Many historically significant buildings in Regina, Saskatchewan were lost during the period 1945 through approximately 1970 when the urge to "modernize" overtook developers' and city planners' sense of history and heritage. The old warehouse district to the north of the old CPR tracks was Regina's original commercial raison d'être once Lieutenant-Governor Edgar Dewdney had established the site of his considerable landholdings as the Territorial Capital.Pierre Berton, The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881–1885. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1971, p.115. 1899 to 1919 Washington Park and 3431 Dewdney Ave building as CPR commercial logistics building, expanded connected with significant conversion of shipping of commercial goods from train to truck and cancellation of passenger service on the railway, the Warehouse District immediately adjacent to the train line has ceased to be exclusively industrial in character. Some areas of the Warehouse District have been transformed into a shopping, entertainment and residential precinct.

The Assiniboia Club on Victoria Avenue—in the early days before the division of Saskatchewan and Alberta off from the North-West Territories in 1905 the names Assiniboia and Qu'Appelle were considered for what became the Province of Saskatchewan, and indeed the Anglican diocese was named and remains Qu'Appelle—has long since ceased to be an élite men's club and continues in use as a restaurant; the former Anglican Diocesan property is now being commercially developed with designated historic buildings protected against outright demolition. Significant historic buildings and precincts include the following.

Government

Federal

The old Post Office (officially renamed the Prince Edward Building in 2003) has now been converted to commercial and cultural use in connection with the ongoing attempt now dating back three decades to revitalize downtown Scarth Street as a pedestrian mall. It houses the Globe Theatre. It was completed in 1907; its 1912 clock tower was for many years locally regarded as Regina’s Big Ben. The building was replaced as a post office in 1956 by the current post office on Saskatchewan Drive (formerly South Railway Street)."The First 50: 1990–1959" (brochure), Regina Public Library, 1959. Regina Public Library: History. Online at www.rpl.regina.sk.ca.

Regina's second multi-story office block after the venerable and now-demolished McCallum & Hill Building was the Motherwell Building at the corner of Victoria Avenue and Rose Street. It was constructed in 1954–56 to a design by local Regina architects in the typical "international style," with its outer service being Tyndall stone. Its purpose was to house, inter alia, Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA)PFRA : A Brief History. Agriculture and Agrifood Canada. Retrieved 1 December 2007. and Western Canadian Engineering Projects."Motherwell Building," Wikimapia. Retrieved 1 December 2007. It has official heritage status in recognition of its architectural significance and has now been converted to condominium title and residential use.Neil Scott, "Heritage building may get four more storeys," Regina Leader-Post, 12 December 2006. Retrieved 1 December 2007.

For many years it, together with the immediately adjacent Hotel Saskatchewan and the 1963 Saskatchewan Power Building, also on Victoria Avenue, were, with the Provincial Legislative Building and the spires of Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Cathedral, the only high-rise structures in the city. They were visible from many miles' distance as one approached Regina by road from any direction, though multiple multi-story buildings now obscure the older ones. (The open top floor of the Saskatchewan Power Building was long open for the public to have a high-rise open air view, which of course is extremely long distance on the absolutely featureless plain in the Regina area, apart from the modest spring runoff Wascana Creek which begins just a few miles to the southwest; it is now long-since closed as a precaution against anyone using the site for jumping as suicide.)

Territorial

The Territorial Government buildings on Dewdney Avenue, dating from 1883, consisted of the Legislative Building, the Administration Building and the Indian Office and were designed by the Dominion architect, Thomas Fuller. The mansard roofed Administration Building, a Provincial Heritage Property, remains standing; it was restored in 1979 and currently sits vacant.

Government House on Dewdney Avenue was completed in 1891 as the vice-regal residence for the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Territories. It replaced the first Government House on the present site of Luther College farther west on Dewdney Avenue. It was the first electrified residence in the Territories and remained the residence of the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West (later Northwest) Territories and, after the creation of the province of Saskatchewan, of the province until 1944.

The Lieutenant-Governor's office and residence were then moved out of Government House and the office into the Hotel Saskatchewan, then operated by the CPR in downtown Regina. Latterly, with increasing historical sensibility among the general public, it has been restored to its former use as a vice-regal mansion, albeit only for public functions and not as a residence.Hryniuk, Margaret. "A Tower of Attraction": An Illustrated History of Government House, Regina, Saskatchewan." Regina: Government House Historical Society/Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1991).

The Regina Court House, built in 1884 on the northeast corner of Scarth Street and Victoria Avenue was where the trial of Louis Riel—before a jury of only six and arguably the most famous or infamous trial in the history of Canada—was held in 1885. It burned down in 1895.

