Central Business District (Saskatoon)

 downtown / central business district, subdivision (housing subdivision), neighbourhood, invisible

Saskatoon's downtown area, also home to a few thousand middle-income residents. Excludes the areas north of 25th Street, which are technically in City Park but often considered an extension of downtown. This includes the area of the original west bank settlement which incorporated as the village of Saskatoon on November 16, 1901.

Downtown Saskatoon was created by the railways. In 1890 the Temperance Colonization Society laid out a new town site on the west side of the river, adjacent to the line of the railway, First Avenue paralleled the tracks, and five streets ran at right angles to it, from 19th Street near the river to 23rd Street to the north. The centre street, which became the heart of downtown Saskatoon, was 21st Street.

The buildings on 21st Street and the avenues that intersect it reflect the major periods of the city's development as a commercial centre. Saskatoon's first years as a city, 1906-08, were also the years of its first real boom. this era is represented in the first two blocks of 21st Street. A second, even more vigorous boom period, from 1910 to 1913, established Third Avenue as a business street. After the First World War the city's growth slowed in the world-wide depression, but gradually picked up in the mid '20s. Second Avenue reflects this third period of less hectic growth. More recently, periods of rapid growth occurred in the '60s, and especially at the end of the '70s. The modern office towers along Fourth Avenue represent these later surges of growth.
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www.downtownsaskatoon.com