During the railway boom from the 1880s to the early 1910s, railways considered their terminal stations to be "prestige projects". Around the time construction began on the new Bonaventure Station, the competing Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) started work just two blocks away on Windsor Station, an imposing Richardsonian structure opened in 1889. As the CPR began work on expanding Windsor Station in 1900, the GTR, not to be outdone, seriously considered building a replacement for Bonaventure Station. A design for a new station was commissioned from Chicago architects Charles S. Frost and Albert Hoyt Granger. In the end, however, the new station was never built as the GTR began to focus on its Grand Trunk Pacific transcontinental railway project.