In 1903, Walter and Edith Fish purchased a plot of land on the corner of Edmonton Street and Cumberland Avenue, just northwest of Winnipeg’s Central Park. Created in 1893, Central Park offered lush green space in a quickly growing city. By 1900, it had become a hotspot for affluent home buyers and builders.

Joseph Greenfield designed the house, which was completed in 1903. The two and a half storey Queen Anne Revival style house features a turret, buff brick exterior atop a limestone foundation. Picturesque and asymmetrical, the windows came in a variety of shapes and sizes. The oval leaded-glass window near the front door is most distinctive, and other windows largely variations on rectangles. Ornamented woodwork, including detailed lattices, cover the two-storey porch. The elegant look of the house is enhanced with an over-sized dormer on the south gable and the steeped hip roof capped with wrought-iron cresting.

Hermisdas Benard, a former Quebec farmer and hotelier in Winnipeg, bought the house from Walter and Edith for $5,600 in 1903. Benard had just sold his Winnipeg hotel, the Hotel du Canada, for $80,000. He passed away in 1906, though his wife Louisa continued to reside in the home until 1936.