Revival of The Community Hub

Historic Calgary City Hall is the only surviving regional example of the monumental civic halls that were erected in several Prairie cities before 1930.

This is why city hall was designated as a historic building by the province in 1978, a national historic site in 1984, and as Calgary’s first municipal heritage resource in 1991.It’s great to see that City Council has begun to rebuild the roots of where our local communities began. What a great way to begin Canada’s sesquicentennial birthday by preserving Calgary’s historic civic booster movement that was so popular at the time in many western North American towns and cities.

Replacing a wood-frame civic building, it was constructed on the same site from 1907 to 1911 as a statement that Calgary was working towards to being the dominate urban center in the region. imposing Romanesque Revival style four-storey building with a massive central clock tower using local Paskapoo Sandstone quarried nearby along the banks of the bow. This is one of the many large buildings that were built using fire resistant sandstone after the great 1886 fire that devastated a large portion of downtown Calgary.

Originally city hall was designed to house the mayor and aldermen, city government offices, the police department, law courts and the municipal telephone system. With the rapid growth of Calgary, the monumental building of its time was too small to accommodate all these civic services by 1913.

Estimated to cost $150 thousand to build in 1907, it actually ended up being $300,000.00. After debating on tearing down the building in the 1950s, city hall actually received a $ 2.5 million restoration. In the late 1990s another $9.3 million renovation was completed.

At 106 years, old City Hall is beginning to show its age. Weather, pollution and vegetation have taking its toll on the historic building. Erosion has begun crumbling the sandstone. Around 30% of the sandstone blocks will require replacing and all will need some sort of repair. The will require replacing and all will need some sort of repair. The restoration which began in 2016 is expected to take 4 to 5 years at cost of $34.1 million.