Windsor

Windsor is the capital of and largest city in Albion as well as the main metropolitan centre in the province of Columbia. With a metropolitan population in excess of 5 million people in the Windsor-Peterborough metropolitan area and more than 8 million in the Greater Golden Fishhook, Windsor forms the centre of Albion's most prosperous and densely-populated urban area.

Windsor is situated on an isthmus between Puget Sound and the Hyaschuck. It is a major gateway for trade with northern Asia and one of the top five largest ports in North America in terms of volume of containers handled.

Initially emerging as a town built around the logging industry, Windsor exploded into prosperity after being declared the capital of the British colonies in the Pacific Northwest, riding the fallout of various gold rushes to absorb significant population and economic booms. The city has since developed into a major centre for the information technology, shipbuilding and aerospace sectors, with a strong economy and an ethnically diverse and highly-educated populace. Windsor is well-known for its large Japanese-Alban community, its celebrated food scene, its proliferation of jazz clubs and a scenic downtown dominated by remarkably well-preserved Queen Anne Revival and Gothic Revival buildings largely protected by firm heritage policies.

History
The Windsor region has been inhabited for at least 4,000 years. At the time of European arrival, the region of Duwamish Bay was occupied by at least seventeen Indigenous villages.

The area was first visited by Europeans in May 1792, when George Vancouver's expedition charted the Pacific Northwest. The region would see a large influx of settlers from 1815 onwards following the end of the War of 1812 and the Great Flight West, beginning with the arrival of the Loyalists following the massive overland trek from what is now the State of Canada. The first Europeans to settle in the area were two Loyalists exiled from Upper Canada: Former musketeer Leonard James Kratz, formerly of Gosfield, and retired Corporal Francis Arthur Schram, formerly of Louth Township. The two were allocated large tracts of land near Duwamish Bay and settled in with their families. The Schram Tract in particular underlies much of central downtown Windsor, including Front and Schram Streets.

The region, then known as Duwamps, remained a comparative backwater for some decades in favour of the Columbia River region, accumulating a few settlers as a result of large-scale British migration. The discovery of gold in the Fraser Canyon in 1843 brought new focus on the north of the British Columbian territory, and with it new attention on the Puget Sound area, through which many settlers began to flow. In 1847, then-Lieutenant Governor William Chafin moved the territorial capital from Fort George to Duwamps, renaming the area Windsor, and spearheading the construction of a railroad between the north and south of the newly-organized Crown Colony of New Albion. The central location of the Duwamish Bay area was seen as advantageous to administering the entire colony.

Early Windsor
Early Windsor experienced significant boom-and-bust cycles as a consequence of the resource-centric development of New Albion's economy. The town was initially heavily supported by the logging industry and supported a number of sawmills, initially prospering from a boom in timbering before declining in the late 1860s, only to rebound as the price of timber again rose. The initial city was built largely from local timber and populated by a mix of local-focused settlers and returning gold prospectors, most of them coming back empty-handed in search of work. Many early settlers were of Asian origin, particularly settlers from China.

The importance of Windsor as a port of entry for fortune-seekers in the various Fraser Canyon gold rushes led the city to accumulate often-disappointed men who had sought fortune in the north and come back with little to nothing. Crime and alcohol-fueled violence were issues in the early years, leading the territorial government to establish the Royal Alban Mounted Police to both patrol the gold rush routes and manage the more serious instances of crime in key cities. RAMP officers would remain the key law enforcement agency in Windsor until the establishment of the Windsor Police Service.

Windsor had become the largest city in Albion by 1878, and the completion of the Dominion Pacific Railway would increase its size, importance and prestige. The city acted as the major gateway to the rest of the new Dominion. Arriving ships would typically land preferentially in the capitol, or in Victoria or Granville in some cases, and travellers would move from there elsewhere into the country.

In 1884, the Great Windsor Fire obliterated most of the historic central business district. Most of pre-fire Windsor consisted of wood buildings, allowing the fire to spread easily. The city was sufficiently prosperous at this point, however, that the downtown core was rebuilt in a more splendid form, with municipal policy eschewing the use of wood cladding in favour of brick and stone. Most of the oldest surviving heritage buildings in the city date from this period onwards.

