Manitoba Municipal Heritage Site No. 323

 

Old Bank of Montreal
33 Main Street
Carberry

Old Bank of Montreal

Designation Date:  June 12, 2007
Designation Authority:  Town of Carberry
Present Owner:  Town of Carberry

The Old Bank of Montreal, built in 1902, is Carberry’s most important building, a landmark and visible manifestation of local pride, and also the most architecturally impressive building from the community’s pioneering period (in a town that has a number of notable early buildings). As a Bank of Montreal (originally built as a Union Bank), the building also holds an important place in the history of Manitoba bank buildings—the Carberry enterprise being the largest and most ambitious in its architecture and functions of any bank building constructed in Manitoba’s small urban centres. Where other bank operations provided smaller communities with standardized Classical temple fronts carried out in wood (like the Bank of Commerce), or small but interesting masonry renderings (like the Northern Bank), in Carberry the Union Bank commissioned from Winnipeg architect George Browne a dramatic, even innovative program, that brought together an array of functions (main-floor banking hall, basement office spaces, second floor residential quarters for the manager and his family) and third floor dance hall used to entertain local notables), within a major building with a complex, appealing external character and a well-appointed, technologically up-to-date interior. Both of these values (community landmark and significant Manitoba bank building) are together expressed in the main facade, a handsome exploration of Classical Revival character, and also in the building’s less visible elevations and some features and elements still present within.

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