Biscuits on the Beltline

Although a sign on the side of the building reads “Biscuit Block” in elegant white all caps, the brick warehouse at the corner of 438 11th Avenue Southeast in Calgary housed furniture for about 14 years before the sweet smell of fresh-baked biscuits wafted from its lofty windows. Its style is distinctly Edwardian commercial: uniform red brick decorated with stone trim, vertical pilasters separating bay windows and an upper cornice adorning the original roofline.
The warehouse was constructed in 1912 by Hugh Neilson, a former cabinetmaker from Ontario who launched his profitable retail and mail-order furniture company in Calgary in 1894. It wasn’t until 1926 that the Independent Biscuit Company took over the property, which became Canada’s first cookie factory, and added a fourth floor (along with several ovens).

The company continued to run its wholesale trade from the building until the mid-1970s, when it once again became a furniture warehouse, home to the Alberta Furniture Company this time around. In 2013, architect and designer Frank Kaspar of Abugov Kaspar Architecture rescued the space from ruin, seamlessly integrating two additional storeys of glass and steel—bringing the total floor area to about 55,000 square feet and giving the structure a modern edge. Allied announced its purchase of the property in 2014, and its history is now preserved in the form of a sleek office space in the heart of the city’s Beltline community.