Post-Great Fire boom period
Urban planning following the Great Fire was heavily influenced by architects who had arrived from the United Kingdom in the preceding decades. The most influential architect in the early post-fire years was likely W.S. Palmer, an English migrant of status heavily influenced by the Queen Anne Revival style. Palmer's most notable project was the four-storey Rainier Building at the corner of King and Kratz Streets, heavily influenced by the Savoy Theatre in Westminster, London. The building remains standing today as one of Albion's most prominent heritage structures. Its design proved influential on future developments, leading to a proliferation of British Queen Anne Revival buildings in the urban core. In contrast to the New World Queen Anne Revival style more common in the United States, the style in Albion remained much more closely aligned with British trends.

Other key architectural influences came from the Gothic Revival style, which would eventually overtake the Queen Anne Revival style in the zeitgeist. The sloped roofs and sturdy stone construction associated with the style proved well-suited to the cool and rainy Alban climate, and its stylings were seen as fundamentally British and royalist, dovetailing with the sentiments of the strongly British-leaning populace. The oldest surviving building in the city - the 1857 St. Paul's Anglican Church, which survived the fire - also proved inspirational.

Also dating from this period are a number of mostly-institutional Neo-Baroque buildings, among them the Parliament of Albion Building, constructed in 1891 from a mix of Haddington Island andesite and Nelson Island granite.

Key building materials in the post-fire period were mandated to be fireproof masonry, with local stone playing an important role. Many heritage buildings dating from after the fire are constructed with locally-quarried granite, or from Chuckanut or Tenino sandstone, with limestone also coming into play (particularly as banding material in Queen Anne Revival-style buildings). Red and brown brick would come to proliferate, much of it originating from the Quatseech Hill Brickworks once located south of downtown. The brickworks has long since closed, but Quatseech Hill bricks define much of downtown's heritage stock.

This building boom was driven by a new wave of gold rushes in the Cariboo and Klondike regions, during which Windsor emerged as a key supply station. Prospectors typically returned disappointed, but the city thrived by handling logistics like selling the men food, tools and clothing. Those who did return wealthy would often set up shop in the city. Government investment further bolstered the economy, supporting the creation of shipbuilding facilities to service the country's massive coastline.

Going into the First World War, the shipbuilding industry experienced an immense boom to account for the fact that Albion suddenly needed ships to ferry supplies to Britain and other allies, namely Australia, which spent much of the war sparring with Siam. The region would similarly become the epicentre of Albion's burgeoning aircraft sector upon the discovery of practical flight, with entrepreneurs increasingly recognizing the importance of aircraft in navigating the immense land distances of the Northwest and the eastern Prairies.

The city was the site of numerous labour disputes in the 1880s onward. The strength of blue-collar labour groups such as bricklayers and shipbuilders paved the way for the Labour movement to take root in Albion. Albion's first Labour Prime Minister, Edward B. Green, held Windsor's mayoralty prior to entering federal politics, and a number of prominent socialist and social-democratic politicians emerged into national prominence as Windsor aldermen.

