Fire at historic Ogden Block in Calgary's southeast sends one person to hospital

A century-old building that Calgarians have been lobbying to save from demolition caught fire early Wednesday, sending one person who was insideto hospital.

Carol Henke, public information officer for the Calgary Fire Department, said a call came in at 3:50 a.m. about a fire in the Ogden Block, a 110-year-old building at 7044 Ogden Rd. S.E.

The fire was on the second floor of the building, which had been boarded up. Henke said no electricity or gas have been connectedfor some time.

Two people who had entered the building had started a fire for warmth,which then got out of control, she said.

One person left the scene, the other was brought out by fire crews. That person was taken to hospital for smoke inhalation.

Henke said the fire is not being considered as suspicious, and that the building will be boarded up again.

She noted the level of damage to the building is not yet known.

According to the Millican-Ogden Community Revitalization Plan, the Ogden Block was built in 1913 by Eng Hon Quan and Eng Shon Yun.

They operated the Hong Lee laundry on the main floor and ran an 18-room boarding house upstairs into the 1920s.

The Lee Association of Calgary states the laundry was used to wash clothes for rail workers at the nearby Canadian Pacific Railway yard. The building's red brick exterior was later stuccoed over, and the building was converted into apartments, according to the volunteer organization's centennial yearbook.

The laundry industry played an important role for Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Researchers say laundrymen were able to find a niche with another difficult form of manual labour after railway work because discrimination left few other options.

Purchased by the city in early 2021, the building is slated to be demolished to make way for the southeast leg of the Green Line LRT.

For the past three years, community residents have been fighting to save the building, which they say has significant historical value.

Bonny Warbeck, chairperson for the Millican-Ogden Heritage Group, saidthe building is now on the city's heritage inventory, but that doesn't ensure its protection.

"[If] people are thinking of developing a particular site that's on the inventory, it kind of says, 'hey, hold on, like you really need to look into this a little bit further.'"

She said the building would need a municipal or provincial designation to prevent it from being demolished, but the owner of the building has to apply for that.

"In this case, the owner is the city and they don't want to designate it [because]it doesn't fit their needs."

Warbeck added the damage from the fire was minimal, and that Ogden Block is still worth saving.