Description of Historic Place

The Pipestone Municipal Building, completed in 1917, is a two-storey stucco-and-brick civic structure set on Reston's main commercial street. The provincial designation applies to the building and its lot.

Heritage Value

The Pipestone Municipal Building is a rare small urban example of a public facility in the Italianate style, popular at the turn of the twentieth century for dwellings, but unusual in civic structures. Elegant in appearance, with a low-pitched roofline, corner tower, wide eaves, tall windows and other vertical features, the design by Brandon architect W.A. Elliott departs from the classical themes referenced in many town halls across the Prairies and injects an almost playful sense of contrast into a typical small town main street.

Source: Manitoba Heritage Council Minutes, January 25, 1999

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Pipestone Municipal Building site include:
- its corner location on Reston's busy main commercial street
- the building's placement, facing south, close to the property lines of a landscaped lot

Key exterior elements that define the building's distinctive Italianate design include:
- its compact two-storey massing with a low-pitched hipped roof
- the square bell tower set into the southwest corner, with a shallow pyramidal roof and arched openings on each face spanned by simple white balustrades
- two elevated south entrances, the main one set in a round brick arch with stone highlights and the simpler secondary doorway protected by a bracketed shed roof
- the variety of windows, mostly tall single and double rectangles, including on the west side a large set beneath a bracketed shed roof and a separate narrow round-arched window with stone detailing
- finishing materials and details such as the building's exaggerated base clad in textured red tapestry brick, the contrasting light-coloured stucco on the second floor and tower, the identification stone over the main entrance and date stone over the secondary entrance, a stone stringcourse on the front and west sides continued in brick on the north and east walls, the exposed wood rafters, etc.

Key elements that define the building's interior character and civic function include:
- the two south-side entrance lobbies, both with stairwells and dark-stained wood trim
- the high-ceilinged main-floor council chambers and adjoining vault with an iron door
- the dark-stained wood staircase with a modest balustrade
- the second floor's centre-hall plan providing access to offices and ancillary spaces on both sides of the stairway landing
- second-floor finishes and features such as a small phone shelf built in to the landing wall, dark-stained wood doors and trim, etc.