The C.N. Tower
10004 104th Avenue
Architects: Abugov & Sutherland of Calgary
Constructed: 1964-1966
When it opened on March 17th, 1928, the papers heralded Canadian National Railways new downtown station as a “symbol of the thriving... young city.” A place that “stood for the future” as much as the present, railway executives and civic boosters alike, claimed that it would “keep its place” within a growing Edmonton — two decades later the station was failing miserably. Passengers, managers, luggage, mail-clerks, ticket and telegraph officials, shoe-shiners and coffee shops; all vied for a spot. Additions in 1945, '48, and '51 tried to solve the problem — they didn't do much. Compounding matters was organizational changes which, effective November 7th, 1960, made Edmonton administrative headquarters for the C.N.R.’s new Mountain Region division.
The railway yearned to replace their ‘old’ station, and got their chance in 1962. On March 22nd, City officials revealed their plans for a new civic centre mega-project. Thought to be the largest single development proposal in Canada, “Plans call[ed] for three 25-storey office buildings, a 13-storey, 432-room hotel, and provision for extension of department stores,” the Edmonton Journal reported. The news caught the attention of G. Roger Graham, the round-faced, browline glasses-wearing Vice-Chairman of Canadian National’s Mountain Region. In particular, it was their desire for a “25-storey office tower of 490,000 sq. ft., with parking for 500 cars” that intrigued him.
Private discussions between Canadian National representatives and City administration began that July. Plans were formalized by October 1963, and Graham publicly announced their intention to build a tower roughly confirming to that proposed by the City’s redevelopment scheme. As the Journal remembered, “proposals were called from the public and a number of designs submitted. The design chosen was the best and most imaginative as well as fitting in with the needs of a terminal building for the CNR was submitted by a group of Alberta businessmen.” Allied Development Corporation Ltd. formed as a result, with the intent to organize, develop, build, lease, and manage the new tower for C.N.
Site-preparation began on October 22nd, 1963, but just how tall the new tower would be was still a matter of debate. According to C.N. officials, Mayor Elmer Roper had, purportedly, promised that the City would lease 30,000 square-feet of office space in the development. City Council was apprehensive, however, and by construction’s start the two parties had yet to draft a formal lease agreement. Without a physical contract the railway warned “that the tower may be called down by up to 13 stories… unless the city legally commit itself to a 10 year-lease of the sixth, seventh and eighth floors.” Council debated the matter at their May 11th, 1964 meeting, where aldermen agreed to follow through on Roper’s word. Their motion read in part:
“The City Commissioners are hereby authorized to confirm that The City of Edmonton will lease space from the developers of the Canadian National Tower to be erected adjoining City Hall, all the office space on the 6th, 7th and 8th floors thereof for use of the City, at a yearly basic rental of $3.97 per square foot.”
Beginning August 4th, “protective hoarding was put around the construction site — the central and eastern area of the present station.” Salvage operations and the hum of steam shovels followed, and by September 23rd, the site was ready for concrete footings. An “official pouring ceremony” was held at 2:30 that afternoon with G. Roger Graham, Mayor William Hawrelak, City Commissioners, and the Honourable Russell Patrick, provincial Minister of Trade and Industry, and F.C. Colborne, provincial Minister of Public Works, in attendance.
Foundation and podium work progressed throughout the winter of 1964-65, aided in part by a remarkably warm January. In one week alone, “more than 50 trucks delivered over 336 cubic yards of concrete” — “enough to make basements for 14 average-size houses.” But winter had the last laugh. If January was unusually balmy, March was unusually cold. Snowstorms set in, delaying construction eight weeks.
A sizeable contingent of Métis and Indigenous steelworkers were responsible for laying much of the tower’s 3,000 tons of steel rebar. “We worked at it pretty hard day and night, 12-hour shifts day and night,” Lewis Avery remembered. “The boys at night would do the cad welding, which was columns added up together all the way up to the top of the tower. Then, in the daytime, the boys would come in and do the slabs, each floor.” On average, they poured 232 tons of concrete daily.
