Thursday, 26 April 2012

New West End Housing Project

 Wellington Avenue, Winnipeg
On Monday I wrote about the new office building slated for Sherbrook and Sargent. There's also a new housing project taking place in the West-Central part of the West End at 724 Wellington Avenue/ 705-709 Beverly Street, (see Google Streetview.)

The first phase of the project is already underway. The former Tavistock Apartments at 724 Wellington Avenue is in the midst of a complete interior renovation.

Council just approved the rezoning that will allow the adjacent building, a former grocery store but now a derelict duplex, to be demolished to make way for a way for a seven unit, three storey apartment complex.

The rents will be moderate and geared toward toward new immigrants. The architect involved is Mistecture.

Wellington Avenue
Wellington Avenue, Winnipeg
November 1912 classified ad 

The Tavistock Apartments opened in late 1912. There was so much construction going on in Winnipeg at the time I can't find any mention in the newspapers of who built it. Instead of apartment numbers, they used letters A through W for individual suites.

The use of the name "Tavistock" disappeared in 1978.

 Wellington Avenue, Winnipeg
1934 ad

The Beverly duplex was constructed in 1925 as 730 Wellington Avenue. It was home to J. Bates Grocery, the owner lived in a suite at the back of the store. In 1932 it closed down and appears not to have reopened until 1942 as Westhome Grocery. A long time proprietor was Jack Flom.

zz038
In 1963 Westhome Foods relocated relocated across the street to 737 Wellington and the old  store spent a couple of years up for sale. By 1966 it was converted into a duplex and marketed as the Tavistock Annex.

4 comments:

  1. The roof tiles on the duplex make it look like it was trying to resemble a Safeway of the era :-).

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  2. Westhome Foods (or whatever it is called now) could also use a makeover. I suppose at one time it was once the only Korean food store in Winnipeg, shelves stocked with plenty of interesting foods even less than 10 years ago. Now that a few have opened in outlying areas in recent years, it no longer serves this purpose. Last time I was there a couple years ago it looked very sad and sparse.

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  3. @Erin. It does. What I learned doing my Safeway post is that you can differentiate a 1920s - 30s Safeway because they were two storeys tall at the back whereas most neighbourhood stores are just one.

    Not sure if Safeway copies a local style to fit in (since Winnipeg was their first Canadian market) or if local stores copies Safeway. It seems to be the former as I've come across a couple of these stores like this one built before Safeway arrived.

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  4. @ Anon - You know, I haven't been inside the store for years. I'll have to check it out. I remember it being a fair size as far as convenience stores go.

    I always found it odd that they don't have a sign out front, except for the Korean characters.

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