Kitakaro Sapporo Honkan (北菓楼札幌本館)

The building was erected in 1926 as the Hokkaidō Prefectural Library (北海道庁立図書館), in memory of the visit of the Prince Regent, the future Shōwa Emperor, and thanks to an imperial gift. It was the first full-scale library in Hokkaidō. It was designed by architect-engineers of the prefecture gathered around Hagiwara Atsumasa (萩原惇正), and served as a library until 1967.

In 1967, after the gift of 220 works by the painter Migishi Kotaro (三岸好太郎) to Hokkaidō, the building became the Hokkaido Prefectural Museum of Art, the first art museum in Hokkaidō. Renamed the Migishi Kotaro Museum of Art in 1977, it moved to a new building in 1983. The building then served as an annex of the prefectural archives (北海道立文書館別館) until 2014.

The confectioner Kitakaro (北菓楼), founded in 1991, made it its first street-front shop in Sapporo, after twenty-five years of dreaming of a flagship in the city. Tadao Ando (安藤忠雄) provided the basic design; the design of the renovation is credited to Takenaka (竹中工務店), Ando's office (安藤忠雄建築研究所) and 西島設計. The shop opened on 18 March 2016 on the theme of the "salon", a place for cakes, culture and meetings.

The place has been listed among the "hundred cultural sites" of Sapporo (さっぽろ・ふるさと文化百選) since 1990 and appears in the City of Sapporo's list of "seeds of landscape" (景観の種). The renovation received the BELCA Prize (renovation category, 27th edition) and the 2016 Good Design Award.

The brick walls facing the street, to the south and west, and the entrance hall are reinforced and kept; everything else is new construction, which keeps the original volume without raising it. The exterior, in the Secession style, has columns rising over several storeys, the giant order, and a geometric design of straight lines. The roof and the fascia that successive adaptations to the cold climate had added were removed to give the facade its original design back. The facing tiles, rare and made by a nearly hand-crafted process, are reused: where they were damaged, tiles from the walls being demolished were taken and washed in acid.

The brick walls are reinforced in two ways, depending on what was to be shown: reinforcing bars and mortar inside the brickwork itself, or a reinforced-concrete wall lining it. In both cases the new structure supports them. The entrance hall is surrounded by reinforced concrete so that its staircase carries no load; the artificial-stone finish, the work of Taishō-era craftsmen, is kept as it was, along with the original reliefs and acanthus ornaments.

Inside, the shop occupies a large volume three storeys high. The floor of the café, upstairs, is thrown across it as if floating. Facing the void, the preserved brick wall can be seen in full, and the bare brick answers a flat slab without beams and a ceiling of white cross vaults on slender columns. The soft light of the south windows, left in place, falls on the texture of the brick. On the first floor, the east and west walls of the café are bookshelves rising to the ceiling and carrying about 6,000 books; there are books on Hokkaidō, confectionery, food and architecture among them.

On the ground floor, the Kitakaro shop offers almost the whole range of the house, Japanese confectionery, Western pastries and fresh cakes, along with products made for this shop alone. One corner, the "Migishi Satellite" (ミギシ・サテライト), recalls the former museum: it shows works by Migishi Kotaro from the collections of the Migishi Kotaro Museum of Art, changed with each season. The former entrance hall keeps the look it had when the building was completed in 1926.

On the first floor, the café serves lunches and desserts. Café customers are free to read the books on the walls. At the back, the memorial room shows the building's history in photographs, documents and objects.

The shop is open from 10:00 to 18:00 and closes only on 1 January. The café, on the first floor, is open from 11:00 to 16:00, with meals served until 14:00. It closes on Tuesdays, or the following Wednesday when the Tuesday is a public holiday, and takes no reservations.

The building stands one street north of Ōdōri Park (大通公園), on Kita 1-jo avenue (北1条通), the approach to Hokkaidō Shrine (北海道神宮). It has no dedicated car park; it can also be reached through the pedestrian underground passage of the street leading from Sapporo Station (札幌駅前通地下歩行空間).