Elsewhere, labourers positioned the tower’s large precast fins into place. The Journal described:
“It’s like a giant Meccano set.
The pieces all have a place.
There are 208 workers putting them there.
More than 200 blueprints to say where they go.
And it’s all controlled by one man.
Peter Greene, 10407 Fulton Drive, sits at a desk in a shed at the foot of the 19-storey CN Tower — soon to be 26 storeys — and directs.
General superintendent, that’s what they call him — the one man on the scene who knows exactly what’s happening on that 70,000-ton structure rapidly rising, one storey a week, above 100th St.”
On October 12th, 1965, the tower reached its apex. Standing at 363-feet tall, it became Western Canada’s tallest building, and Alberta’s first to exceed 100 meters. A topping-off ceremony followed on November 26th, where Mayor Vincent Dantzer attached the Canadian flag to the tower’s crane. Hoisted up to its boom, the crane swung the recently-adopted, maple leaf-adorned standard in a circle “to mark the reaching of ‘the highest point in Edmonton.’”
An official opening followed at 3:00 p.m., November 4th, 1966. C.N. President Donald Gordon, G. Roger Graham, the Honourable J.W. MacEwan, Premier Ernest Manning, Mayor Dantzer, and representatives of Allied Development Corporation Ltd. were all in attendance. “The railways launched Alberta into the Twentieth Century,” Gordon proclaimed, “and the succeeding pages of her history have recorded great achievements in many fields. It is fitting, therefore, that this new building which we dedicate today should bear a railway symbol.” As a token of this relationship, Gordon presented the City of Edmonton a steel wheel from C.N.R. Locomotive 3805, a Mikado-type 2-3-2, which served in Alberta between 1936 and 1960.
Regarded as a “novel design” at the time, the C.N. Tower marked the pinnacle of Western Canada’s International architectural movement. Its style is distinctly ahistorical in approach and represented an implied faith in the new post-war order. Maitland, Hucker, and Ricketts write in A Guide to Canadian Architectural Styles that Internationalism itself is “most easily recognized by its use of a module, usually a square or rectangle, that forms the basis of a building’s design.” Hard, angular edges, plain surfaces, and an emphasis on the structural allure of steel and glass abound. “At best it is a style of subtlety, relying for its beauty upon harmonious proportions and beautifully finished materials.”
The Capital Modern Project cites “the modern notion of a tower sitting on a podium,” as the C.N. Tower’s most explicit manifestation of Internationalism. This cantilevered podium, comprising the tower’s second, third, and fourth floors, acts as a parkade housing 633 stalls, a total then “more than any other office building in Edmonton.”
Each 13,000 square-foot floor recall Maitland et al’s “style of subtlety” comment, where minute curves — concave on its north and south faces; convex on its east and west — “give the onlooker a view of the building’s many moods as light and shadow move across its surface.” Precast fins give them an “appearance of solidity” while “[exaggerating] the height of the building.”
Allan Fleming’s classic C.N. ‘worm’ adorns each side of the tower’s crown. Erected just prior to Christmas 1965, the Neon Products Ltd.-manufactured signs stand eleven feet high by thirty feet long. Each comprises 2,500 feet of neon tubing. Illuminated section-by-section, the letters were initially “lit every four seconds from the top of the letter C through the rest of the sign” — this iconic rotation has since been slowed.
At the time of its opening, the C.N. Tower’s twenty-two office floors accommodated 650 railway employees in addition to personnel from Confederation Life, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and the City of Edmonton’s Health, Telephone, and Welfare Departments. Italian marble, black Canadian granite, cream terrazzo, and formica greeted them, as did eight “fast lift” elevators with the ability to travel 710 feet per-minute. Canadian National staff were privy to a private lunchroom and library, stocked with 6000 volumes, on the 20th floor. Employees from other offices relaxed in the fifth floor’s cocktail lounge, cafeteria, and dining rooms.
