Two tall arched windows in green frames flank a pair of wooden doors set in a sandstone surround, all of it cut into red brick, at 218 6 Avenue SE in Medicine Hat. The doors belong to the Cypress Club, which Alberta Historic Places says was incorporated on November 21, 1903, by the Legislative Assembly of the North-West Territories as a private meeting place for businessmen and civic figures.
The Canadian Register of Historic Places describes a two-storey Edwardian building with massive sandstone pilasters at the entrance, fluted columns with Ionic capitals and arched three-part windows. Inside, it lists a grand staircase with turned balusters and leaded glass.
Key facts
- The Cypress Club at 218 6 Avenue SE has been a Provincial Historic Resource since December 6, 2002, according to the register.
- The register dates the building to 1907 and credits architect William T. Williams, with Oakes and Everand as builders.
- The upper walls are pressed brick made in Medicine Hat, the register says, above a corbelled concrete and sandstone foundation.
- The club was incorporated on November 21, 1903, the Alberta Historic Places blog states, and the Tourism Medicine Hat walking tour covers the building.
The brick came from the town’s own clay industry
The register says the brick came out of Medicine Hat’s ceramics trade, which ran on local natural gas. A club for the district’s business leaders was built from the product of the town’s own factories. That’s a plain fact and it needs no decoration, and the town’s ceramics story continues in the Hycroft china factory.
The exterior stayed restrained while the interior ran rustic
The register’s phrase for the club is frontier gentility. It sets a restrained facade against interiors fitted out in rougher materials: a stone fireplace, a beamed ceiling in the common room, oak and fir woodwork, hunting trophies, a very large pool table and an octagonal poker table counted among the historic artifacts. A visitor from outside saw the sandstone and the arches. A member saw the fireplace and the poker table.
The builder depends on which source you open
The register names Oakes and Everand as the builders. The Alberta Historic Places blog says A. P. Burns was contracted to build it for $15,000, with Hop Yuill lending the money and the club repaying him from membership dues. The blog also notes that a deal gave the Bank of Commerce the front of the lot on Main Street, with the club built on the back. Neither source settles the builder question, so both names stand.
The heritage value sits inside and the public record shows little of it
Most of what the register lists as character-defining sits behind the door: the fireplace, the staircase, the leaded glass, the pool and poker tables. The walking tour says the dining room requires membership and that anyone may join, which answers the access question in principle. It doesn’t give a resident a way to see the rooms the designation exists to protect.
A designation whose listed value sits behind a members’ door needs a public record to match. The club, with the province’s help, could publish a photographic inventory of the named interior elements and open the building one day a year. The record also owes readers a plain statement of who was admitted. The register calls it the main social club for men in the district, and the blog says membership was confined to men. An old room isn’t a better room because it’s old, and the interpretation should say so.
Behind the two wooden doors the register places the fireplace and the poker table, out of sight from the sidewalk at 218 6 Avenue SE.
