Description of Historic Place

St. Michael and All Angels Anglican Church, a tidy 1920 stone structure with an attached parish hall, is nestled on a quiet corner site in a well-treed older residential area of south Winnipeg. The City of Winnipeg designation applies to the building on its footprint.

Heritage Value

St. Michael and All Angels Anglican Church is an exceptional and, for its time and Winnipeg location, a rare example of Norman-influenced Romanesque architecture that draws on medieval design precedents for its distinctive visage. The building's unobtrusive basilica plan, subdued limestone finish and simple detailing, reminiscent of older parish churches in rural England, admirably suit its compact residential site and function of serving a High Church parish that upholds traditional Anglo-Catholic theology, liturgy and ceremony. This facility also is valued for its uncluttered, well-lit nave, Lady chapel and exquisite stained glass. Organized in 1904 as a suburban mission, St. Michael and All Angels is the second oldest High Church parish in Western Canada. Its building, designed by H.W. Greene, retains much of its exterior integrity and, through post-fire interior rehabilitation since 1970, remains a vital and aesthetically singular place of worship.

Source: City of Winnipeg Committee on Planning and Community Services Minutes, December 4, 1989

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the site character of St. Michael and All Angels Anglican Church include:
- the corner location at northwest Mulvey Avenue and Hugo Street North, among older, mostly single-family dwellings, including the church rectory to the immediate west
- the neighbourhood-compatible scale and placement of the church and attached hall, filling much of the site, but also including a small landscaped yard at the rear
- the traditional eastern orientation of the high and Lady chapel altars

Key exterior elements that define the church's Norman-influenced Romanesque style include:
- the low basilica form incorporating an elongated gable-roofed nave with a clerestory, lower flat-roofed side aisles, a hip-roofed polygonal apse (east end), two square towers with pyramidal roofs, a Lady chapel and a variously configured parish hall
- the stone construction and detailing, with walls finished in rock-faced limestone laid in broken courses
- the ordered but differentiated facades, notably the angles and recesses formed by the east walls of the apse, Lady chapel and aisles and the eight-bay south elevation with wide pilasters, etc.
- the towers, including the open southwest corner tower containing a double-door main entrance and fanlight behind and within round stone archways and a secondary entrance in the smaller north bell tower
- the round-arched Romanesque windows throughout, including tall openings with radiating stone heads, stone sills and subtle Tuscan columns incorporated into wood frames, the belfry's louvred and the apse's half-openings, etc; also, the west rose window and the flat-headed clerestory and south tower windows
- the restrained details, including an elegant wood cupola on the nave roof, Latin crosses atop the apse and Lady chapel, heavy arched hood-moulding over the main entrance, the chimneys, etc.
- the parish hall off the northwest corner, composed of stone and stucco-finished sections of varying heights, roof types, fenestration, etc.

Key elements that define the church's interior heritage character include:
- the traditional layout of the main volume, including a west narthex, a nave with a processional centre aisle, side aisles and a raised sanctuary
- the nave's barrel vault ceiling, Romanesque arcades carried on square concrete columns with plain capitals, round-arched narthex openings, etc.
- details such as the sanctuary's marble altar and four stained-glass windows, the light-hued coloured glass in clerestory windows, etc.
- the Lady chapel's side-aisle layout, wooden altar (original to the 1904 mission church), stained-glass windows, etc.