The History of
Inglewood

Long before Calgary officially became a city, Inglewood was already taking shape. Established in 1875 — ten years before the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway transformed a North-West Mounted Police outpost into a growing settlement — it remains Calgary's oldest neighbourhood, with much of its early history still visible today. Near Fort Calgary, the Hunt House has stood on its original riverside site since around 1880, dating back to the era when the Hudson's Bay Company operated a trading post along the Bow River flats. It is widely recognized as the oldest building in Calgary still standing in its original location.

In 1893, Inglewood added another milestone to its history with the founding of the Calgary Brewing and Malting Company, Alberta's first brewery. Operating beside the Elbow River for more than a century before closing in 1994, it became part of a broader industrial landscape that included stockyards, packing plants, Fire Station No. 3, and manufacturing facilities. Inglewood was a neighbourhood built on production and industry — a place that helped construct, supply, and sustain a young Calgary.

What makes Inglewood especially distinctive is how much of that identity has endured. Its side streets still contain homes from the 1880s through the 1920s on their original lots, creating one of the city's richest concentrations of visible historic architecture. Along 9th Avenue, former industrial and warehouse buildings have been adapted into independent shops, breweries, cafés, and music venues while retaining the character of the area's working past. The Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, established in 1929, remains one of Canada's oldest urban bird sanctuaries and preserves an important green corridor along the river. Through every cycle of growth and downturn Calgary has experienced, Inglewood has managed to retain a strong sense of continuity — a neighbourhood that still unmistakably looks and feels like itself.