Photo credit: City of Saskatoon
At the corner of College Drive and Campus Drive on the University of Saskatchewan campus, the Stone Barn is both one of its most recognizable buildings and most pressing heritage issues.
Built between 1911 and 1912 at a cost of $150,000, the Stone Barn was designed by the Montreal firm Brown and Vallance, which designed many of the university’s earliest signature buildings. Its L-shaped form, gambrel roof, and cedar-shingled upper walls set on an eight-foot base of rough granite are reminiscent of barns in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, making it one of the few structures of its kind on the Prairies. Built to house roughly thirty horses and fifty cattle, the barn anchored the university’s working farm and related teaching and research in animal science. Its west wing served the university’s horses until the 1950s, and its two attached concrete silos are believed to be the oldest in Saskatchewan.
The university’s needs outgrew the building by the early 2000s, and a series of engineering studies over the next twenty years repeatedly flagged worsening structural problems, particularly frost damage to its stone pilasters and roof trusses. The building was closed to animals and the public in 2010 over safety concerns and has been unoccupied since. In 2022, a working group was established to consider its future, followed by a public visioning event and survey in 2023 that drew roughly 600 responses. The barn’s restoration was folded into the university’s “Be What the World Needs” fundraising campaign, but no plan for full restoration or reuse has yet emerged. In 2025, the university’s Board of Governors approved $500,000 in stabilization funding covering structural reinforcement, roofing, flooring, and exterior repairs to keep the barn safe and weathertight while a consultant is engaged to explore longer-term restoration or redevelopment options. The building remains unoccupied in the meantime.
Location: Saskatoon, SK
Endangered Places List: 2026
Status: Endangered
