Over the last number of years many old buildings and houses in Winnipeg’s Osborne Village have disappeared and been replaced by new buildings that are usually not very exciting to me.
Some of these old buildings just naturally declined overtime, others had historical status and the owners or developers got around it by just leaving them to rot away until they were so beyond repair that the historical status no longer applied. Some of these new replacement buildings are well built, but many pop up very quickly and I wonder about the quality.
When I’m wandering about taking photos I often come across empty lots and I have a hard time remembering what was there before. I sometimes go home and look through my past photos to find out.
This blog is about how, not far from my place, a small apartment building and a couple of lovely old houses disappeared over the past year. I dug through my computer folders to find the photos I’m sharing here.
I’ll start with the way the lots looked recently, in March of 2026, and work backwards to what they looked before. I’ll write captions below the photos to explain them.
March 2026 – above is the currently empty lot on River Ave, which is a one way street heading west, just before it turns the corner and becomes the start of Wellington Crescent. You could once see the side of a small apartment block here, with its front facing onto Wellington Crescent.
February 2026 – above is the backhoe that did much of the demolition on River Ave between Wilmot St and the start of Wellington Crescent.
February 2026 – above we’ve head back east along River Ave to Wilmot St and in the B&W photos we see the empty lots where the 2 old houses once stood. The coloured photo looks towards the intersection of River and Wilmot and on the left of the photo you can see the edge of a house, with colouring and architecture similar to that of the destroyed houses. It’s still standing today.
January 2026 – above is an old house with many windows that was briefly exposed after the demolition of the house in front of it. Then in February it disappeared, too.
April 2025 – The first to go was the apartment building on the corner. Here’s how it looked at the end of the demolition. On the left you can still see the closer house near the car.
2024 – here’s the front view of the apartment building as it once stood at River Ave & Wellington Crescent. You can see a bit of one of the houses behind it.
2024 – the house that once stood nearest to the apartment building.
December 2024 – The houses and the side of the apartment building on River Ave. The larger house on the left was hit by a bus when the driver had a medical incident. I can’t remember exactly when it happened, but it was never repaired, I think the plan to eventually demolish them all was already afoot.
2023 – all three together.
I wrote a tiny piece titled, “That Corner,” about the house with many windows seen up above. It was published on April 2, 2026 in Paragraph Planet. To read it click on Menu above and then Nonfiction/CNF section for the link.
Click on the website menu above for various categories of links to my published writing and photos, as well as information about my book, Glass Bricks (paperback & digital) published by https://atbaypress.com/books/detail/glass-bricks
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