On this day in 1936, the Hudson’s Bay store downtown was undergoing another major addition.
The current three-storey building has been an enduring part of Edmonton’s downtown for more than 85 years. However, this building is not the first Hudson’s Bay store to be built there, nor the second, nor the third. There have been four different such stores, including the current one on Jasper Avenue and 103 Street.
The company, founded in 1670 in London, opened its first stand-alone store in Edmonton in 1890. The two-storey wooden shop sold general goods, as well as mining and farming equipment. The early 1900s were a time of explosive growth for Edmonton, and the store grew along with it. Soon, The Bay store had expanded into a sturdy brick building that stretched half a block.
In 1912, the HBC began a massive modernization project, which included building flagship department stores across Western Canada (parts of which The Bay technically “owned” at one point in its history when these areas were known as Rupert’s Land). Calgary was the first of what became known as the “original six” stores. Similar stores soon followed in Edmonton, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Victoria, and Vancouver.
Edmonton’s growth slowed in the mid-1910s, but the HBC store was remarkably successful. Over the next decades, it expanded at least nine times, including the 1936 plan that turned the fifth-floor storeroom into a showroom focused on radios, refrigerators, and other modern luxuries. This success came at a cost, however. The spontaneous additions and renovations led to an unsightly hodgepodge of a building, with uneven floors and other construction issues.
In 1938, construction began on the current Bay building. The enormous, two-storey department store, built of limestone, cost $1 million to construct. It was a complicated process, as the company decided to keep the store open while its replacement was built on the same site. That meant a lot of shuffling around. Sometimes entire departments would be packed up after closing hours, moved to a new location, and made ready for business by opening the next day. Some parts of the old building were so reinforced that they had to be demolished with explosives.
The new building was adorned with six carvings on its facade that depict the company’s coat of arms and other (sanitized) parts of its history. When the new HBC store opened in 1939, it drew 20,000 people. This new store saw a few more additions in the latter half of the century, including a full third floor. It was designated as a municipal historical resource in 1989.
After more than a century in the same location, HBC closed the department store in 1995 and moved to a location in City Centre Mall. In 2005, the University of Alberta purchased the building and renamed it Enterprise Square. It now houses administrative and support departments, as well as continuing education facilities.
The old HBC building is a structure that is now likely to outlive the company that built it. The Bay has recently begun liquidating all but six of its stores. All of its locations in Alberta, including its Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off 5th stores, are part of the closure and are expected to be vacated by the end of June.
This clipping was found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton’s history from armchair archivist Rev Recluse of Vintage Edmonton.