Commercial buildings

 * The Rainier Building, completed in 1887 at the corner of King and Kratz Streets. A four-storey heritage building in the Queen Anne Revival style, it takes clear inspiration from the Savoy Theatre in London. It currently houses the offices of a communications consultancy on the upper three floors and a menswear store on the main floor.
 * The Columbia Steamships Building, a seven-storey building completed in 1893 at the corner of Front and King Streets. Another Queen Anne Revival landmark built for the now-defunct Columbia Steamship Company, it resembles a number of Richard Norman Shaw buildings in the UK, namely Albion House in Liverpool. Currently houses a fantastically expensive bistro on the main floor, with the upper floors occupied by the offices of a high-powered law firm.
 * The Edward B. Green Building, formerly known as 78 King Street. Built in 1887 as a four-storey Queen Anne Revival building, it was rented out to several businesses, most notably the dental practice of future Prime Minister Edward B. "Doc" Green. The building today houses a prominent first-floor pub, Doc's Public House, with the upper storeys long being occupied by the local offices of the Labour Party of Albion.
 * The Bird Building, a 24-storey Art Deco skyscraper opened in 1929. It was Windsor's tallest tower at the time it opened. The building is clad in limestone slabs at the lower levels and red brick on up the elegantly-articulated tower, with edging and accents in white limestone and a pyramidal roof peak in greenish slate. Its most distinct exterior feature is heavy use of pale terracotta banding with depictions of symbols of birds of Albion, mainly loons, geese, jays and swans, motifs carried through to an extravagantly-appointed lobby. The building has cycled through tenants over the years but currently houses a number of businesses, including the head office of Air Albion.
 * AIBC Tower, fronting onto Front and Granville Streets. At 307 metres tall (about 82 storeys), it is the tallest building in Albion and has been so since its completion in 1984. It is a massive and handsomely articulated glazed tower that appears nearly black from a distance, with a base clad in carnelian granite. AIBC was the original anchor tenant and maintains its head office and a major downtown branch there, with other floors leased to a number of companies.
 * Windsor Dominion Centre, a massive glass tower at Front and Bond Streets. It comes in at 72 storeys and 299 metres high, second-tallest in Albion behind AIBC Tower, and serves as the global headquarters of Windsor Dominion Bank. The building was opened in 1975 but underwent a total recladding in 2009 to bring it to its current white-and-glassy appearance, replacing older white marble slabs with glazing wherever possible.
 * Merritt Place, a 908-foot glazed tower at Merritt and Port Streets. Originally opened in 2009 as the mixed-use Trump International Hotel and Suites Windsor, the building dropped its branding after Donald Trump's arrest and conviction as part of U.S. President Samuel L. Jackson's crackdown on financial crimes. The building, third-tallest in Windsor, is now owned by a major hotel chain. It offers both hotels and condos.
 * Levin International Hotel and Centre Windsor, a splendid 59-storey glazed skyscraper at Kratz and Bond. Opened in 2011, it's one of many buildings operated by the Levin Group and CEO Paul Levin, possibly Albion's most ridiculously overblown TV capitalist. The building houses a handsomely-appointed luxury hotel and several storeys worth of condos as well as event facilities.
 * The Dominion Pacific Building, a 17-storey building at Port and Front Streets. Opened in 1913 and built in the Italianate style as the then-headquarters of the Dominion Pacific Railway, it was the tallest building in the British Empire at the time. DomPac left the building in 1988 and sold it to a real estate firm. It is now a fully-rented office space with extensive green retrofitting.

Religious buildings

 * St. Paul's Anglican Church, completed in 1857 on Church Street. It's the oldest surviving building in town and a rare survivor of the Great Fire. Built in a Gothic Revival style primarily from local granite, it continues to operate as an Anglican church. Its steeple is the largest entirely stone steeple in Albion.
 * Trinity Anglican Church, a major church located on the north crest of the Quatseech neighbourhood, completed in 1878 and expanded in 1902. An important Anglican church constructed primarily from local stone. Its spectacular stained glass windows are a regional landmark.
 * Windsor Betsuin Buddhist Temple, the country's largest Buddhist centre of worship, completed in 1949 to replace an older 1910s-era building. It's located in the Quatseech and is a brick structure with roof pitching, gabling and detailing consistent with traditional Japanese architectural concepts, reflecting its significance as a centre of the Japanese Alban community.

Institutional and other public buildings

 * The Old RBA Building, at the corner of Duwamish and Queen Streets, just blocks from Parliament. Constructed in 1928 for the Royal Bank of Albion, it's a 10-storey Art Deco building in brown brick and white limestone. While it housed the RBA's headquarters until the 1950s, much of the building was rented out by the federal government to house Parliamentarians' offices. Today it's a fully government-owned building occupied entirely by Members of Parliament and their staff.
 * Grand Pacific Station, located at Front and Chafin Streets. Opened in 1906, it remains the largest and busiest train station in Albion and a major hub for DCRail's Golden Express high-speed line. The station takes clear influence from St. Pancras in London, being built in a Gothic Revival style with facades in red brick and white-and-buff limestone and terracotta, accented by wrought-iron finials and latticework. The station once housed a luxurious railway hotel, which now serves as offices for DCRail.

Sports and recreation

 * The Dominion Airlines Centre, opened downtown in 1962 and expanded over the years to its present capacity of 18,000+ for hockey and 19,000+ for basketball. It is a multi-use arena and the home stadium of the Windsor Redcoats of the National Hockey League and the Windsor Whirlwinds of the National Basketball Association. Initially opened as the Columbia Coliseum, it was known as WD Garden from 1989 to 2014 during the ownership of Windsor Dominion Bank before being sold to Dominion Airlines and renovated. The arena is being actively considered for replacement.