LAND TITLES BUILDING - VICTORIA ARMOURIES

The Land Titles Building - Victoria Armouries is a one and one-half storey building of brick covered in stucco located on two city lots on 100th Avenue in downtown Edmonton.

The heritage value of the Land Titles Building lies in its structural representation of the settlement in Northern Alberta, as the site where immigrants would register their claims to Crown land. As the Victoria Armouries, it is significant for its association with three Edmonton regiments.

The Land Titles Building was constructed in 1893 to serve as the Crown Land, Timber and Registry Office for the District of Alberta in the North West Territories. (The federal government tried to move the office across the North Saskatchewan River to the rival town of Strathcona, but Edmonton residents sabotaged the wagons carrying the office's records and furniture, and engaged in an armed stand off with North West Mounted Police (N.W.M.P.) in protest). It is likely the oldest existing Land Titles Office in Alberta, one of the oldest extant buildings in the province, and certainly the first purpose-built registry office.

When the volume of business necessitated a new Land Titles Office in 1912, the building on 100th Avenue became the Victoria Armoury. The Armoury was home to a series of Edmonton regiments over the next half-century: the 19th Alberta Dragoons (1915-39), Edmonton Fusiliers (1940-46), and the 19th Armoured Car Regiment (1947-8).

As a federal building, the original bisymmetrical design is attributable to Thomas Fuller, Chief Architect of the Dominion, but it echoes Hudson's Bay Company (H.B.C.) warehouses in Edmonton and elsewhere. Two additions have been constructed on the east elevation. The first, built during its use as an armoury, continued the general style and roofline to the east. A box-like addition was added later.

Together with the Arlington Apartments across the street, the Land Titles Building - Victoria Armouries establishes a direct link with the pre-World War One development of Edmonton.

Source: Alberta Culture and Community Spirit, Historic Resources Management Branch (File: Des. 208)

The heritage value of the Land Titles Building - Victoria Armories lies in such character-defining elements as:

- form, scale and massing (original 1893 building is bisymmetrical on a central north / south axis);

- jerkinshead roof with narrow, hipped dormers;

- boxlike flat-roofed addition forward of east elevation;

- bisymmetrical fenestration pattern describing the original 1893 building, additional irregular windows in additions, two-over-two and one-over-one wood windows.