Futures Past
Future plans are always in the works for Calgary, but this city would have looked vastly different if only a small portion of previous grandiose plans came to fruition
By Colin McGarrigle
Illustrations by Kelly Sutherland
Loving couples stroll along the downtown promenades as affluent businesspeople gently sip their cappuccinos at dozens of bustling sidewalk cafes. Teams of rowers and kayakers gingerly share the city-centre water with swans and ring-necked ducks as crowds gather for an international festival at the central obelisk. Tourists flock to admire the grand architecture of the Civic Centre and the central train station as the monorail whizzes overhead with sublime silence.
A typical day in Paris? Vienna? This could have been an emblematic day in Calgary if some of the early visions for the city had made it from the drawing board to realization.
From its early days of 16 log shacks, nine teepees and a Mounted Police fort in 1881 to the sprawling metropolis it is today, Calgary’s architecture and infrastructure has become a concrete conglomeration of varying intentions with influences from around the world, resulting in something that is . . . well, uniquely Calgary.
Politicians, city planners and community groups through the ages had grand plans for this city, many of which came to fruition, and many more which never saw the light of day. But what if some of those defunct architectural plans had actually became reality?
“Calgary would have had a lot more heritage buildings,” says Darryl Cariou, senior heritage planner with the City, referring to one of those plans — the drawings of distinguished English architect, Thomas Hayton Mawson (1861-1933).
Only 37 years after the inception of Fort Calgary in 1875, the City of Calgary commissioned Mawson and paid him $6,000 to prepare a preliminary development plan for what was anticipated to be substantial growth. By 1912, population levels had exploded by more than 1,000 per cent from the previous 10 years, and City officials hoped for more settlers, but they realized the basic need for a growth strategy.
After much anticipation, Mawson presented his radical plan in 1914 for transforming Calgary from a simple pioneer town into a world-class city similar to Paris or Vienna.
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Thomas Mawson's plans for downtown Calgary aimed to make the city into a world-class destination similar to Paris or Vienna.
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If not for the outbreak of war, it’s likely many of Mawson’s drawings would be seen today in concrete and mortar in the downtown core.
“We had a huge boom back then, much bigger than we have now,” says Cariou. “But that all came to a crashing end with World War I. Mawson’s plan was illustrative of the huge aspirations the city had, and during that boom time, it seemed possible to have a ‘Vienna on the Bow.’”
Local historian Harry Sanders agrees Calgary had huge plans, but feels City officials at the time were completely overwhelmed by the absolute opulence of having a “Paris on the Prairies,” where all the buildings were to conform to a complementary “royal” architectural design.
“I think they were surprised, to say the least,” Sanders says. “[Mawson’s] plans were so magnificent that I don’t imagine they fit into the local vision for what Calgary might be.”
A garden designer, town planner and architect, Mawson firmly believed civic architecture should be expressed in a grand, Edwardian manner and held in his heart that Calgary could be a utopian city. Mawson also felt strongly about the relationship between the citizens of a city and its architecture, sensing people would have better lives if they lived in grander surroundings.
“He was very well-received at the time,” says Linda Fraser, curator of the Canadian Architectural Archives at the University of “Calgary. “While his plans were drastic, he was a very eloquent speaker and during his presentation he talked about gradual implementation.
“His whole thesis was based on beautiful vistas and he was very visionary for his time.”
And vision was what it was all about for Mawson. For example, instead of the Centre Street Bridge we know today, he suggested having a low level bridge, complete with elevators to bring automobiles down from the hill, just so drivers and pedestrians had a complete vista of a planned circle of buildings with a monument in the centre.
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| Thomas Mawson's drawing for the Centre Street Bridge including the use of elevators for vehicle. |
“Looking at the Centre Street plan, it gives the impression of being like a fortress,” says Sanders. “His plan for the bridge was completely impractical for the future. Can you imagine the traffic now? Each car would have to wait for the elevator to come back — it would have tied up traffic for miles.”
However, the area surrounding Prince’s Island was the centre of his grand vision, where he imagined a Civic Centre in Eau Claire with several large government buildings designed in Edwardian grandeur, which would lead pedestrians to a symmetrically fashioned Boating Reach and eventually to a formally laid-out Prince’s Island where a museum and elliptical pathway awaited.
