My column in today's Winnipeg Free Press is about one of Winnipeg's grandest homes. It was built at 10 Ruskin Row in 1912 - 13 and unceremoniously torn down 50 years later.
The 37-room mansion cost about $150,000 to construct. To get a sense of how expensive that was, Ashdown House at 529 Wellington was also built in 1912 for a measly $45,000, while the well-appointed, 37-unit Rothesay Apartments on Preston Avenue cost $150,000. The following year, Westminster Church on Maryland Street came in at $158,000.
I take a look at who lived there, what went on behind the walls and what led to its demise.
March 1963 ad, Winnipeg Tribune
For such a grand home, not a lot of good quality photos of it exist. I gathered what I could from the Western Canada Pictoral Index, the Manitoba Archives and some grainy Tribune and Free Press shots, about 40 images in all, and posted them in this Flickr album !
2 comments:
Oh my goodness what a beautiful home it must have been! So sad to see these grand old gentlemen (it seems a masculine home to me) torn down...but what it must cost to keep up such a large old home. They were of another time. Beautiful.
In one article I read wile doing the research someone claimed that it cost $1800 to heat in the last year it was occupied. Assuming that was 1958, that's over $15k in 2016 dollars !
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