Description of Historic Place

Trend Interiors, built in 1899 and appreciably altered in 1909, is a three-storey brick commercial structure in Winnipeg's historic downtown Exchange District. The City of Winnipeg designation applies to the building on its footprint.

Heritage Value

Trend Interiors, a simple multipurpose structure of modest scale and aesthetics, represents the advancement of a significant pioneer business, R.J. Whitla and Co., that distributed goods across the West, boosting Winnipeg's twentieth-century emergence as a regional entrepot. The building also recalls a transitional period in the development of Main Street, when retail shops gave way to banking halls and office towers in keeping with the city's additional status as a financial centre. Designed by J.H. Cadham and built for the Imperial Dry Goods Co., a Whitla subsidiary, this structure is the remainder of a long narrow building that stretched from Main to Albert Street but was divided by a party wall in 1909. The front became an elegant branch of the Royal Bank of Canada, while J.H.G. Russell redesigned the rear third in a subdued Edwardian commercial style to accommodate ongoing retail and warehouse use. This section also held the recreational and social facilities of the Young Men's Hebrew Association (1935-52) and was an early example of local preservation activity, reflecting the building's durability and importance to the integrity of the Albert streetscape in what is now the Exchange District National Historic Site.

Source: City of Winnipeg Committee on Environment Minutes, June 16, 1980

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Trend Interiors site include:
- the mid-block location on east Albert Street between Bannatyne and McDermot avenues among several other designated buildings
- the structure's full occupancy of its site

Key elements that define the building's blended 1899 and 1909 architecture include:
- the rectangular three-storey massing with a stone base, solid brick walls and flat roof
- the main (west) facade divided into three well-lit bays and incorporating a large recessed corner entranceway, a dentilled main-floor metal cornice and a modest crown of corbelled brickwork
- the numerous openings, including, at the front, oversized rectangular ground-floor windows with transoms and stone sills and segmental-arched upper-storey windows, two in each bay, with transoms, radiating brick heads and continuous rough-cut stone sills
- the south wall of plain buff brick with a metal fire escape, recessed loading bay, large multi-paned windows on the main floor, single upper-storey openings of similar design to those on the front, etc.
- the details, including pilasters, a simple metal sign bracket, etc.

Key elements that define the building's interior character include:
- the open plan organized by the column grid
- the large return staircase with wide, deep treads off the entrance vestibule
- the details, including some pressed tin ceilings and plank flooring, simple wood trim and moulding, etc.