'All we have are thememories': Historians mourn loss of key building from Winnipeg's jazz era

It took two days to burn down 110 years of history at a corner on the edge of Winnipeg's downtown, whereicebound rubble is all that remains of a building that was once a focal point of the city's jazz and big band era.

The two-storeyKirkwood Block, a brick, arrowhead-shaped building that stood at thenortheast corner of Portage Avenue and LangsideStreet, was consumed by a fire that began Wednesday and kept crews pouring water throughout the night and following day.

By Friday, it was partially collapsed into a single level, with the city preparing for full demolition in the coming days.

It's awrenching end to a building whose second floor had a glorious three-decade run, beginning in the mid-1950s, asHarry Smith's Club Morocco.

"The club became Winnipeg's top nightspot and the longest-running such jazz club not only in our city, but in Western Canada," according tomusic historian and author John Einarson, who wrote about it in his bookHeart of Gold: A History of Winnipeg Music.

"I would consider the Club Morocco definitely a landmark in Winnipeg's music history, and we've lost it just as we've lost so many others as time marches on,"Einarson said in an interview on Friday.

"To see it now gutted isheartbreaking because there are so many memories from so many people who either went there or played there."

More recently, it was home to a handful of independent businesses on its street level, includinga Japanese doughnut shop, a hairdresserand a convenience store.

Brent Bellamy,senior design architect for Number Ten Architectural Group, called it "a tragic loss."

"I worry about the neighbourhood and how the neighbourhood moves on with losing the businesses that were in there."

Those types of buildings are the lifeblood of a community, often providing the livelihoods ofpeople who not only work, but also live inthe neighbourhood, he said.

"They're part of the DNA and fabric of the community and when thosebuildings are lost, we lose that connection."

Boom time

The KirkwoodBlockwas designed byarchitectJohn D. Atchison, who was responsible for nearly100 buildings in the city from the early 1900s until the mid-1920s,many in theChicago style ofarchitecture.

Built in 1912 for pharmacist William Kirkwood, it opened at a boom time, as Winnipeg flooded with new citizens and new buildings sprouted to fill many needs.

Kirkwood's drugstore was located in one of the four retail shopsfronting the sidewalks along Portage and Langside. The second floor hosted a Pentecostal church hall before it become one of the city's hottestbig bandnightclubs.

Club Morocco was the creation of Polish immigrant Herschel Schmutkin, who became Harry Smith when Canadian customs officials said his name was too hard to pronounce.

He was a larger-than-life character full of chutzpah, whodecorated his club in a faux-African motif, with paintings of warriors with shields,spears and masks, Einarson said.

"Very quickly it became a popular jazz club, as well as bringing in artists from across Canada as well," he said.

The club had a dress code thatrequired men to wear a jacket and tie. There were rentalsavailable for those who came unprepared, but the selection wasn't the best.

"They had a cloak room with a couple dozen of the ugliest jackets you've ever seen, and you had to pick one," drummer Wayne Finucansaysin Einarson's book.

Still, Finucanremembered it as "a cool place, a real happening place back then."

When the dance band and jazz era began to wane asrock rock 'n' roll roll took over thelive music scene,Club Morocco began to struggle.

It managed to attract crowds through the 1970s and part of the 1980s, partly because its licence allowed it to stay open longer than other drinking spots, but that also led to a different type of notoriety.

Fighting, more so than dancing, began to occurand the club'ssteep staircase was usedto send off troublemakers, according to Einarson.

"Harry had his brother, Earl, installed as kind of like the enforcer," he said.

"If someone was getting a little too drunk getting a little out of hand, he would go over and blast a cigarette on the person's hand to get his attention and then physically throw him out."

Smith eventually closedthe club in the late 1980s but briefly tried to revive it shortly afterwards, turning the Morocco into a non-alcoholic teen club during the week, according to a Winnipeg Free Press story from 1990.

The effort didn't last long, and the venue wentthrough several owners and incarnations after that. It was abar under several banners, many of which became familiar topolice responding to incidents of violence.

It was a far cry from its Pentecostal beginning.

"My mother wouldn't let me go to Club Morocco," Einarson said with a laugh. "She thought it was a little bit of a scary place and an adult kind of a place as well. So I never got inside it, but I certainly was aware of the reputation back then.

"Andin looking back on the history I became even more aware of its prominence in Winnipeg music history."

'We realize the loss of it'

Winnipeg has always been a hub for live music,going back as far as vaudeville days of the 1920s and '30s, Einarson said.

"Andplaces like the Club Moroccowere pillars of that whole live music scene."

But as the jazz agefaded into the memories of the previous generation, so did the role of places like Morocco.

Einarson said it sometimes takes misfortune, like this week'sfire,for people to recognizethe importance of a building they've likely passed without a glance for several years.

"And we realize the loss of it. It's gone. It's not going to be there anymore. So all we have are thememories of people who were there."

The Kirkwood Block may not have the historical significanceofthe Hudson's Bay building on Portageor the Bank of Montreal building at Portage and Main, but it has its own importance, said Bellamy.

It was one of few remaining examples of pre-First World Warbuildings that defined downtown at one time.

"It was really the strip mall of 1912, with commercial storefronts lining the sidewalk and people generally living, or office space, above," he said.

"If you want to know what Portage Avenue looked like before Portage Place was built, it was really lined with those kinds of buildings. They used to be all throughout downtown and we've sort of lost them, one by one by one."

Little mom and pop shops like those that filled the Kirkwood'sretail spaces will have a tough time surviving in other buildings with higher rents, he said.

"We often talk about wanting a modern city with progressive buildings but it's the old buildings that are the soil that allows the fine grain of commerce small business to really flourish and grow."

A 2009 report prepared for the City of Winnipeg on the Kirkwood Block: