Places

175 McDermot Avenue

Former Names:
  • Toronto Type Foundry Building
Address:175 McDermot Avenue
Current Use:

retail

Original Use:

warehouse

Constructed:1881
Architects:
  • David Ede
Guides:Part of the QR Code Tour

Photographs

More Information

The Toronto Type Foundry Building, a narrow three-storey brick warehouse erected in 1881, is part of a significant turn-of-the-twentieth-century streetscape in Winnipeg’s Exchange District, a national historic site of Canada. The City of Winnipeg designation applies to the building on its footprint.

Heritage Value

The Toronto Type Foundry Building, a modest structure of typical brick and heavy mill construction, occupies a key site within a rare, nearly intact row of smaller-scale historic warehouses in Winnipeg’s Exchange District. The building, erected by monument-maker and architect David Ede as a speculative venture during the city’s first major boom, is the oldest in the row of six McDermot Avenue structures that together convey a clear sense of time and place through their complementary designs and materials. Modified in the early 1900s from a more ornate three-bay design to a vernacular-style front and extended at the rear, the warehouse served for 70 years as the home of the Toronto Type Foundry. This firm employed state-of-the-art technologies for job printing and publishing small newspapers, and was one of several such companies clustered on McDermot, also known as Newspaper Row.

Source: City of Winnipeg Committee on Planning and Community Services Minute, August 29, 1988

For more information:
Canada’s Historic Places

Design Characteristics

Materials:

brick

Height:

3 storeys

Neighbourhood:

The Exchange District

  • Key elements that define the heritage character of the Toronto Type Foundry Building site include:
  • – its centre placement in a block of six period buildings, which, while varying in design and colour, form a compatible and largely intact streetscape on the north side of McDermot Avenue between Main and Rorie streets
  • Key exterior elements that define the warehouse’s heritage character include:
  • – its three-storey rectangular shape that pushes to the sidewalk and flares in width toward the rear in response to the curve of the street
  • – its solid masonry construction
  • – its 1910 facade of brown tapestry brick, with the main-floor storefront window offset by an east entrance and two bays of flat-headed windows above, underscored by stone sills and with elongated stone keystones over the top-floor openings
  • – its wider five-bay rear (north) elevation incorporating a loading dock and window openings with segmental-arched brick heads and rough limestone sills
  • Key interior elements that define the building’s heritage character include:
  • – its internal frame of heavy wood posts and beams arranged in three floors with high ceilings and a mezzanine in the back of the first floor
  • – its wood floors and pressed tin ceilings best seen together at the front entrance and up the front stairs
  • – its freight elevator