Top of the world, ma, top of the world…

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/04/2018 (3103 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was 1970. I can remember like it was yesterday. Looking down at what at that time was the rest of the world as I knew it.

I was at the top of 55 Nassau, one of the taller buildings in Winnipeg, standing on the 39th floor overlooking the entire southwestern part of the city. By comparison, the only other building in Winnipeg at that time that could be compared was the Richardson Building, which was up and in business by 1969.

It’s amazing that these skyscrapers were under construction in the late ’60s and still just as solid as anything being built today.

55 Nassau is the fifth-tallest building in Winnipeg and stands 109 metres, or 358 feet, tall. The Richardson Building is 15 metres taller, at 124.1 metres or 407 feet.

These days the tallest building in the city is 201 Portage, which was finished in 1990 at 128 metres.  Manitoba Hydro Place, which was finished in 2008, stands 112.5 metres or 369 feet. The former Trizec Building, now known as 360 Main, stands 117 metres or 384 feet.

Just to put things in perspective, the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa Building is 826 metres or 2,717 feet tall. The CN Tower in Toronto is 553 metres or 1,815.3 feet tall.

If you consider that almost a half-century has gone by and only 30 feet separates the tallest building in Winnipeg from this block known as 55 Nassau, that is a testament to the architects of the ’70s.

As I mentioned, it was 1970 when I last looked down on Osborne Village and all the way to the University of Manitoba’s Fort Garry campus, where you can now see Investors Group Field, albeit just the outline.

My sister was visiting me from Cranbrook, B.C., last week and I had to pick her up from where she was visiting an old friend in Winnipeg.

She gave me the address and when I discovered it was 55 Nassau St., I was pretty excited as it would be my second look across the city from Winnipeg’s fifth-largest building — a view I hadn’t seen since in almost half a century.

It did not disappoint.

Rick Sparling is a community correspondent for North Kildonan. Email him at ricksparling@shaw.ca