Tuxedo Park Shopping Centre Part 1

The picture is the Agricultural College in 1903. Now the Asper Jewish Community Campus of Winnipeg.

The Tuxedo Park Shopping Centre was built in 1962 to serve the town of Tuxedo. It initially had a Safeway, a Bank of Montreal branch, the headquarters of the Tuxedo Police and a hotel.

The land used to belong to the Hudson Bay Company but was granted to Lord Selkirk in 1811. By 1857, it had been surveyed into farmland from the Assiniboine River out to 2 and later 4 miles. The region was known as Assiniboia and by 1880 it became the Rural Municipality of Assiniboia.

One of the first buildings to be built in the area was the The Agricultural College in 1906 along Tuxedo Avenue. It was deemed to be too small and 1911-1913, the college moved to Fort Garry, home to the present University of Manitoba.

From 1914 until 1917 this site was used by the Manitoba School for the Deaf, the first such institution in Western Canada. In 1917, the facility became necessary for wounded men from World War I. The building served as a hospital until 1919. Thereafter, the Canadian Army took over the building and from 1919 to 1968, it was the Fort Osborne Barracks. The Asper Jewish Community Campus of Winnipeg bought the site in 1997 and it is used as an educational and cultural center.

In 1904, 283 acres of the land along the river was bought by the City of Winnipeg for the site of Assiniboine Park.

From 1905 to 1913, Frederick W. Heubach and various investor acquired land for their new Tuxedo Park development. In 1913, the Town of Tuxedo was incorporated and Heuback became its first mayor.

The American firm Olmsted Brothers designed the town and that plan was followed assiduously for many decades.

A British firm held a small piece of the new town. It was a small triangle of land bounded by Tuxedo Avenue, Roblin Boulevard (later Corydon Avenue) and Edgeland Boulevard which was zoned for three apartment blocks and a shopping center.

That shopping center became what is the present Tuxedo Park Shopping Centre.

(to be continued)