On this day in 1948, Whyte Avenue was undergoing a boom in business.
The new construction was a sign that South Edmonton, as the area was called then, was growing into a "business and industrial centre important to the economy of Edmonton and the entire province," wrote the Edmonton Journal.
The article lists dozens of new and planned businesses for the area — car dealerships, photography studios and banks among them, as well as St. Anthony's Church.
Whyte Avenue has a long history of commercial development, one that started long before it was a part of Edmonton. When the Calgary and Edmonton Railway was established in 1891, a small community sprang up around where the rail line terminated just south of the river. That community would grow into the city of Strathcona, and Whyte Avenue served as its main street. The area grew rapidly and the businesses along Whyte served both local residents and gold-seekers who stopped in before continuing north. Strathcona went from a hamlet to a town and then into a city, becoming somewhat of a rival to the larger Edmonton across the river. By the 1910s, the two cities became more entangled and in 1912, Strathcona and Edmonton amalgamated. Whyte Avenue lost its main street status but picked up the designation of 82nd Avenue.
Over the next couple of decades, the area around Whyte grew into a popular residential neighbourhood consisting of mostly single-family homes. The commercial boom in the late 1940s continued into the next decade. That, combined with an expansion at the nearby University of Alberta campus, led to changes in the area around Whyte. More businesses and apartment buildings began to spring up and the desire to preserve the area's unique character and historic buildings grew.
That unique character became stronger in the 1980s and 1990s, as Whyte Avenue grew into a more entertainment-focused area and a hub for many of the city's festivals. In 2007, the province designated Whyte Avenue and the area around it as a provincial historic area, preserving many of its century-old businesses.
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit Whyte Avenue hard and now the street is beginning to open up. When it does reopen, it will be with wider sidewalks and more sitting areas to promote social distancing.
This is based on a clipping found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton's history from armchair archivist @revRecluse — follow @VintageEdmonton for daily ephemera via Twitter.