Sutherland Hotel reduced to rubble as heritage advocates call for more protection for vacant buildings
Hotel, built in 1882 as city's population boomed, was razed by fire on Wednesday
More than 140 years of history lay in a pile of rubble along Main Street on Thursday morning.
The Sutherland Hotel, which opened in 1882, was ravaged by fire on Wednesday and demolished overnight, leaving another gaping hole along that stretch of Main in Winnipeg's Point Douglas area.
The three-storey building at the corner Main and Sutherland Avenue was closed down early last summer, shortly after another fire, and boarded up. All utility services, including electricity and heating, were cut off.
It was later listed for sale at $575,000 and a deal was finalized earlier this month, though the owner wasn't expected to take possession until June, according to Brad Gross, a listing agent for the building.
The head of Heritage Winnipeg says more needs to be done to protect and redevelop vacant buildings — historical or not — especially in light of the city's need for affordable housing as it works to decommission homeless encampments.
"Heritage organizations have always struggled with vacant buildings. They're much more prone to fire and these kinds of problems," Cindy Tugwell, executive director of Heritage Winnipeg, told CBC Manitoba's Up to Speed host Faith Fundal on Wednesday.
"We talk about needing spaces and residential spaces for long-term housing, and this would have been a great building for that. We need these buildings maintained and looked after … [because] this is the kind of fate that they're going to face.
"This is a very chronic problem in our city with vacant buildings and fires. I think the government should have stepped in."
In 2023, the city had what was then a record 156 fires at vacant properties — a 38 per cent increase from the previous year. Data for 2024, sent to CBC by the city earlier this month, shows there were 182 fires in vacant buildings as of the end of September that year.
Approximately 700 buildings remain on the city's vacant and derelict buildings list.
"I don't know what the percentage of them are for the downtown or the Exchange District, but I know that we'd be happy to sit down and talk to the government — and that's all levels of government, because this is a housing problem for all levels to deal with — to talk about the inventory of vacant buildings and how some … could be taken over and rehabilitated," Tugwell said.
Mayor Scott Gillingham says the city has created a working group that involves developers, social agencies, non-profit organizations and city departments to discuss ways to solve the problem.
"I agree … that all of those lots, all those vacant, derelict buildings represent potential for housing at a time where we need housing," he told CBC Manitoba's Information Radio host Marcy Markusa on Thursday morning.
"Often governments or levels of government will just try to address the issue on their own but we've got a lot of smart people with good ideas in the community, so let's bring people together."
The objective of the working group is to reduce the number of empty buildings by getting those sites and other empty lots redeveloped into housing, he said.
"Part of it is the dialogue with the developers to say, what would it take for you to develop here? What can the city do and assist with to to make this area more attractive for development," Gillingham said.
"I really think all of these areas represent potential to transform a neighbourhood."
The Sutherland was built in 1882 and first named the Cosmopolitan Hotel and then the Palace Hotel in 1903 and finally Sutherland Hotel in late 1907. It was expanded with a single storey at the back in 1913.
"It was built … to fill the demand for short-term residential space," Tugwell said.
Winnipeg was in a population boom in 1882, its population having doubled to 25,000 with new people arriving daily.
Hotels were so crowded that cots had to be placed at night in the corridors and offices of other buildings, according to the Manitoba Historical Society.
"Many a sleepy individual sat in a billiard room awaiting the closing of 'a last game' to claim … the privilege of reposing on the hard slate bed of the billiard table," the MHS website says, citing a series of letters from Charles Napier Bell published in March and April 1887 in the Winnipeg Daily Sun.
"New hotels were opened almost daily and, to meet the demand for accommodation, many of the proprietors rented hastily constructed buildings, to be used entirely for lodging purposes, while the guests stood in lines at the dining-room doors during meal hours, awaiting their turn for entrance."
Most recently, the Sutherland had become long-term housing for low-income people and to brighten its rough facade, it had been entirely painted in a mural titled The Fancy Shawl Dancers to honour a First Nations powwow dance style.
"A lot of these buildings want to tell the stories of Indigenous history and the city's history, so there's been a lot of murals put on these buildings to tell those stories," Tugwell said.
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