210 Maryland Street – 3-story circular tower with cone-shaped cap, dormer199 Maryland Street – Tudor half-timbering745 Westminster Avenue –1910-1912 – featuring a beautiful rose window – Westminster United Church is a substantial stone edifice built as a Presbyterian facility in 1910-12, in the Late Gothic Revival style. It is of monumental proportions with a disciplined yet expressive exterior. From its imposing towers to its monochromatic limestone dressing and exquisite rose window, this church is a striking and vital presence in the tree-lined Wolseley neighborhood. Key elements that define the church’s style and stone construction include the substantial, expansive form of an elongated rectangle on a high base, with wide stubby transepts and a deep west annex, all built of stone around a metal and wood frame. The vertical emphasis is provided by the main volume’s two-story-plus mass under a high gable roof with cross gables. It has long slender windows, many buttresses and an elevated front entrance flanked by soaring towers of unequal height with tall belfry openings and crocketed pinnacles. The walls are of rough-cut Manitoba limestone randomly laid; there are smooth- and rough-cut door and window accents, staged buttresses with smooth offsets, and broad stone staircases. The distinctive Gothic-style openings, many set in Tudor arches, some with matching hood-molding, many with tracery, including the main volume’s five-part transept openings are other key elements. The large multi-hued rose window with curvilinear tracery is beautiful. Gothic details include crenelation, raised gable ends with smooth stone coping and banding elements, panels of blind pointed arches, and pinnacled colonnettes. The two-story annex has a hipped roof, dormers, south pavilion and porch, and generous fenestration. There are large chimneys.830 Wolseley Avenue – two-story turret erupting through roof838 Wolseley Avenue, Moyse House, is a brick mansion erected in 1913. It is an example of a Georgian Revival mansion, an architectural style that was popular in the Wolseley neighborhood, an area of mostly single-family houses along the north side of the Assiniboine River, and south of Portage Avenue. Its orderly facades, hipped roof with dormers, red brick finish contrasted with light limestone and wood trim, classically detailed rear verandah and signature Palladian-style window all speak to the skill of the architect, P.M. Clemens, who also designed the house next door in a similar fashion. John Moyse was the owner of a downtown livery stable. Key elements that define its style include the nearly square plan, 2½ stories in height, its brick construction on a raised limestone foundation, a hipped roof, gable dormers, and a west gable end that doubles as a pavilion pediment. Other elements include the harmonious, symmetrical facades, with walls of mainly flat red brick. The many windows are mostly tall rectangular flat-headed openings in singles, twos or threes, with several having multi-paned upper sashes. The two primary entrances are a north door with sidelights and a fanlight accessed through a modified two-story wooden porch and an elaborate west entrance recessed below a broad brick and rusticated stone archway, and flanked by compact round-arched windows. The classically inspired details and features include modillioned wood cornices along the main roof, and south verandah, prominent keystones and arched brickwork over windows, stone windowsills, cartouches in the north dormer and west gable ends, the south-side walkout, and tall chimneys.960 Wolseley Avenue – In December 1913, when Mrs. Isaac Cockburn (Laura Secord’s granddaughter) formally opened the ten completed rooms, the school stood among empty market garden fields on the fertile banks of the Assiniboine River, at 960 Wolseley Avenue. The school occupies a large site in an older residential neighbourhood. When completed, Laura Secord School was the most modern building of its kind in the city. Twenty-six classrooms, two manual training rooms, a huge auditorium that seats 800, shops, showers and a third-floor caretaker suite made it one of the largest schools built during the era. It covered over 25,000 square feet per floor and was 72 feet tall. The school had separate entrances for boys and girls which continued to be used until the mid-1970s. The similar shading of materials on Laura Secord demonstrates how they age and discolor differently. All the limestone has a dirty appearance because it tends to accumulate pollutants faster than the brick. This is very evident on the foundation and windows sills and is common on many older buildings with limestone elements. While the stone darkens, the brick develops a patina, adding to its lightness. Laura Secord School’s most stunning feature is the baroque entrance way. Of fireproof construction, the school features long, classically ornamented rectangular facades organized around an interior courtyard. Inside are classrooms with large windows for natural light and ventilation, wide corridors, staircases and exits in all wings, and usable basement spaces. Key elements include its substantial, nearly square form, two stories high over a raised basement, of reinforced concrete construction with brick and limestone walls and a shallow mansard-shaped roof lined by semi-elliptical dormers. The impressive front has a central tower, an arched open porch accessed via broad twin staircases and end pavilions divided into three bays topped by stepped gables containing half-circle windows. The many tall rectangular windows, most with stained-glass transoms, are set in single, pairs and banks of four throughout. Fine brick- and stonework on all elevations includes a high rusticated stone base and pale brick walls laid; a wraparound stone belt course is above the second floor. Delicately carved stone column caps and keystones are found on the front porch. There are stone sills, coping and pilaster caps; brick pilasters, corbelling and spandrel detailing. There is an elaborate arrangement of brick and stone voussoirs atop the tower’s round-arched upper window. The stone-carved name ‘LAURA SECORD SCHOOL’ and a stained-glass version of the school’s crest on the tower are additional features.180 Nassau Street – turret and dormer549 Gertrude Avenue at Nassau Street – Trinity Baptist Church – Romanesque style stone building, tower with finials with cone-shaped caps, rose windows, buttresses525 Wardlaw Avenue at the corner of Nassau Street – Crescent Fort Rouge United Church – 1910 – a stately Romanesque Revival style church with banding on the towers218 Roslyn Road – Corinthian capitals surrounding door with a semi-circular transom; circular windows on either side of door; balustrade on second floor windows, pilasters with Ionic capitals, decorative cornice, banding; two story tower at back176 Roslyn Road – dormer with keystone above central window; banding above second floor windows; dentil molding353 St. Mary’s Avenue – St. Mary’s Cathedral was originally designed in 1880 by C. Balston Kenway and was updated in 1896 by Samuel Hooper, an English-born stonemason and architect who was later appointed Provincial Architect of Manitoba. The building features elements of Romanesque Revival and Germanic tower and spire. It is the cathedral church of the archdiocese of Winnipeg, one of two Roman Catholic cathedrals in Winnipeg; the other one is St Boniface Basilica of the archdiocese of St. Boniface and is across the Red River in Winnipeg’s French Quarter.
