Lombard Commerce Building
177 Lombard Avenue

This Beaux-Arts Classical building was built for the Great West Life Assurance Company, an international company still headquartered in Winnipeg. The Beaux-Arts style, with its Greek and Roman motifs, sets this structure apart from the city's large number of Richardsonian Romanesque buildings (typically buildings with heavy arched windows and rough-faced stone), most of them located in the Exchange District. Structurally, this building is composed of steel girders and beams encased in terra cotta. Its exterior is divided into three stories of Kootenay marble, four stories of smooth ashlar and one storey, at the top, of terra cotta. The result is a very dignified, elegant building. The minimal exterior terra cotta was produced by the American Terra Cotta Company of Chicago.