Description of Historic Place

The City of Saskatoon Electric System Substation is a Municipal Heritage Property comprising three lots in the Nutana district of Saskatoon. It features a one-storey, masonry municipal building. Designation is limited to the exterior of the building.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of the City of Saskatoon Electric System Substation resides in its architecture and historical integrity. Constructed in the late 1920s, this is one of the last surviving examples of the flat-roofed, brick style buildings that were commonly constructed to house public works in Saskatoon during the mid-twentieth century. The building exudes permanence and strength. Its walls of No. 2 Redcliff, Light Claybank and Tee Pee Mocha brick, and its secure metal-grid windows, are suggestive of municipal authority. Strong, clean geometrics typical of the Modern Classical style are maintained in the façade through the use of contrasting brick pilasters, belt courses, decorative brick panels trimmed with granite and a stepped entablature capped by a parapet wall. While the building has been refurbished, the alterations have been designed for minimal visual intrusion to the façade.

Heritage value also lies in the building’s longstanding association with public works in Saskatoon and its contribution to the Broadway district streetscape. Designed to house the transformers for the municipal electrical system, the building was used for this purpose until 1973 and for city storage thereafter. It has since housed several businesses. Although located off Broadway Avenue itself, it is one of several masonry buildings that characterize this commercial district, speaking to past uses and contributing to it a sense of permanence.

Source:

City of Saskatoon Bylaw No.7986.

Character-Defining Elements

The heritage value of the City of Saskatoon Electric System Substation resides in the following character-defining elements:
-those elements that speak to its Modern Classical design elements, such as its stepped entablature and parapet wall, limited cornice, piers with slightly recessed bats;
-those elements that speak to its historical integrity, such as the use of brick throughout the exterior and its number of windows and their metal-grid treatment.