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Manitoba Agricultural College (M.A.C.) Buildings
1913 - 1914

Excited anticipation probably best described the atmosphere at the Manitoba Agricultural College when school opened in the fall of 1913. It permeated the offices of the new administration building, the classrooms scattered across the campus, and the student residence overlooking the Red River nearby. The pastoral beauty of the prairies was everywhere visible, adjacent farms and fields a reminder of the college’s central purpose, although a recently paved Pembina Highway and the street car line connecting the campus to Winnipeg were solid evidence of the urban presence. It was a time of change, not just in the surrounding landscape, but in lives as well. For college staff, it meant relocation from the comforts of the old campus to the unfamiliarity of the new. For the young men and women entering the college for the first time to study Agriculture and Home Economics, it was the beginning of an adventure, possibly the first one away from the home fires of the farm. Life was rich with possibilities, the future bright, the rumble of guns still unheard from across the seas.

In 1913, agriculture was king. It had been steadily growing in importance for well over thirty years, with no end in sight, and prairie farmers were increasingly interested in applying the latest scientific principles in its pursuit. None of this was fully appreciated at the time. Indeed, when the Manitoba Agricultural College opened in the fall of 1906 at the Tuxedo campus, nobody realised that in less than five short years it would have outgrown its facilities. Indeed, by 1911, the dairy barn had been converted into a dormitory, and thirty students were living off campus. With no land available nearby and more and more students clambering to attend, the government realised that a new location for the college had to be found. Eventually it settled on a parcel of land east of Pembina Highway and approximately seven miles south of the city. Consisting of about six hundred acres surrounded on three sides by a loop of the Red River, the site offered plenty of space for present and future growth, and work began in the summer of 1911 to clear the land. By that winter, 375 acres had been cleared and about 125 acres of this had been broken for the test and demonstration field plots required by the college. Construction was also underway on the main buildings. During 1912 and 1913, the work moved ahead at a feverish pace. When the college opened on 28 October 1913, much of the major construction had been completed, certainly enough to commence the school year.
 
Built at a cost of over 3 million dollars, which was a huge amount of money at the time, the campus was magnificent. Indeed, the centrally located Administration Building radiated a stately grandeur that could not fail to impress the visitor, who approached it for the first time from the road connecting the college to Pembina Highway. Sets of four massive stone pillars and wide stone steps dominated both the eastern and western façades of this building, providing a fittingly frame for the main entrances that opened into a large rotunda dominated by massive marble stairs. Ascending from the level below and rising four stories to a huge dome that diffused light from above through beautiful stained glass, the stairs connected the different levels of this central space, onto which all offices and other rooms in the building opened.

The Administration Building was a focal point for the students. Its lower level housed the post office where they could pick up their mail at general delivery or in a private box. They could also purchase books and other school supplies at the bookstore located there.

The offices of the registrar and bursar were located on the main floor. Students registered here when they entered the college and made arrangements to pay the required fees. They could also deposit money with the bursar in a trust fund, from which they could draw funds on Tuesdays and Fridays. W. J. Black, B.S.A., the President of the College had his office on this floor, too, although students had few occasions to go there. However, they might drop in elsewhere to deliver assignments or discuss course work. The English professor, the professor of Animal Husbandry, and the superintendent of Extension work all had offices on the main floor.

A reading room and library, located in the south wing, provided a place for students to study and do research. A large classroom occupied the north wing, and there was a museum there as well, a place familiar to the student body, even if they didn’t visit it often.

Offices for the departments of Field Husbandry (south wing), and Household Art (north wing) were located on the second floor. The Department of Household Science, a large theatre classroom, and the office of the lecturer in English were located on the third floor. The Board Room, where the meetings of the Board of Directors and the Faculty were held, also occupied the third floor.

The Horticulture and Biology Building occupied the north-east angle of the campus. Horticulture, Entomology, and Forestry were located on the ground floor. The second floor was devoted to Botany and included botanical laboratories, a herbarium, drying and pressing rooms, a class room, and offices for the staff. The Dept of Bacteriology occupied the third floor, where there were three laboratories, an incubation room, culture room, and an animal dissecting room. Green houses were connected to this building as well.

The Chemistry and Physics Building occupied the northwest angle of the campus opposite the Horticulture and Biology Building. Chemistry, soil physics, and general physics were taught in this “absolutely fire proof” building, which had walls of tile and brick, floors of terazzo, “with the exception of the floor in one theatre class room,” and no wood even for the doors and door jambs. It had the “most up-to-date apparatus for the teaching of chemistry, soils, drainage, mathematics, and general physics, including electricity, and magnetism.”