Other Mawson plans, influenced by the Roman designs of Vitruvius and the Renaissance architecture of Filarete, included an awe-inspiring CPR station on Centre Street, new plans for the Exhibition Grounds, covered arcades in abundance throughout the downtown core — similar to the Hudson’s Bay arcade at 8th Avenue and 1st Street S.W., and a circular traffic system instead of the current gridiron pattern.
Mawson’s vision included stipulations that no part of his plan could be altered, lest it undermine and compromise the quality of his overall concept. “He wanted everything,” says Fraser. “He didn’t want a single thing changed with his plan. And if the City wanted to change anything, it needed to be done in consultation with his office.”
Unfortunately for Mawson — and perhaps for Calgary — economic conditions after the war prevented his vision from becoming reality and his plans were shelved, and then lost for many years.
“In the ’30s, the City sent the drawings to Edmonton by train. Unfortunately, when they were sent back, they were left in the lost luggage for several months, and as they were to be discarded, someone took them home for garage insulation,” says Fraser.
For decades, unknown to anyone, the original City of Calgary presentation drawings sat glued to the reverse side of sheeting used to cover the interior of a garage in Hillhurst. By pure luck, the drawings were recovered in 1976 when the garage was demolished. Recognizing their historical significance, the owners donated the drawings to the University of Calgary, and they are now one of the jewels of the Canadian Architectural Archives.
The rediscovery of Mawson’s drawings could not have come at a better time for then-Mayor Ross Alger and others advocating for the construction of what is now the Calgary Municipal Building.
“It was a political bonus at the time,” says Sanders. “The discovery of the Mawson drawings helped proponents to implement some of the grandeur he saw for Calgary and to forge ahead with Mayor Alger’s plans.” While Mawson was the godfather of majestic plans for Calgary, many other designers, officials and architects have also seen their plans shelved in the dusty halls of library archives.
The city’s landscape might have looked very different had some of the alternative plans for public transportation in the late 1960s been implemented. Initial designs for the C-Train included an elevated system or a subway.
While the subway system was more than three times the cost of the elevated system, city planners felt the elevated system, similar to a monorail, would work best with future plans for an overhead walkway system known today as the Plus-15s.
While a meshing of the two transit systems eventually came to pass, plans for the Plus-15s are still ongoing.
The original 1960s plan for what was first called the Pedestrian Circular System envisioned connections between practically every major building in the core, including elevated pathways to Prince’s Island. However, even initial planners warned that the system wouldn’t work unless most of the buildings were linked. Decades later, the Plus-15 system is extensive, but there are still significant gaps.
“We are still adding to [the Plus-15 system],” says Cariou. “There is significant City policy that encourages the expansion, but I believe they felt it would be gradual.”
Adds Sanders: “I believe the plan was similar to the way Mawson saw his plans being implemented; over a period of time, not all at once.”
Another plan that could have greatly altered the face of Calgary was CP Rail’s grand $35 million rail expansion on the banks of the Bow River, which would have effectively removed any chance of our current pathways in and around Prince’s Island Park.
In 1963, the railway giant brought City officials a plan no one seemed to want to refuse, which would relocate CPR’s main tracks a few blocks from the south side of 9th Avenue to the banks of the Bow, through Chinatown and what is now Fort Calgary.
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| Thomas Mawson's plan for the CPR Station Plaza. CP would later suggest relocating their rail lines to the banks of the Bo, another plan that was scratched. |
At the time, aldermen hailed the proposal as a major facelift for Calgary, a boon to tourism and commercial growth and a solution to the traffic bottlenecks and unemployment situation.
Fortunately for future Calgarians, people like then-Alderman Jack Leslie, local businessman Bob Barron and the Local Council of Women fought hard against the odds, and the plans were eventually abandoned.
As with all cities, plans come and go now as they did in the past, and the face of Calgary will continue to transform. But how would Calgary’s pioneers and previous planners feel about the Calgary of today?
“I believe they had a real sense of optimism,” says Cariou. “They were looking to the future and had huge aspirations, something I believe we all still have today. I definitely think they would have been gobsmacked by all the high-rises . . . maybe even disappointed.”
It’s hard to imagine Calgary looking like a futuristic Vienna with elevated railways and walkways, grand obelisks, a Centre Street traffic elevator, circular street layouts and no public access to Prince’s Island.
But these plans, failed though they may have been, stand tribute to visionaries who, even today, continue to imagine how Calgary might look in the future.
