Harcourt House was designed by Freda O’Connor, the first woman president of the Alberta Association of Architects. The building is recognized as a strong example of the International Style and is one of Edmonton’s notable modern buildings.
The building is named after Robert Earle Harcourt, a businessman and player with the Edmonton Eskimos rugby football team. He was born in Edmonton in 1910 and died in 2000 at age 90. His childhood home – the George Harcourt Residence in Windsor Park – was designated a Municipal Historic Resource in 2009.
When gold and silver deposits were discovered near Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories, Harcourt travelled to the area by dog sled and boat to work in the region’s mines. Later, he helped pioneer a winter road between the Peace River area and Great Slave Lake.
After the Alberta and Dominion governments built the road, Harcourt founded the Yellowknife Transportation Company. The company made the first freight delivery by road to Yellowknife in 1939 and helped lay the groundwork for the all-season Mackenzie Highway.
In 1965, Harcourt began constructing the building for his company Decury Supply; however, he sold it to the federal government that same year when it purchased his northern transportation businesses.
The building later became known as Harcourt House and was home to the Edmonton Rehabilitation Society, which operated a range of programs, including sewing, weaving and crafts, for people with disabilities. These programs helped participants develop skills to find work in various industries. The Edmonton Rehabilitation Society is now known as Goodwill Industries of Alberta. In 1988, Goodwill received funding for a new Edmonton headquarters and moved out of Harcourt House.
WECAN (Where Edmonton Community Artists Network) Society moved into Harcourt House in September 1988 and has operated artists' studios, classes and exhibitions in the space ever since. The Society was formed after several local artists organized an art auction to benefit victims of the Black Friday tornado that struck east Edmonton on July 31, 1987. The success of the auction, which featured 200 local artists and nearly two dozen cultural and arts organizations, helped the Society secure a place where artists could work and exhibit together. In March 2025, City Council approved a $500,000 grant to WECAN Society to assist with the purchase of Harcourt House from the province.
About the architect and architecture
Harcourt House is valued for its association with its architects, Freda and Dennis O’Connor. Freda was born in Wales in 1926 and worked on designing temporary structures in Coventry after areas of the city were bombed during the Second World War. She and Dennis O’Connor married in 1951 and later moved to Edmonton, where they opened their own architectural firm.
The firm designed numerous schools, churches, commercial buildings and health centres. When Freda was elected president of the Alberta Association of Architects in 1974, she became the first woman to lead a professional architectural association in Canada.
Harcourt House displays many features of the International Style, with a minimalist form that emphasizes vertical and horizontal lines. The building has a flat roof, tall evenly spaced windows stacked vertically, buff brick façades and an offset main entrance on the north end of the front façade. An underpass driveway on the south side gives the building a “floating box” appearance when viewed from the front and rear.
Harcourt House is the 196th building to receive a Municipal Historic Resource designation in Edmonton.
