The Exchange District

A breathtaking full-colour photography book celebrating the architectural splendour and cultural heritage of Winnipeg's famed Exchange District, a National Historic Site and one of the city's most vibrant artistic, commercial, and tourist hubs. The Exchange District is the architectural jewel of Winnipeg's downtown core, a thirty-block area featuring 150 remarkably preserved heritage buildings dating back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These iconic buildings are among the best examples in North America of several turn-of-the-century architectural styles, including Romanesque, Italianate, Beaux-Arts, and Chicago School. From its origins in the 1880s as a commercial and industrial gateway to the Canadian West to its current revitalization, the Exchange exemplifies the spirit of a modern city embracing its past while creating a bright and dynamic future. Treasures of Winnipeg's Historical Exchangeis a sumptuous visual feast for residents and visitors. With stunning photography highlighting the impressive scale and intricate detail of the Exchange's imposing banks, sprawling warehouses, and commercial towers, this book will amaze and delight anyone interested in Winnipeg's history and architecture. In addition, the book captures the renewed energy, creativity, hospitality, and entrepreneurial spirit that have invigorated the Exchange in recent years, making it one of Canada's most vibrant up-and-coming neighbourhoods.

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This book is about a city’s current state versus its potential state. It examines the dynamic beginnings that gave the city an exciting promise for the future and how that promise evaporated through the 20th century. The premise is that the author falls asleep in the forward of the book and wakes up in the epilogue, only to realize that all of the grand ideas discussed in the 16 chapters to help the city reach its potential were just a dream. Find out how the development mistakes of Winnipeg parallel the lunacy of Monty Python, Get Smart and Police Squad. Even though the subject matter focuses on one city, the issues raised affect most cities to varying degrees. Any reader with an interest in urban development, design or the twilight zone should find the material relevant to their experiences.

The Exchange District is in downtown Winnipeg just north of Portage and Main. It derives its name from the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, the center of the grain exchange in Canada. The Exchange District is the historic center of commerce in Western Canada. The District developed from the banks of the Red River at the foot of Bannatyne and Dermot Avenues. Most commercial traffic came along the Red River from St. Paul, Minnesota where the nearest rail line passed. Goods were shipped to Winnipeg by steamer during high water in spring. Through the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, the city was linked to other major financial centers of London, Liverpool, New York and Chicago. Most Canadian financial institutions established their Western Canadian headquarters in Winnipeg and by 1910 there were almost twenty banking halls and offices on Main Street between City Hall and Portage Avenue. Many Winnipeg-based financial companies were also established. At the turn of the century, Chicago was the center of North American architecture. Louis Sullivan developed the first steel frame and reinforced concrete buildings. Sullivan used stone and terra cotta on the exterior, suspended by metal shelves bolted to the frame. He favored terra cotta with simple details which complimented rather than completely covered the surface as in earlier heavily-detailed styles. John D. Atchison was the foremost Chicago School architect in the city. St. Boniface is a Winnipeg neighborhood on the east side of the Red River. It is the heart of Franco-Manitoban culture, a place indelibly tied to the foundation of the province, a Western Canadian hub of francophone culture and an important site in the history of the Metis people. For much of its history the area was an independent municipality with its own culture and roots. St. Boniface has played a key role in the development and growth of Winnipeg. The architecture of St. Boniface embodies a wide span of cultural, religious and economic history. The area around the forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers was a site for camping, trading and other activities by indigenous peoples. In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries land to the west of the Red River had several European settlements, including Forts Rouge, Gibraltar and Douglas and the Red River Colony. The roots of the present St. Boniface can be found in these years. In the early-nineteenth century the area was settled by groups of Metis fur traders and mercenaries hired to protect the Red River Colony; the latter included the German-Swiss De Meurons regiment. In 1817 Jean-Baptiste Lagimodiere and his wife Marie-Anne Gaboury settled on Seine River lots granted to them by Lord Selkirk. They were the first white couple to settle in the northwest. They became the grandparents of Louis Riel. Near them settled the Des Meurons troops that Selkirk brought with him from Montreal to oppose the North West Company forces. In 1818-19 Father Provencher and Demoulin established here the first permanent school and mission in the west.

From commercial retail environments to branded urban villages, brands are now a salient feature of contemporary cityscapes and are deeply entwined in people’s everyday lives. Drawing on extensive empirical material and recent theoretical developments in the sociology of brands, this book explores the complex relationship between brands, consumption and urban life. Covering a range of brands and branding in the city, from themed retail stores to branded cultural quarters, it considers how brands provide new ways of mediating identities, lifestyles and social relations. At the same time, the book reveals how brands are bound up with forms of socio-spatial division and exclusion in the city, defining what kinds of practices, images or attitudes are acceptable in a particular place, constituting cultural boundaries that keep certain people and activities out. With attention throughout to the social and cultural implications of the presence of brands in urban space, Brands and the City examines how people engage with brands, and how brands shape urbanites’ experiences and sense of self, society and space. An extensive exploration of the processes through which brands are integrated into cities, their effects on everyday experiences and their role in the policing and governance of urban space, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in urban studies, consumption and branding.