Utilities Building

Constructed in 1939, the City of Calgary Utilities Building was the largest single building project completed in downtown Calgary at the close of the Depression. Utilizing a self-liquidating loan scheme this civic works program was carried out under the Federal Municipal Assistance Improvement Act. Thus, the undertaking was cooperatively financed by both the Federal government and The City. When completed, the project cost $100,000; $89,000 of which was borrowed from the Federal government at the rate of 2% per annum. A boost to the economy, the project was tendered to enhance the employment of the city's skilled workers, providing work for fifty men each day. The utility departments had previously maintained administrative offices in the basement of City Hall (from 1911). With the new building, both the Electric Light System and the Waterworks Department were relocated to the same lo

Alberta Government Telephones (AGT) built this 4-storey structure as its Calgary headquarters in 1929. Peter Rule, architect for A.G.T., designed the building, and Fordyce and Stevenson, an important local architectural firm, were consulting architects. The building has a steel structure, faced in brown brick with Tyndall stone trim. It is significant for having had the first automatic elevators in Alberta, and for an innovative floor construction that allowed for better circulation of electrical wires and conduits. The building is an excellent example of the commercial architectural style of the time in which elements derived from the Gothic Revival (such as the buttress-like piers and the crenellated parapet) are combined with geometric Moderne forms. (1991)