Calgary's Hudson's Bay building was more than just a store. These photos reveal its rich social history
The Elizabethan dining room. The rooftop playground. The cream-glazed terracotta.
While the Hudson's Bay Company is closing all but six stores in the country, its building on Calgary's Stephen Avenue leaves a landmark of its legacy in Western Canada.
Local historian Harry Sanders said that while the Bay's reputation is a "mixed bag" — being the oldest corporation in North America and having a record of colonial exploitation — its place in Canada and Calgary's history is undeniable.
The company first arrived in Calgary in 1876 — just a year after Fort Calgary was founded — with a trading post just east of the Elbow River, according to Josh Traptow, CEO of Heritage Calgary.
In 1884, they constructed a wooden building at the northwest corner of Centre Street and Eighth Avenue S.W., in the location of downtown Calgary's present day Hudson's Block.
About seven years later, that store was replaced by another Bay sandstone building in the Romanesque Revival architectural style.
The year 1891 marked the start of its operations as a department store in the city — the first of its kind in Calgary.
In 1911, construction began west of the block on the $1.5-million, six-storey, Chicago Commercial-style Hudson's Bay building Calgary knows today.
The monumental building, designed by the Toronto architectural firm of Burke, Horwood and White, opened on Aug. 18, 1913. Featuring Edwardian Classical elements and made of reinforced concrete and steel, the exterior is entirely faced with cream-glazed terracotta — a rarity in Calgary.
The store offered 40 departments, including a large grocery division, a regional shipping department and other on-site amenities including public telephones, a telegraph and cable office, and a men's smoking lounge, according to the city's Inventory of Evaluated Historic Resources.
"There were escalators and elevators and ... this is just five years after the very first passenger elevator was installed in Calgary," Sanders said. "There was really nothing like it."
The evolution of Calgary's Hudson's Bay store
In May 1930, the store completed its significant expansion, adding the Eighth Avenue facade and the iconic colonnade made of granite columns, terracotta archways and a mosaic terrazzo floor. The expansion came with the price tag of $2.5 million.
In an article from March 1932, The Beaver magazine, now known as Canada's History, called the colonnade "an ancient Greek Athenaeum put to practical use."
Another addition was completed to the west of the building in 1958, expanding the store by 130,000 square feet at a cost of $3.5 million.
A national prototype
"When this building was built in 1913, it was the first building of its kind in the Hudson's Bay portfolio and they used it as kind of a test project for their other buildings," Traptow explained.
The Company would later model new stores in Vancouver (1916), Victoria (1921), and Winnipeg (1926), in the image of Calgary's sandstone building.
"That was just the sign of the times. ... The 1910s, 1920s were kind of a good time in Calgary — the age of optimism, right?" Traptow said.
A 'social' hub, beyond a shopping experience
Sanders said the store initially had 600 employees, who participated in the "Beaver Club" — a kind of employee association which took part in excursions like picnics.
The sixth floor of the building was called the Elizabethan room — fitted with Elizabethan-style furnishings and finishes that made it one of the city's most desirable restaurants.
The 275-seat fine dining space hosted politicians, clubs, fraternal societies and others, according to Sanders.
"There's a rich sort of social history to the Bay that's far beyond just the commercial function," he said.
Shoppers could drop their children off to the rooftop playground which had a governess who would watch the kids.
Outside, street photographers who operated out of a kiosk inside the Bay captured Calgarians out for a stroll or shopping on Stephen Avenue.
A lasting legacy
The Bay's presence in downtown Calgary cemented it as a retail hub for people to come and shop, Traptow said, maintaining its presence on Stephen Avenue in some way, shape or form, since the 1890s.
"I'd say it's one of the most architecturally significant buildings in the city of Calgary with the arcade ... the Chicago style of architecture," he said.
"There's nothing else like it in Calgary — really, in Western Canada."
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With files from Helen Pike