Occupying the south-west corner of the quadrangle was the three-story Engineering Building, a U-shaped structure 153 by 110 feet, each of its two wings 53 by 75 feet with windows on three sides. The south wing on the main floor was the laboratory for traction engineering. Eventually, it would be “equipped with a large number of gasoline and steam engines for instruction purposes, and also with ample apparatus for advanced work in engine testing and other phases of mechanical engineering laboratory work.” Since it had insufficient space for handing both regular student classes and the winter short courses that were so much in demand, the college planned in future to use the north wing for this latter purpose. However, during the winter of 1913-1914, this space was used as the forge shop, and would continue in that use until a separate facility could be constructed nearby. It contained forty-four forges, with a set of bleachers for student seating during the daily demonstration lessons in forge work.

The central section of the Engineering Building contained a classroom and offices to the right of the front entrance. On the left was a concrete laboratory where students learned how to test, mix, and place concrete. Part of its floor space was earthen, so that students could practice making “short lengths of sidewalks, concrete stalls, etc. … under conditions similar to those met with in outside work” on the farm.

The drafting room was on the second floor directly above the concrete laboratory. A machine shop, lockers, and display room were above the forge, while wood work occupied the entire south wing above the power machinery laboratory and right-hand classroom on the main level.

Except for a blue printing and dark room, the third floor was entirely devoted to farm machinery. Here students had an opportunity to dissemble and reassemble a variety of farm machines.

The Dairy was a small building located to the south and west of the Engineering Building. This was where dairy husbandry – butter-making, cheese-making, and milk testing – was carried on.

West of the Dairy was the Stock Judging Pavilion, which was 150 by 52 feet and built of brick and stone with concrete floors. In the centre of this building was a large judging arena 66 by 24 feet to which “various classes of live stock” were brought in for judging work. This arena was surrounded by a gallery with seating accommodation for up to one hundred and fifty students. The Pavilion also included refrigerator rooms, a butcher’s department, emergency stables, and the veterinary science laboratory and office.

Near the Pavilion were the horse barn, beef cattle barn, dairy cattle barn, and swine barn. A sheep barn was still under construction when the school opened. During the summer, the college had added to its stock on hand through the purchase of a “team of general purpose horses of the best delivery wagon type” and several “Holstein and Shorthorn cows.” In October, Professor Peters and G. W. Wood went east to purchase additional livestock, chiefly dairy cattle and sheep.

Further west of these buildings was the Poultry Plant, a building 60X40 feet, constructed of solid brick and cut stone. It contained lecture rooms, incubator rooms, and egg rooms. Grouped around this building were the 30X60 ft. poultry fattening house, a brooder house, and three laying houses each 180 feet long.

The students’ residence and auditorium was by far the largest building on the campus. 550 feet long, with long wings running toward the rear, this three story building stretched along a bend of the Red River on the south side of the campus. It also had a basement and sub-basement and could accommodate “about 350 men and 200 women.”

The auditorium between the two residences could seat 1,500 people and was where meetings of the whole student body were held. It was also used for “farmers’ conventions, entertainments and final examinations.” The floors of all halls and lavatories were terrazzo and of the rooms fir. The rest of the woodwork was oak with a golden finish.

The residences provided every comfort. Each room was designed for two students and furnished with single beds, mattresses, blankets, comforters, and white spreads, study tables, chairs, bookshelves, and a dresser and washstand. Students had to supply “a pillow, two pillow covers, three sheets, four towels, and a laundry bag, all properly marked with the student’s name in full.” They were also required “to make their own beds, sweep and dust their rooms every morning, and keep them at all times neat and tidy.” The rooms were inspected daily at 8:30 a.m., and if unsatisfactory, the occupants could be asked “to room out.” Each room had two clothes closets that could be locked if desired, each of them large enough to accommodate a trunk no larger than “three feet long and two feet wide.”

The dining room was centrally located on the main floor and accessible from both the “boys’ and girls’ residences.” Adjoining the dining room was a large kitchen where the cooking for the whole institution was done. Equipped with ranges and a “refrigerator plant” and connected to an underground vegetable cellar, it was thoroughly up-to-date for the times.

The gymnasiums for the young men and young women of the college were located in the two wings to the rear of the residence. These were equipped with “high class apparatus including vaulting horses, parallel bars, special duplex pully weights, horizontal and vaulting bars, spring boards, horizontal ladders, climbing ropes, travelling rings, flying rings, stall bars, tumbling mats, medicine balls, basket ball outfit and indoor baseball.” Near the gymnasiums were the “shower baths, two swimming tanks, and lockers for gymnasium suits, bathing suits, and work suits.”

Sitting rooms and reading rooms were provided for the students, and there were quarters for the matrons, the dietician, staff members who desired to live at the college, and all the hired help.

One of the most important, but little noticed buildings on the campus was the central power house, which was located to the south of the Dairy building. It was equipped with four large boilers, each with a capacity of 600 horse power, which heated all the university buildings on campus. Power for the water works and college lighting was provided by the city. The entire facility was as up-to-date as it was possible to be in 1913.

