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Osborne Village - Roslyn Court Apartments - 40 Osborne Street - 1909

In 1996 this structure was recognized by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada as one of the country’s finest apartment buildings in the Queen Anne Revival style of architecture. Roslyn Court Apartments originated during a period of rapid economic and physical growth in Winnipeg which had given rise to affluent suburbs such as Fort Rouge and Crescentwood on the south side of the Assiniboine River.

This is where the large single-family homes of Winnipeg’s business, professional and political elites were found. This is also where most of the city’s pre-1915 luxury apartment blocks were.

Roslyn Court was one of the earliest, largest and most costly to construct ($205,000 or nearly $5,700 per suite). Moreover, architect William Wallace Blair gave the structure a lively Queen Anne Revival face rather than one of the more sedate neoclassical designs commonly applied to the era’s apartment blocks.

Roslyn Court attained further prominence by virtue of its location across the Assiniboine from the Manitoba Legislative Building and at the southeast corner of the Osborne Street Bridge, one of the busy gateways between the downtown and South Winnipeg.

The block originally was divided into 36 suites, including 26 two-and three-bedroom units and 10 one-room bachelor suites with full baths. Some units had a small bedroom off the kitchen for domestic staff. Original elements included ornate plaster- and woodwork, stained glass, beamed dining-room ceilings, open fireplaces, and a cage passenger elevator that has remained operative over the years.