Some good shard news at Portage Place!

© 2026, Christian Cassidy

There's some good news on the shard front after the fiasco of Air Canada Park last year. 

I noticed on the portion of Portage Place that is now being demolished that the terra cotta shards on the façade were removed beforehand. I’ve been told they’ve been put into safe storage to be reused in the new project.

If you didn’t notice these shards before, you’ve certainly seen their siblings around town. They were once part of the building at 421 - 431 Portage Avenue, at the northeast corner of Vaughan Street, built in  1926.

The building never really had a name. Some sources say the Sterling Building, but I can’t find it called that in late 1920s newspapers or street directories. That would have been a confusing choice, as there was/is the Sterling Bank Building just a few blocks east.  Street directories just show a collection of around eight addresses ranging from 421 to 431 located at Portage and Vaughan without a block name.

The architect of the building was the firm of Parkinson and Halley, established in 1926 as the successor to the venerable J. D. Atchison and Co., with offices in the Boyd Building. The main partners were Edward Parkinson and James Halley.

The firm appears to have been a short one, as it stopped advertising in 1929. Other buildings it designed were the Rossmore Apartments on Roslyn Road (1929), an extension to St. Joseph's Hospital in Kenora (1927), the Modern Dairy Building on rue Saint Joseph,  Crescent Auto Sales Building on Corydon (1928), an extension to the Union Stock yards office building (1929).

The manufacturer of the terra cotta panels was the Midland Terra Cotta Company of Chicago. You can check out their 1925 catalogue here. This is where the architects may have chosen the panels from!

The building was torn down circa 1985 for the Portage Place development, but many of the terra cotta panels were removed for reuse in later projects. Aside from various places on the façade of Portage Place, inside the main floor hall at Place Promenade, outside the RWB School (now demolished), at The Forks, on the Playhouse Theatre expansion, and places that I can't even remember!

The nicest collection of these panels can be found on Main Street in the plaza between the Confederation Life Building and the Playhouse Theatre extension. Along this wall is a plaque that describes the panels and names the designers and manufacturers.

Winnipeg still has an incredible assortment of Terra Cotta-clad buildings still standing. If you ever get a chance to do the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation's Terra Cotta Tour with Gail Perry, do it! You can also download a copy of the walking tour guide at this link and guide yourself.