A gritty, grimy charmer: Iron Works Building

“It was never a nice office building or warehouse or retail space or anything like that. It was a gritty, grimy type of building that has taken a beating over the years because of the activities that were in it”

But now the old industrial building is undergoing a $21 million renovation with the hope it will be a catalyst for development in The Quarters. The Iron Works Building was constructed in 1909 on 96th Street, north of 104th Avenue. Two brothers, James and Thomas Cornwall, started Edmonton Iron Works in 1903, not far from where the Legislature is now. Johnston says they manufactured iron, steel and brass—important building materials needed in a construction boom in those days.

Edmonton’s population was growing in leaps and bounds in the early years of the 20th century: from 2,200 in 1899 to 23,000 in 1909—and 60,000 by 1919. Johnston says business was so brisk for the Cornwall brothers that they realized they needed a bigger facility. And so in 1909, they built a new building on 96th Street, conveniently close to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. And it wasn’t just any industrial building. It was a two-storey Edwardian-style brick beauty.

“They made a decision at that point that they weren’t just going to throw up a wood-frame, barn-type building to make steel and what not inside. This is a masonry building front to back.  It’s not like they just put up a nice frontage masonry piece on the front… The whole building was masonry and solid and would have been expensive. Lots of windows…windows were expensive. At the time, it would have been a really beautiful building and really showed the commitment those guys had.”

But the Cornwalls sold the building in 1927. Over the years it changed hands several times and was used for manufacturing things like farm plows and boilers. Johnston says it went through a series of ownership changes and decline. The city acquired the property in 2016 because, despite its decline, it deserved historic preservation.

“It’s not been well looked after over the years and in particular more recent times. By the 60s and 70s, it started shifting into more of scrap metal recycling and salvage… They made alterations to the interior to suit new companies coming in… They just weren’t kind,” says Johnston. 

“By the time we started getting into the space, it was rough in there,”Johnston adds. “There’d been a fire in the basement… It was quite a mess, so we were looking at having not just a little refresh. It was much more of a full-scale rehabilitation. And when you start taking some of these things apart to fix them in these types of buildings, you start uncovering all sorts of stuff that you just go…oh boy, what is this? How did they build that? This isn’t supporting anything. It just slowly mushrooms into a full-scale rebuild in a sense.” 

But Johnston believes it’s worth the effort.  

“It’s kind of great that it’s still standing because a lot of those buildings were just seen as disposable,” he says. “It’s also a bit more of a rare example of that Edwardian architectural style.  You go down onto Whyte Avenue and you see loads of that type of stuff over there, but you don’t see as much of it downtown or certainly in The Quarters. The design is definitely interesting and a bit more rare… I think the building was a symbol of the optimism of that time that the Cornwall brothers moved the operation.”

The hope is that the renovated Iron Works Building will evoke a sense of that optimistic time in 1909. 

“That’s the intent here. Once you walk into the foundry hall itself, the idea is to maintain that openness. The idea is to maintain that sense of volume and space,” says Johnston. “We don’t want it chopped up into drywall and offices and you don’t even know what you’re standing in.  You’ll walk in and you’ll still see the steel beams. You’ll still see the brick walls, the concrete floor… There will be a couple of cranes still in the building. They aren’t functioning, but you’ll be able to understand that this was a working, industrial hive of activity. I think that is a core part of interpretation of a space like that, for sure.”

Now, with the new life coming to The Quarters area, Johnston sees the Iron Works Building being a catalyst to help that along.

“It’s a site that has a long history in the area…” he says. “You know it was this sort of janky scrap yard for a long time and now the opportunity is to recognize its history… but also to get a hub of activity going in that part of The Quarters: exhibitions and shows and music. It can get people into a building that no one has been able to get into for decades. I think it checks off all sorts of good boxes.”