Underground, the station — considered “one of the most modern railway terminals in North America” — centred around a circular hub, which included ticket wickets, an information counter, and passenger sales’ service bureau. Nearby was escalator service to trains, a snack bar, barbershop, bookstore, an automatic carousel to dispatch and deliver luggage, and direct connections to both Rent a Car services and C.N.’s Hotel MacDonald. A vehicle ramp, “designed to let vehicles load and unload passengers inside the terminal,” connected it to the ground above.
Fourteen passenger trains ran through C.N. Tower daily at its peak — that high was short lived. Air travel ate away at the market and a decade later Canadian National divested itself from its passenger rail responsibilities, forfeiting them to VIA Rail, a new federal crown corporation. While VIA maintained revenue service out of the tower for another twenty-one years, C.N. wound-down its central operations by shifting focus to its Calder Yard facility. The last train pulled away on May 28th, 1998, and C.N. tore up its tracks not long after — they fully vacated their namesake tower in May 2008.
Photo Gallery:
Sources:
“Opening of New Canadian National Depot Marks Epoch in City’s History,” Edmonton Bulletin, March 16, 1928.
“Edmonton To Head CNR Region,” Edmonton Journal, November 7th, 1960.
“$107,000,000 City Centre Plan Biggest Single Project In Canada,” Edmonton Journal, March 22, 1962.
“City, CN Discuss Tower,” Edmonton Journal, July 7, 1962.
“First stage Of Work Starts On CNR Tower,” Edmonton Journal, October 22, 1963.
Armin Hecht, “Alberta — Nation’s Pacesetter,” Edmonton Journal, January 23, 1964.
“CNR Prepares,” Edmonton Journal, February 11, 1964.
“Centre’s Growth May Be Stunted,” Edmonton Journal, May 9, 1964.
“Leasing — space in CNR Tower Bldg.,” Meeting No.19, Edmonton City Council Meeting Minutes, May 11, 1964, 285, City of Edmonton Archives,
“Lease Pact Saved City Millions,” Edmonton Journal, May 12, 1964.
“Construction Begins On CN Tower,” Edmonton Journal, August 4, 1964.
“Tower Will Rise Here,” Edmonton Journal, September 22, 1964.
“City Council Will Rent Air Space,” Edmonton Journal, December 15, 1964.
“Warm Weather Boosts Building,” Edmonton Journal, January 18, 1965.
“CN Tower, Chateau Lacombe Projects Delayed Tow Months By Bad Weather,” Edmonton Journal, March 5, 1965.
Dave Laundy, “Storey A Week Story Behind New CN Tower,” Edmonton Journal, July 30, 1965.'
“CN Tower Tallest Building In City,” Edmonton Journal, August 9, 1965.
“CN Tower Reaches Its 26-Storey Peak,” Edmonton Journal, October 12, 1965.
“Ceremony To Mark Tower Milestone,” Edmonton Journal, November 24, 1965.
“New Depot Opening Soon Below 26-Storey CN Tower,” Edmonton Journal, January 20, 1966.
“New CN Station In Tower Building…,” Edmonton Journal, February 11, 1966.
“Dream Comes True,” Edmonton Journal, November 3, 1966.
“Terminal, 650 Employees Join Forces At CN Tower,” Edmonton Journal, November 3, 1966.
“Big Ceramic Mural In CN Tower Foyer,” Edmonton Journal, November 3, 1966.
“Eight Fast Lifts,” Edmonton Journal, November 3, 1966.
“Wheel To Grace Tower,” Edmonton Journal, November 5, 1966.
Bill Mah, “End of the Line: Downtown Train Station Closes,” Edmonton Journal, May 29, 1998.
Jeff Holubitsky, “Sidetracked,” Edmonton Journal, June 15, 1998.
Leslie Maitland, Jacqueline Hucker, Shannon Rickets, A Guide to Canadian Architectural Styles (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1993), 179.
Lewis Avery, interviewed by Winston Gereluk and Muriel Stanley-Venne, Alberta Labour History Institute, April 19, 2018, 1,
“CN Tower — 1966,” Capital Modern, accessed August 13, 2022,
https://capitalmodernedmonton.com/buildings-by-area/downtown/cntower/.
