What a difference 131 years makes.
The City of Medicine Hat has grown upward and outward since before its incorporation in 1906. From residential, commercial and industrial growth, the original tent town has flourished in the corner of opportunity in southeast Alberta.
Each year has brought growth in each corner and industry across the city. In 1894, a total of $45,000 was spent on new buildings in the city.
The biggest slice of that 18th-century pie was the Medicine Hat General Hospital’s Maternity Cottage. The stone building, named the The Lady Aberdeen Women’s Hospital after the wife of then Governor General of Canada, Sir John Campbell Hamilton Gordon, was finished being built in 1985 and stood on the southeast corner of the hospital grounds to serve the special needs of Medicine Hat’s maternity cases.
The building costs came to $3,500 with furnishings adding another $1,000 to the total. The General Hospital was condemned in 1953 and demolished.
The News is looking back at notable events from Medicine Hat’s history as we celebrated our 140th publishing year on Oct. 29.
A new two-story residence, sized 21 x 24 ft., with tower and modern architecture located on the Esplanade cost $2,500. The construction of a concrete addition to a house as well as a large, two-story cottage on Main Street and a large concrete residence on the Esplanade each cost $2,000 to be built.
A total of 50 various buildings were listed to have been built or improvements have been made in and around Medicine Hat through the summer.
“We think we can safely saw, without fear of contradiction, that there is not a town in Western Canada, of the size of this, that can boast of so many handsome residences,” the Nov. 22, 1894 News read.
“Of this one thing we are sure, that there is not another town in the West, of our retentions, that has made anything like the same progress during 1894.”
In a modern contrast, the total estimated value of approved residential construction projects for the year 2025 to date is notably higher than in 2024. The 25 permits issued so far amount to $11,908,113 in value.
The average value of residential builds approved this year has climbed by a little more than $100,000 per permit over last year.
The total value of all new building permits issued in Medicine Hat across the first three quarters of the year sits at just over $138 million as of Oct. 31. The value is inflated significantly by the approval of the permit for the new Holy Trinity Academy school the Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education is building near Monsignor McCoy High School. That project is valued at $67 million and the permit was approved in June.
