There is something bold and gripping about Portage Avenue. On it stretches away into the horizon, immensely wide, immensely garish, very hearty, glowing in fresh possessions, proud of shining prosperity, inviting all the world to come and be edified. The city’s motors never seem as numerous or sound as blatant as on this thoroughfare, the shop windows are nowhere as enticing and glittering; the full blaze of the sun, the sweeping blast of a keen wind, the drenching shower, the clouds of flying dust; all these assail it with the force and fierceness felt on no other street. - “On Winnipeg’s busy thoroughfares,” Manitoba Free Press, August 19, 1911
THE RISE AND SPRAWL
Density and complexity
Central Park, 1970s. Source
King Street, with Albert Street in the background, 1957. Source
In front of City Hall, 1961. Source
In the Free Press today, I have a piece that was inspired partly by reading this article on the “missing middle” types of housing, and partly by how Winnipeg seems unwilling to recognize that neighbourhoods must experience change in order to be conserved.
Maybe we should try being more like Chicago again. Source
Main Street, 1929. Source
Imagine a downtown neighborhood with no gaping holes in it: Design students at the University of Manitoba will be presenting their ideas for filling in South Portage, which happens at noon, Thursday, May 10, on the second floor of Portage Place (on the east end of the mall near the skywalk).
A city can’t be identified by its suburbs — the centre must have strength, symbolizing with grace and dignity that this is the place of heightened activity within a region.
John Warkentin, to the Winnipeg Free Press, July 15, 1961
