To where I would be climbing, but not using these fire escapes
Southward on Princess Street. On the top floor of the tall building on the right, the Ryan Building, is where Winnipeg-born writer Jack Ludwig hammered out his first novel
Confessions in 1963
Northward, up Princess St., the west side of which is a relatively continuous ten-block-long row of turn of the century buildings. The crook in the road is where the city's market square once was
The tops of the buildings were adorned with graffiti, leftovers of late-night parties by the buildings occupants and visitors
The impressive Silpit building, at left, and down a seemingly canyonesque Garry Street, at right
One of the many narrow airshafts at the buildings' inside walls. The air was warm and smelled like hot water radiators and dust covered wood
On ground level, looking to one of the buildings I was just on, the Maltese Cross Building
And, to where I was going, to the top of the Silpit Building, recently purchased by bigshot Toronto developers who will be converting to class one office space
Looking east to the backside of the Royal Albert Arms (yellow with red fire doors). Built in 1913 to accomodate commercial travellers in Winnipeg's burgeoning business and warehouse district, the Albert's fortunes ebbed with the city's. The 60s, wrote Ted Allan, saw the Albert "regain a degree of sangfroid, with actors working the Manitoba Theatre Centre, starving artists wearing their integrity on their ragged sleeves, visiting jazzmen and folkies playing local clubs living fraternally with the Albert's parchment-faced old men, brown bag winos and creatures of the night who spoke to themselves in thunderous soliloquies."
What the grafitti on the roof of the Silpit building lacked in artistry, it made up for in age
Looking down east on McDermot Avenue
Peeking from (new) Market Square to the Conderation Life building on Main Street
In the Exchange District east of Main Street, the handywork of local "arts collective" Two-Six festoon hydro poles on John Hirsch Place, a lane between Bannatyne and Market Avenues, roughly where Brown's Creek ran from the Red River to City Hall. The lane was named in honor of John Hirsch whose pioneering efforts in local theatre led to the formation of the Manitoba Theatre Centre
The inescapable towers of the Portage and Main
Looking up close at the eastern portion of the Exchange District
...and east, to Waterfront Drive, the Red River, and St. Boniface
A pulley over John Hirsch Pl., a remnant no doubt of railway spur line that replaced Brown's Creek, up the alley, to serve J.H. Ashdown's warehouse
1ajs, this photo is for you: Point Douglas
and Waterfront Drive condos under construction
Way off the in the distance, the grotesque apartment towers of North Kildonan
Up on Main, past my barber shop, where the combined years of experience of the two barbers is seventy-seven
On another roof, looking south on Main St. and to some hidden sinage on the Allman Block
Across the street to where work/live space for artists is popping up. In the background, the Disraeli 'freeway' and the remnants of south Point Douglas it so mercifully spared
Peaking through a skylight, where mixed-use upper floors are now occupied only by pigeons
Linear Mode
