The Palliser Hotel, Lancaster Block, Canada Life Building and the Hudson's Bay store were built.

Burns leased out the remaining 35,000 square feet (3,300 m2) of office space to a wide variety of tenants.

Historian Hugh Dempsey wrote, "the list of businesses which occupied the Patrick Burns Building…reads like a corporate Who's Who."

The exterior features Lions' heads and other ornamental mouldings sculptured in the surface of the terracotta.

Around 1980 the demolition of the Burns building became a possibility when it was proposed that the property it sat on was needed for the construction of the Calgary Centre for the Performing Arts.

At the time of the recommendation it was thought possible to fit the necessary concert halls and theatres in and around the two old buildings.