinctive, featuring corbelled brick at the top and imitating the appearance of a column, complete with base, shaft, and capital. It has been an icon of the site since its construction. Another architectural sensibility is evident in the 1907-08 Administration Building designed by the well-known Calgary architectural firm, Hodgson and Bates. The building is clearly an office structure, distinct from the industrial structures that surround it, and features an elegant marriage of brick walls and sandstone trim. The Administration Building’s most prominent feature is a relief sandstone carving of a buffalo head and horseshoe – the iconic logo of the company.
The 1930s witnessed two significant additions to the site. In the early 1930s, J. B. Cross, continuing his father’s legacy of community service, built a large garden adjacent to the brewery as a make work project for his Depression-era employees. Begun in 1932, the garden eventually included a variety of species of flora, fish hatcheries, waterfalls, and an 1875 Metis cabin brought to the site from near the original Fort Calgary. In the late 1930s, architect George Fordyce designed a pub in the Tudor Revival style that was incorporated into the east portion of the 1892 Brew House and Ale Celllars. The buildings, structures, and landscape elements at the site thus represent an evolution of both industrial facilities and architectural sensibilities.
Source: Alberta Community Development, Heritage Resource Management Branch (File: Des. 2048)
Character-Defining Elements
The character-defining elements of the Calgary Brewing and Malting Co./Molsons Brewery include such features as:
1892 Brew House and Ale Cellars :
- mass, form, and style;
- concrete foundations;
- sandstone and brick walls;
- dimensional lumber floor joists;
- fenestration pattern;
- original windows;
- shallow arches above windows and doors of sandstone voussoirs and keystones;
- modified large timber post and beam structural system and stone fireplace in pub;
- wood subfloor and concrete floors;
- original equipment.
1892 Malt Kiln:
- remaining mass, form, and style.
1892 Original Boiler Room:
- remaining mass, form, and style.
1903 Storage Cellars:
- mass, form, and style;
- brick and sandstone walls.
1905 Wash House (Empty Barrel Storage later):
- mass, form, and style;
- brick and sandstone walls.
1905 Brew House:
- mass, form, and style;
- sandstone and brick facades;
- original windows;
- load-bearing sandstone and brick exterior walls;
- concrete encased steel beams supported on cast iron columns;
- original floor plan.
1905 Malt Kiln:
- remaining mass, form, and style.
1905 Boiler House:
- mass, form, and style;
- sandstone and brick walls;
- concrete roof slab;
- original boiler.
1905 Smokestack:
- mass, form, and style;
- brick construction;
- corbelling and decorative masonry features.
1905 Racking Room Storage (Later Full Keg Cold Storage with North Addition):
- mass, form, and style;
- brick and sandstone walls.
1905 Bottling House (Empty Bottle Storage later):
- mass, form, and style;
- brick and sandstone walls.
1907 Administration Building:
- mass, form, and style;
- sandstone foundation;
- bricks walls and sandstone trim;
- sandstone sculpture of buffalo head;
- original cornerstone;
- fenestration pattern;
- brick corbels below the parapet cap;
- original lath and plaster walls and ceilings (now covered).
1913 Engine Room:
- mass, form, and style;
- brick walls;
- steel beam roof structure
- corbelled band of brick just below the parapet.
1913 Well:
- mass, form, and style;
- brick construction.
1932 Brewery Gardens:
- mass, form, and style;
- irregular flagstone walks;
- concrete ponds, wooden pole railings, wooden plank railings, wooden bridges;
- variety of trees, shrubs, and perennials.
1933 1875 Metis Cabin:
- mass, form, and style.
Theme(s):
Developing Economies: Extraction and Production
Expressing Intellectual and Cultural Life: Architecture and Design"
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Excerpt from Historic Walks of Calgary, Harry Sanders:
"Rancher Alfred Ernest Cross headed the group of businessmen who established the Calgary Brewing and Malting Company in 1892, the year prohibition ended in the NWT and licensed liquor sales began. (When prohibition returned to Alberta from 1916-24, the brewery sold soft drinks for domestic consumption but continued brewing beer for export.) The Calgary Brewery marketed its beers using a distinctive buffalo head label. Like other breweries in the province, it built up a chain of hotels where its product could be marketed. By the 1950s, the provincial government came to regard this practice as a monopoly and passed legislation requiring breweries to sell their hotels by 1967.
Besides its capacity as one of Inglewood's largest employers, the brewery was also an important component in the district's social and sporting life. It provided Depression relief work through the development of the Brewery gardens, fish hatchery, and trout ponds. The Calgary Brewery Cabin, a Metis or settler cabin originally located near the Hunt House, was relocated to the Brewery gardens in the 1930s as a relic of Calgary's origins. Further community endeavors included the Horseman's Hall of Fame museum and the salt-water aquarium that opened to the public in the 1960s. The museum closed in 1975, and the aquarium was shipped to Montreal.
The Calgary Brewing and Malting Company was sold to Canadian Breweries Ltd. in 1961, and, in 1989, it was taken over by Molson's Breweries. The plant was closed permanently in 1994."
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All photos care of
www.glenbow.org
1897
1905/1906 (much if these buildings still exist under newer additions)
1924-1927 - Calgary Malting & Brewing Company Stampede beer garden
1925 - Guy Weadick, founder of the Calgary Stampede, AE Cross, one of the "Big Four" Stampede financiers, and "Hoot" Gibson, film star
1932 - Men working on the Brewery Gardens during the Great Depression
1935 - Brewery Gardens
1935 - Brewery Gardens
1940s
1945
1954 - Fish Hatcheries
1956 - Mrs. A. E. Cross being presented with flowers at laying of new office building at Calgary brewery.
1957 - Distinctive Buffalo head label (1920's bottle and larger 1957 bottle)
1960 - Opening of the aquarium
1960 - James B Cross speaking at the opening
1960 - Premier Ernest Manning and James B. Cross at opening of aquarium, Calgary Brewing and Malting Company.
1960 - Premier Ernest Manning cutting ribbon at opening of aquarium, Calgary Brewing and Malting Company.
1960s - Calgary Safety Roundup and School Patrol children receiving prizes, Calgary, Alberta. The children are holding soft drinks made by the Calgary Brewing and Malting Company.
1960s - Decorated for Christmas
1972 - People watching trout in the Brewery Gardens
1972
1972 - Malt Room
1972 - Horseman's Hall of Fame
Some examples of brewery redevelopments:
http://www.firstpathway.com/projects...-redevelopment
http://www.thedistillerydistrict.com (National historic site in Toronto)
http://www.amarchitects.com/redtruckbrewery.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4464862/Se...terloo-Ontario
http://www.kaufmanlofts.com/
And of course the nearby Ramsay Exchange project is a good example of former industrial put to use in a mixed use new development:
http://www.ramsayexchange.com/
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