Winnipeg’s Main Street in the early 1900s was still mostly mud and prairie gumbo, crosshatched by narrow wagon wheel tracks — vestiges of a frontier past as it teetered on the cusp of becoming one of North America’s most robust cities.
In spring 1903 it crossed that threshold.
That’s when the corner of Main and William Avenue, the edge of a former creek bed, was chosen as the site for what would become western Canada’s first skyscraper.
Construction of the Union Bank building marked a leap forward for the young city. Though it stood just 11 storeys tall, it towered over the two-and-three-storey buildings fronting Main.
When completed in November 1904, it was
