Architecture bracket exposes history at risk
This year's edition of the "Arch Madness" showdown for iconic Edmonton buildings will focus on properties at the highest risk of demolition, examining both what the city stands to lose and opportunities for renewal.
"We are at a pretty critical junction here," said Dan Rose, creator of the annual bracket competition, which will run until March 31 through polls on his Instagram stories. "I don't think it's too hyperbolic to say that heritage architecture design is facing an unprecedented and unparalleled volume of threats."
This DEFCON 1 assessment from Rose, the former chair of the Edmonton Historical Board, is based on a blend of insights from the historical community and the cold truth that buildings have an expiry date — unless someone intervenes to preserve them. Hence, the stark terms users will be asked to take into account when voting for a building.
"This year, you have to answer a nearly unanswerable question: if you could only save one of these historic landmarks, which one would you save?" Rose posted when announcing the 2026 bracket.
The contenders are the Princess Theatre, the former Royal Alberta Museum, Spruce Avenue School, Donald Ross School, the University of Alberta's Horse Barn and Humanities Centre, the former University Grocery in Garneau, the High Level Bridge, the Freemasons' Hall, the Strathcona Garage, the Edmonton Light and Power Substation #100, the Argyll Safeway (now the city's Reuse Centre), the Horne & Pitfield Building, the Civil Defence Bunker, Dyde House, and A. MacDonald Consolidated. As of March 9, the Horse Barn and the Humanities Centre had been eliminated.
Rose held the first annual Arch Madness in 2021 as something of a "COVID foible," as both the online bracket and visits to historical sites were safe activities in the social-distancing era, he told Taproot. Moreover, Rose makes a habit of getting people engaged with history outside conventional means.
"I've always been interested in finding accessible ways to engage people around complex conversations about built heritage, architecture, and design, and the importance of conservation," Rose said. "It's kind of been my (modus operandi) for the better part of my time doing heritage things — to try and find novel ways to bring people into a conversation that … isn't the most accessible subject matter for people to wrap their heads around."
Rose said he hopes more people will become invested in the future of these buildings. Some bracket members have legal protections, but those protections are fallible, Rose said. For example, the Princess is a provincial historic resource and is listed on the register of municipal historic resources (which differs from the unprotected properties on the city's inventory of historic resources). And yet, in Rose's estimation, the Princess is at the greatest risk for demolition of the entire bunch.
"I'm not kidding, that building could literally crumble, like, tomorrow," Rose opined based on a tour of the building this winter. "There's standing water in the basement of that building right now, which is pretty horrifying."
To use a grim metaphor, historical protections prohibit execution, but do little to prevent a slow, gradual death. "Even for buildings that are designated by these lists, such as the Princess, the little piece of paper and the little plaque on the building certainly do not prohibit an owner from simply letting the building fall into disrepair," Rose said.
