Charles Barber created an early skyline of Winnipeg – Our Communities Project

Charles A. Barber arrived in Winnipeg from his native Ontario in the spring of 1876 to establish his architectural practice. Within a year, he began to transform the skyline of the fledgling country town into a modern city center.

Barber's first major commission came from the Church of England in June 1877, when he beat two other architects for the ladies' college building at the prestigious St. John's College. The three-story, brick and stone structure has been described as a mix of “Swiss, English and American Gothic styles.” The beautiful Winnipeg Central School on Ellen Street for the Winnipeg School Division came up a few weeks later.

Those schools put Barber on the map, and he soon found himself working in residential buildings for members of Winnipeg's early business elite.

Barber was most active in the early 1880s, following the announcement of the transcontinental railroad through Winnipeg in 1882. All of the city's businesses and institutions want large buildings that will last for decades to come. Barber's Main Street office had a large staff of draftsmen, and he sometimes partnered with other architects to help share the load.

In 1882 and 1883 alone, Barber designed such landmark buildings as Manitoba College on Ellis Avenue, the Winnipeg Police Court on James Street, the original Knox Presbyterian Church on Donald Street, and, arguably, his best-remembered work, Winnipeg's “gingerbread” City Hall. .

Barber's career slowed in the mid-1880s due to a series of scandals that exposed his unsavory business practices. He was accused of trying to intimidate the administration of the General Hospital to accept the project of the new building and of bribing civil officials during the construction phase of the city hall. In 1887, another bribery scandal saw him move his firm to Minnesota.

When Barber returned to Winnipeg in 1891, it is not certain that his reputation had been forgotten. However, it was clear that he considered the intersection of embellished historical styles to be passé. New architects supplanted it with new designs from places like Chicago and New York.

Barber closed his Winnipeg office in 1898 and moved to Montreal in 1901. He was born in 1915 in New Westminster, BC. passed away, little remains of the nearly 80 barbershop-designed buildings that once dominated the city's skyline.

Facade of the 1892 Baulf Block, Winnipeg's Grain Exchange Building, incorporated into Red River College's Polytechnic Exchange District campus. The only remaining barbershop building is probably the Bathgate block at 242 Princess Street. It was built in 1882-83, making it one of the oldest commercial buildings in the city, and has been vacant since about 2000.

When the Bathgate Block is demolished, so will the last vestige of Winnipeg's most prolific architect of its first decade.