The Supreme Court of the North-West Territories sat in a courthouse built in 1894 on the northwest corner of Hamilton Street and Victoria Avenue.Drake, Earl G. Regina, the Queen City. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1955. The Supreme Court was established by Parliament in 1886,North-West Territories Act, R.S.C. 1886, c. 50, s. 41. under its jurisdiction to legislate for the Territories.Constitution Act, 1871, s. 4. The Court was the superior trial court in civil and criminal matters, and also the appellate court for the Territories. Individual judges of the court sat as trial judges, while all of the judges sat en banc on appeals. The Supreme Court of the North-West Territories continued to exercise jurisdiction in the Province of Saskatchewan for the first two years of the Province's existence, until it was abolished for Saskatchewan in 1907 and replaced with the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan.

In 1918 The Court of Appeal Act and The King’s Bench Act abolished the Supreme Court, separately constituted the Court of Appeal and established the Court of King's Bench (or Queen's Bench during reigns of female monarchs) as the superior trial court.Courts of Saskatchewan website. Retrieved 13 June 2007. The 1894 building was replaced in 1965 by the current courthouse on Victoria Avenue between Smith and McIntyre Streets, opposite City Hall. The Avord Tower now stands on the site of the Supreme Court building. As with the 1962 Regina Public Library, the keystone of the original building is on the front lawn of the current courthouse as a decorative feature.Regina Court House Official Opening (brochure), 1961.

Provincial

The Beaux-Arts Saskatchewan Legislative Building on the south shore of Wascana Lake was constructed 1908–12, replacing the Territorial Administration Building on Dewdney Avenue, east of Government House. Discussion initially contemplated constructing such facilities in city centre on the site which became Victoria Park; the provincial government decided instead to locate them south of the lake, then entirely undeveloped, farmland rather than commercial and residential buildings, which were not built until after the Legislative Building.

Wascana Lake had been created in 1883 by damming Wascana Creek, but between Angus and Rae Streets, 1½ blocks west of the 1908 Albert Street dam and bridge, itself replaced by the present bridge in the same location when Wascana Lake was drained in 1931 for deepening of the bed. The design contemplates expansion of the building by the addition of wings extending south from the east and west ends and coming together to form a courtyard. In the beginning it was anticipated that Regina and the population of the province would soon grow much larger than it has ever become. The plans originally called for the exterior of the building to be red brick but after construction had begun and red bricks were already on the site, Premier Walter Scott insisted on Manitoba tyndall stone being substituted.Barnhart, Gordon L. Building For the Future: A photo journal of Saskatchewan’s Legislative Building. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2002.

It immediately became and remains the dominating architectural presence in Regina. "The streets in Regina’s downtown all provide a clear view of the Legislative Assembly. A bylaw prevents construction of structures that would block this view.""Regina: The Early Years." http://scaa.usask.ca/gallery/regina/south/legislative_400.html Retrieved January 13, 2013. Additional provincial government buildings were erected south of the Legislative Building, beginning in the 1950s.

Civic, government and business

The 1908 "gingerbread" Romanesque Revival City Hall on 11th Avenue between Rose and Hamilton Streets provided publicly owned facilities for civic government but also contained a large audience chamber, used for public lectures, balls, theatricals and even boxing matches (see below). In Regina's early days after its 1908 opening—26 years after Regina's founding on the site of Buffalo Bones in 1882—this was an alternative public venue to the Regina Theatre and other privately owned venues.

Across 11th Avenue from City Hall at the corner with Hamilton Street was the RH Williams and Sons Department Store.

The Army and Navy discount department store was opened at the corner of 11th Avenue at Broad Street in 1920, only one year after Samuel Joseph Cohen opened the first Army & Navy location in Vancouver in 1919, and it would be across both streets from the Allen (later Metropolitan) and Broadway theatres. The Robert Simpson Company built a mail order house in 1915 at 1050 Broad Street.Regina: The Early Years. "The Robert Simpson Co. Western Mail Order House Regina." http://scaa.usask.ca/gallery/regina/north/warehouse_a_1223.html December 10, 2012. Considerably north of downtown and next to the original town cemetery, "[d]uring the 1930s the Robert Simpson Company operated a full-service department store on the first four floors of the building[until] 1946, when Simpson's purchased the R.H. Williams and Sons Department Store on Hamilton Street and 11th Avenue and moved the retail end of the operation into that building," when the Broad Street branch changed to wholesale operations; "[t]oday, after many mergers, the company has become Sears Canada, and the Broad Street building is still in use today as a call centre and warehouse." The downtown retail branch closed several years ago as retail trade increasingly moved to shopping malls in the outskirts of the city.

It temporarily relocated for some years to the considerably smaller Beaux-Arts old Post Office building on Scarth and 11th Avenue which had been left standing and essentially without purpose after the construction of the new post office on South Railway Street (now renamed Saskatchewan Drive) after the demolition of the 1908 building, and this saved the old Post Office—now containing the stage of the professional Globe Theatre—from the wrecker’s ball.Regina Leader-Post, June 11, 1976, June 18, 1963).