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HOME Reflections Appreciating where you live means knowing its history. HOME Reflections is a regular feature revealing interesting facts about our city from bygone days.
SASKATOON’s Historic Mansions William Hopkins’ grand house at 307 Saskatchewan Crescent West, ca. 1912-1916.
Jeff O’Brien
Photo LH 1718 courtesy of the Local History Room – Saskatoon Public Library
There are certain streets in Saskatoon that beg to be walked down on a warm night in the summer or fall, simply for the joy of looking at the grand old houses that line them. Most of these houses went up in the space of two or three very amazing years, just before the First World War at the height of the city’s first great building boom. Today,
they stand as monuments to a time when the city was young and opportunity was knocking so loudly you needed earplugs just to get to sleep at night. The original settlement was in present-day Nutana. But when the railway came through in 1890, the railway company built its station and facilities on the hitherto undeveloped west bank, on
what is now First Avenue, near 20th Street. The commercial and social centre of the settlement soon followed, with residential districts near the river on the eastern periphery. It was here, on winding Spadina Crescent, that Saskatoon’s first larger homes were built. The most notable of these was James Clinkskill’s house, Fall 2011
just west of the Traffic Bridge in what is now River Landing. Built in 1903, it was a large, 3-storey building with a main floor verandah and second floor balcony running the full width of the house. Clinkskill – a politician and dry goods merchant who had come to Saskatoon from Scotland via the Battlefords – sold it to the federal government • • • • •
S askatoon H O M E
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