Richardson Building, Winnipeg

The Richardson Building is a prominent 34-story office tower located at the heart of downtown Winnipeg. Designed by the architectural firm Smith Carter Searle and Associates, the tower was constructed between 1966 and 1969 by Poole Construction, utilizing structural steel from Dominion Bridge. The building serves as the corporate headquarters of James Richardson & Sons, Limited.

Standing 124 meters (407 feet) tall, the Richardson Building is clad in granite chip pre-cast concrete and solar bronze double-glazed glass. It is part of the Lombard Place development and is connected to the Winnipeg Square shopping mall via the Portage and Main Concourse. While it is currently the third tallest building in Winnipeg-behind 201 Portage and 300 Main-it briefly regained the title of the tallest structure in 2011 when CBC installed a new transmission antenna, raising the building’s pinnacle to 151.8 meters (498 feet).

The building’s origins date back to an earlier plan in the late 1920s, when James Richardson & Sons had proposed a 17-storey headquarters on the same site. However, the 1929 stock market crash halted those plans, and the lot remained unused for nearly four decades. Construction was finally re-announced on February 23, 1967, and completed two years later.

In addition to its architectural significance, the Richardson Building is also notable for the public art displayed outside. In 2000, a large bronze sculpture by Leo Mol depicting children in an oak tree was installed in the adjacent Richardson Plaza. Commissioned by Hartley Richardson, it weighs nearly 1,600 kilograms and was Mol’s largest work at the time. In 2012, another sculpture titled North Watch by Winnipeg artist Ivan Eyre was added, portraying a man and his loyal dog.

Today, the Richardson Building stands as a landmark of modernist architecture and a symbol of Winnipeg’s commercial and cultural vitality.