Heritage-building victory cast in granite

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

By: Bartley Kives

Posted: 03/25/2014 1:00 AM | Comments:

Enlarge Image

More than 4,000 black granite slabs had to be removed and reattached to the Workers Compensation Board's 54-year-old headquarters on Broadway.

The Workers Compensation Board has spent three years and $14 million to ensure its downtown office building looks precisely the same as it did before.

To heritage advocates, this is a victory.

More than 4,000 black granite slabs have been re-affixed to the WCB's 54-year-old headquarters on Broadway as part of an effort to solve a problem common to other stone-clad structures built in Winnipeg from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.

During this era, the architects who designed some of Winnipeg's best-known modernist buildings were not aware of the effect freeze-thaw cycles would have on stone cladding.

Over the course of decades, water and ice got behind the stones on the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Public Safety Building, convention centre and Centennial Concert Hall, cracking or rusting away the braces that hold the stones in place.

Original post:
Heritage-building victory cast in granite