A MANITOBA MASTERPIECE

On the day the downtown Bay opened at 9 a.m. Nov. 18, 1926, it was the largest reinforced concrete building in Canada.

Here's a snapshot of what went into the six-storey construction more than a year earlier:

ñ its 151 foundation piles rest on bedrock, up a depth of 52 feet

ñ more than 40,000 cubic yards of concrete were poured

ñ reinforcing steel used weighed in excess of 3,500 tons

ñ more than two million feet of lumber was used

ñ stonework includes 125,000 cubic feet of cut stone

(locally cut tyndall) and 1.5 million bricks

ñ 500,000 square feet of wall and partition tile was also used

ñ at the height of construction about 1,000 workers were on the site each day

The total budget for the store's construction was $5,968,000.

Original plans for the building's exterior called for terra cotta to be brought in from the United States. At the urging of local leaders, the Hudson's Bay Company changed its plans and agreed to use $400,000 worth of locally cut tyndall stone. The decision not only created additional jobs in Manitoba, but allowed The Bay to later advertise that the structure was constructed 100 per cent of Manitoba products.

-- Source: Hudson's Bay Company Archives

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 2, 2013 ??65531