Portage Village Inn

The Portage Village Inn is a modest two-storey building on a busy intersection in downtown Winnipeg's commercial district. Built in 1920, and remodelled in 1923 and 1930, the brick and stucco structure stands at the eastern end of a block of Portage Avenue that includes a classically detailed bank, a small retail outlet and a post-World War II retail/office building. The City of Winnipeg's Grade III designation applies to the building on its footprint.

The Portage Village Inn is an example of the kind of modest building that was a nearly anonymous, but vital, element of the commercial landscape of Portage Avenue, Winnipeg's primary retail street after 1900. While other major nearby buildings, like the former Eaton's Department Store (which once loomed across the street) were better known to Winnipeggers, buildings like the Portage Village Inn provided space for a variety of smaller ventures. The building's low-key architecture, a kind of reduced commercial Italianate, is of note mostly for the modest second-storey features.

Source: City of Winnipeg Historical Buildings Committee Meeting, March 18, 1999

Key elements that define the site character of the Portage Village Inn include:

- its location at the northwest corner of Portage Avenue and Donald Street in downtown Winnipeg, with its west edge abutting its historic neighbour, the former Mitchell-Copp Building

Key elements that define the building's function and modest commercial Italianate style include:

- the large, simple, rectangular plan, with truncated southeast corner holding the main entrance doors, the flat roof and modest cornice and frieze

- the basic fenestration, with the large window openings of the main-floor facades and, on the second floor, simple rectangular windows on the south and east faces and two arched openings on the east face, all embellished with raised brick mouldings

- the two light wells running east-west on the second floor