Today we’re looking at the Venini House, in Calgary’s Scarboro neighbourhood, and shooting a BIGDoer.com Then & Now. Woohoo! The goal of these posts is to compare or connect with something from the past and the creative process is wildly fun. 1) First, we take an old image sourced by us or supplied by a reader that, shows some street scene from long ago. 1a) Then, if the location is unclear, we do a little research to find it, but if not, we move on to step two.
2) Next, we visit the place and shoot a Now photo, while doing our best to duplicate the angle, composition and content of the original. If we can and it’s not always possible. We’ll even match seasons, when possible. 3) Finally, and this where it really starts to get interesting, we dig up some history and babble on about the experience here on this website. That’s what we’re doing right now.
Venini House Scarboro Calgary 1928 & 2024 – it’s hasn’t changed! A before and after by Chris Doering & Connie Biggart (BIGDoer/Synd)
Thanks to “Dale” for sponsoring this and many other posts at BIGDoer.com. Be like Dale…
This fine home dates to 1915ish (reports differ slightly – a common problem when researching history) and sits on a wedge-shaped lot where two streets at a traffic circle diverge. The left route, when facing the house, is one of the few ways out of the neighbourhood and when leaving Scarboro via that way, the majestic home is in clear view. Straight ahead and unmissable, there it is.
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The Scarboro community dates to the early 1910s and the location is a little west of and sort of overlooking downtown. It’s an exclusive kind of place (meaning, even if we won ten-million in the lotto, they’d never permit us to live there) and has many historic homes. With its tree-lined streets and beautifully tended properties, most of them with classic old homes, it’s picture perfect.
Into the 1920s, the neighbourhood had as many empty lots as it did those with homes.
Chris here and I know Scarboro well from my childhood and walked these streets on the way to school. That’s back in the 1970s and often I passed the Venini House. Being from a “lesser” neighbourhood to the east, it admittedly felt foreign and odd. Not that it was bad, but it was just so nice that it was hard to comprehend. There’s no police tape…or cars on blocks…how weird! 😉😉😉
The first residents of the house were the Veninis and it suggested descents still own it today. Mr Venini (George Demetrio Venini) was once a big-wheel at the Mason & Reich Piano Company (piano shops were a thing back in the day) and lived at this residence for about sixty years. He only passed in the mid-1970s and at the ripe old age of 92.
Venini came from Italy to Calgary, by way of Ontario and Manitoba. While at the piano store, he commissioned the building of this house and with his wife, raised some kids here. Three of them in fact. Venini was very active in the church and his daughter Marie Bernice penned a book the subject in the 1970s. The title is “From the Buffalo to the Cross: A History of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Calgary”.
Now let’s talk about what’s changed after almost 100 years…(the sound of crickets). Ummm, let’s see…(more crickets). It looks much as is it did and goes down as one of the least changed subjects used in a BIGDoer.com Then & Now. It’s now in contention with this one…The Greenhill Hotel Blairmore AB is Timeless.
It’s like time has stood still here and in a dynamic city such as this, that’s almost unheard of. When Venini built the house, Calgary had a population of just under 75 thousand. Today it’s over 1.5 million and that’s 1900%-ish increase according to the old calculator here at the desk.
Okay, we found something that differs…the gate at the front has changed…but that’s it. Even the fire hydrant out there on the street is in the same spot. Thinking…the hedge is bigger…he said while grasping for something to talk about, to help round out this post. Now we’re out of things compare, so let’s just appreciate how gorgeous the home was and is.
We’re unsure what the thing is left of the fire hydrant in the old photo – a postal box? A police call box? Given its position, neither seems to make sense, so we’ll say something we hate stating…”we don’t know”. We zoomed into the photo as best we could, but it’s not clear enough to see.
Downtown Calgary is not far away in back, but the Venini House obscures some of it from this angle in the modern view. Back in 1928 there wasn’t much anything tall out that way.
Even if the exterior is the same, we understand the inside may not be as it was. From that time we posted the house on social media: “They did a major renovation of the interior about 15 years ago…” – Jolanda Slagmolen-Flores. Unless we get an invite to come in (we’ll bring the beer – top self stuff too), we can only imagine how it looks. I’m sure it’s almost as nicely decorated as our place.
Mason & Reich not only manufactured pianos but also phonographs. The Calgary outlet was located in the 500 block of 8th Avenue Southwest back when Mr Venini worked there. That building is long gone, but if you stand there in front of the Barcelona Tavern, close to Cucina Market Bistro, but after hours when it’s less noisy downtown, and you listen carefully, perhaps you can hear someone playing softly on the keys. It comes on the breeze.
Venini was the provincial manager for Mason and Risch and retired in the early 1930s. Apparently, it was good endeavour and got you a nice big house in an exclusive part of town.
The Then photo is thanks to the University of Calgary and came with the date 02/03/1928. Our shot was late in December 2024, in case you’re curious. While we source many of the photos used in this ongoing series, we also accept images sent by readers. If you have an old family photo showing some kind of street scene like this, that you think we might successfully duplicate, we encourage you to send it our way.
Broad scenes work best and of course, it’s important that something from the old days remains. Images that show great change – that is there’s only one or two things left from then are still present, or ones that in contrast show minimal change (like the Venini House), are usually the most dramatic. We love doing these and always look forward to new challenges.
“The photos made by Chris and Connie are exceptionally good. Their research is very well done and they are happy to share their work with others. They are preserving our visual history. I highly recommend “Off the Beaten Path”…” Marion Kelch.
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Date of adventure: 1928 and 2024. Location: Calgary, Scarboro. Article references and thanks: City of Calgary, the University of Calgary photo archives (including the Venini family fonds), old Henderson Directories (at various locations) and the Medicine Hat & District Genealogical Society.
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