MAKING NEW MEMORIES
Brewer honours Farnam Block site heritage
As an excavator began to pull down the walls of Saskatoon’s Farnam Block building, residents gathered to watch the demolition.
Some were there to mourn, shedding tears while grabbing a last photo. Others took bricks as mementoes. Many had hoped to see the Farnam Block restored and the thought of another business rising in its place felt unnatural and wrong.
That was March 16, 2015. It took a while, but construction of a new building on the corner of Broadway Avenue and 11th Street East wrapped up last year and it now houses Prairie Sun Brewery, a business that embraces the site’s 103-year history.
Prairie Sun co-owner Heather Williams was one of those sad to see the Farnam Block go. Lydia’s Pub, the building’s final tenant, had been her local haunt; her favourite aspects of the pub were the great bands, patio and burger-and-beer combo. She said the building was an icon of the Broadway streetscape.
“It was a very emotional building and it held so much, not just for the Lydia’s goers, but even past tenants and anyone that grew up in Saskatoon, really — it’s such a staple,” she said.
“I knew I would have to be very sensitive to that and very careful to honour what was past.”
Without Lydia’s, there may never have been a Prairie Sun Brewery, as the pub was where Williams first fell in love with craft beer.
“I actually had my first craft beer at Lydia’s — it was a Big Rock Grasshopper — out of the same tap that we now have at the bar upstairs,” she recalls. “I was just sipping the beer like, ‘Oh my God, what is this? Why does this taste so good? Why is this so much better than other beers?’
“It just got me hooked — that was it.”
Williams, alongside co-owners Brad Pederson and Cameron Ewen, first opened their brewery on Quebec Avenue in the Kelsey Woodlawn neighbourhood in 2013 before taking over the former Farnam Block location in late October 2019.
When they first began searching for a home for the brewery, they had wanted to open along Broadway Avenue, but the high rental prices made it unsustainable. Williams said it felt like fate intervened when, years later, the Farnam Block’s owners began searching for businesses interested in their space and she realized Prairie Sun was at a point where it could compete for a spot in the location she already loved so much.
“It’s kind of like this really cool, crazy, freaky full-circle thing.”
At one point, Farnam Block was to be replaced with a five-unit building and Williams planned to take a single unit to open a growler fill station. But soon the idea of one unit turned to two, then three and she figured why not just take over the entire space and move the brewery completely?
Williams knew any new business opening at the site would be contentious for some locals who were still upset about the decision to demolish the Farnam Block. So she held a public meeting, in addition to the city’s zoning meeting, where residents came and shared their concerns and ideas for the new building. Most people who attended just said they wanted to see the site’s history preserved and celebrated, Williams recalls.
As the sole tenant, and because a full brewery would not fit into the previous layout plans, Williams was able to design the interior to her precise specifications, working closely with architect James Zimmer to ensure the history of the Farnam Block would shine within the new space.
Not only has the new design incorporated some original wood beams, it also has the old beer tap and the Lydia’s Pub sign and door — all of which were either salvaged by the building’s owners, local chiropractors Roger Kiva and Dean Potapinski, or donated by fellow Farnam Block lovers. A Lego replica of the building, created by Sandie Irvine after the Farnam Block was demolished, was also donated and is set to take up residence in Prairie Sun once its custom glass display box is completed.
Kiva and Potapinski also salvaged the large brick “Farnam Block 1912” sign that graced the building ’s facade, though Williams says she is unsure what to do with it as it’s too large and heavy to mount on the walls or ceiling. She says she is open to suggestions if anyone has a good idea.
It was a very emotional building and it held so much, not just for the Lydia’s goers, but even past tenants and anyone that grew up in Saskatoon, really — it’s such a staple.
Prairie Sun Brewery co-owner Heather Williams
I knew I would have to be very sensitive to that (history of Lydia’s Pub) and very careful to honour what was past.
As The Farnam Block grew and evolved with the Broadway community it called home, a lot about its history remains overlooked. With help from Peggy Sarjeant and the Saskatoon Heritage Society’s History Review, we highlight five interesting facts about the Farnam Block.
1.
Saskatoon’s first head shop
Though cannabis was legalized about three years after the demolition of the Farnam Block, the building, as a hub for Saskatoon youth culture, became home to the city’s first head shop in the fall of 1967, more than half a century before legalization.
The shop, aptly named The Blown Mind, was the first of its kind in Western Canada. Though it only lasted a year, it blazed a trail for the city’s second head shop, The Sol Store, which had a seven-year run in the building from 1970 to 1976.
2.
Corner Gas connection
If you went to see live music at the Farnam Block’s Crypt Coffee House during its five-month stint in 1970, chances are you enjoyed the country/folk band Humphrey and the Dumptrucks.
Not only did the band live for years in what was then known as The Merry Mansion — which more recently housed the bookstore Turning the Tide before it was demolished alongside the Farnam Block — they also wrote the music for a pop opera, Cruel Tears, in 1975. The production toured from Vancouver to Montreal and included Janet Wright, known to Corner Gas fans as Emma Leroy, in its extensive cast.
3.
Full house
When the Farnam Block was first constructed by Quebec transplant Arlington Ingalls Farnam in 1912, the three-storey structure was valued at $20,000 and its building permit allowed it to be used for offices and stores. Though classified this way, it also housed people in the top two levels, with one- and two-bedroom rental suites at the back of the building.
Farnam was actually listed in the 1913 Henderson’s Directory as living and working in the building, residing in a suite on the ground floor, likely in the southwest corner — the building’s only one-bedroom suite — and running his real estate business out of a storefront on the same level.
4.
Documenting history
Photographer John Gibson moved to Saskatoon in 1925 and quickly set up his photo studio in the lower level of the Farnam Block. He specialized in commercial and portrait photography.
Many of his photos, and those of his son Murray Gibson, shed light on what city living was like from the mid-1920s into the 1980s, and have found a home in the city’s photo archives housed by the Saskatoon Public Library.
5.
Lydia’s ghosts
Lydia’s Pub was a well-known spot for ghost hunters in Saskatoon and was a stop on the Marr House Board’s annual Ghost Busser Tour.
Many of these ghost stories were connected to renovations the pub had undergone; staff said they witnessed unusual activity late at night after closing, from disembodied footsteps to shadowy figures and even a face appearing in the window of the inside front door long after the outside door had already been locked.