Historic Edmonton blacksmith shop faces the wrecking ball

Part of Edmonton’s heritage has an uncertain future.

The 93-year-old A. Minchau Blacksmith Shop, located in the city’s historic Old Strathcona neighbourhood, harkens back to Edmonton’s time just after the turn of the 20th century as a Prairie boom town.

Built in 1925, the blacksmith shop has connections to a German-Canadian family that has long settled in Edmonton and is one of the last structures of its kind in the city.

But Alberta municipalities face weak regulations that give them few options when they wish to preserve historical buildings, and Cejay Ventures, the owner of the building, applied for a demolition permit in March of this year.

The A. Minchau Blacksmith Shop was also listed on the Top 10 Endangered Places list by the National Trust for Canada for 2018.

“Provincial legislation says the owner has to initiate the preservation process. If they don’t, the municipality can but they have to compensate the owner for the worth of the parcel,” said City of Edmonton principal heritage planner David Johnston.

In the case of the blacksmith shop, the parcel can accommodate up to 12 storeys of development and the owner has indicated they would like to move forward, Johnston said.

“The building is currently on the city’s inventory of historic resources and has been evaluated as a historically significant building. But that doesn’t provide any legal protection from demolition,” he added.

The province could designate the building as a historical resource, he said, and would not have to compensate the owner, but such designations are rare and must demonstrate the building in question is significant to provincial history.

“It’s only been done a handful of times and determining provincial significance isn’t always easy,” Johnston explained.

But the city has asked the province to intervene, Edmonton City Councillor Ben Henderson said.

“The province has more powers than we do, and we have asked them to step in. The mayor sent a letter, and the ball’s in their court,” he said.

There are alternatives that could still preserve a measure of the historical significance of the site, Henderson said.

“At minimum, we’d like to see the facade held onto,” Henderson said. “This building is the last of its kind of Edmonton’s boom town architecture, and that architecture was all about facades.”

Henderson pointed to the Enbridge tower in downtown Edmonton, which incorporated the facade of the historic Kelly Ramsey Building into its design.

“They took the face down, rebuilt it, and did a beautiful job. So there are ways to do it. It’s not ideal and preserving is best, but there are solutions, and the city is more than happy to help,” he said.

There’s also the challenge of public attitudes that don’t necessarily hold historical preservation as a top priority.

“What happens here is that we decry when we lose buildings and say it won’t happen again, but then it does come up again and again,” Henderson said.

“I don’t think we value this stuff enough, and we’re far too quick to tear things down. As a city we’re not old enough to understand our value, but if we never allow these structures to get that old, we won’t have character buildings.”

“We have a bad habit of letting buildings run down. We have a bunch of 1970s-era buildings now and we won’t realize what we’ve lost until we’ve lost it,” he added.

“There’s been an attitudinal shift towards heritage as Edmonton has experienced rapid growth with other people coming from other places and raising expectations with politicians and officials regarding preservation,” Johnston said.

“But the legislation hasn’t kept pace with that.”