The new college was formally opened on February 12, 1914, by the Hon. Sir Rodmond Roblin, Premier of Manitoba, before an assembly of approximately 2,000 visitors and students at the residence auditorium. Visitors had been arriving all day by streetcar for tours of the buildings by the senior students, and many had remained for the official opening at 8:00 p.m. In addition to the premier, about thirty of the leading men of the province were present on the platform, and a number of them spoke, including President Black, head of the Manitoba Agricultural College, the Honourable George Lawrence, Minister of Agriculture, and Major H. M. Dyer, Chairman of the Board of Directors. One of the highlights was the unveiling of a full size portrait of Premier Roblin, which plainly touched the premier, who gladly agreed that it be hung in the halls of M.A.C. He then gave an “instructive address” and declared the college open “amidst thunderous applause.” In the words of the Gazette, this brought to a close an event that would be remembered “as marking a gigantic stride in developing scientific agriculture in Manitoba.”

Source material
“All buildings where teaching done finished in oak with terrazzo floors in halls and laboratories and elsewhere the finest edge grained fir.”

The New College. P. 13.
the President’s residence.”
Students had visited the college in March 1913.

Pembina highway had been paved from the city limits past the college farm and a gravel road built through the centre of the farm to the boulevard in front of the administration building.

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Two new departments had been added in the Graduate courses, in the past year, namely Horticulture and Forestry. The ones already in place were Animal and Field Husbandry, Dairying and Agricultural Engineering. The reason for the additions was that it would give young men “an opportunity to secure a training in the theory and practice of Prairie Horticulture and Prairie Forestry, that they would be in a position to direct work of this kind in our prairie provinces.” Trained horticulturists were needed at the experimental farms, the Forestry Brance needed inspectors and assistants at the forestry farms; the railroads for men to direct the work of station ground improvements, and to assist in the horticultural work which those larger lines are undertaking; and the cities and towns for men to assist in the work of civic improvement. They were trying to combine theoretical and practical aspects. In botany, they would make a study of the botany of our cultivated plants, which emphasis will be place on such phases of botanical work as Plant Pathology, Plant Physiology and Plant Histology. Entomology as it applies to the treatment of insects affecting horticultural plans and forest trees, will receive careful consideration. In chemistry, attention paid to the chemistry of insecticides and fungicides, while in Physics the subject of soil drainage would be an emphasis. “In he splendid new Horticultural and Biology building at St. Vital, provision ahs been made for giving thorough instruction in the various branches of horticultural and biological work. The building was well arranged and commodious, attached to the building were a range of greenhouses, where studies could be made in plant growth and greenhouse methods. Outside work also. Ten acres of well drained, loamy soil, well adapted for horticultural work, to make practical studies of hardy fruits and ornamental plants, and where training could be given in horticultural practice such as budding, grafting and general care of nursery stock. (University of Manitoba, Archives and Special Collections, The M.A.C. Gazette, 1913-1914, v. VII, No. 1, Oct 1913, p. 18-19)

Demonstration Work in Drainage. A portion of the college farm had been drained by prison labor under the direction of the Department of Soils. This is used to demonstrate the value of using tiled drainage in Manitoba. They experimented with different depths of tiles and found tht those placesd at 2 1 ½ to 3 feet below the surface were not damaged by traction engines driving over or cultivating them . (University of Manitoba, Archives and Special Collections, The M.A.C. Gazette, 1913-1914, v. VII, No. 1, Oct, 1913, p. 20-23)

Animal Husbandry Notes. All the buildings were complete and the college livestock was housed in the barns by Oct. 28. The sheep barn was the only one not completed. “The judging pavilion, a brick building 156 feet long and 52 feet wide will be ready for use by the time college opoens. This buioding contains three large lecture and judging rooms. The main live stock judging area occies the central portion of the building. The judging arena is 66 feet long copy this article (University of Manitoba, Archives and Special Collections, The M.A.C. Gazette, 1913-1914, v. VII, No. 1, Oct 1913, p. 29)

The Diploma Course was now three years instead of two. It was practical and nature and not preparatory for entry into the BSA program. It was designed to give practical training in the shortest possible time to men who desired to return to the farm. (University of Manitoba, Archives and Special Collections, The M.A.C. Gazette, 1913-1914, v. VII, No. 1, Oct 1913, p. 32)

Home Economics. Copy (University of Manitoba, Archives and Special Collections, The M.A.C. Gazette, 1913-1914, v. VII, No. 1, Oct 1913, p.41)

Extension Section. Copy this (University of Manitoba, Archives and Special Collections, The M.A.C. Gazette, 1913-1914, v. VII, No. 1, Nov 1913, p. 90

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