Great photos! It is interesting to note that the Morse's Tea building had different signage then.

Another great shot from that album

http://www.panoramio.com/photos/original/64650695.jpg

You can also see the Birks Building. What was lost on that block was a real shame, especially considering it has been a parking lot now for 2 decades and counting. What is that really tall brick building to the right of the Joe Howe Building? Is it just an edge of the Roy that I'm seeing or is it part of something that disappeared when Founders Square was built?

I believe that is the Roy building.

There is the orange neon Morses Tea signage that was taken down a bit later.



Funny, I was in a Gingers Tavern way back when but I didn't remember it looking like this. The one I recall was on Hollis where Metropark is now. Seemed to me is was an old stucco or cement building on the outside.

I love that picture to death. lol I think it's cool to see the addition going up, a good picture to show someone if they ask 'why is it 2 different colours?" haha. I would love to see a picture of the original part of the building under construction.. something I know I've not seen before. 2 cranes in older downtown? Yes please. lol

There's also a great photo in that album of the Dalhousie rink under construction. The lobby, grounds, and street-level exterior of the building could've used a big renovation/redesign but I think the roof was a real loss. Anyone know what the site looks like now, and how the new building is coming along?

That is the Gingers Tavern that was on the west side of Hollis between Morris and South. I don't know of any other Gingers at that time. Gingers eventually 'moved' to the Henry House, Granite Brewery.
There was a Sam's bar that was further North on the same side of Hollis in the early 80's and sounds like your description, but I don't recall it being as far north on Hollis as the metropark.
http://www.openfile.ca/halifax/blog/...ax-bar-history
"What is now a parking lot on Hollis between Sackville and Blowers
Sam’s Tavern
Silver Bullet
Double Deuce (1990-1994)
Stonewall Tavern"

You know, I think that is what I recall, Sam's. I don't believe now that I was ever in the Ginger's shown. This would have been around 1984 or so.

From that same gallery:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/o...l/64650699.jpg

Anyone recognize this place?

It is the site of the recently-closed Ela!, formerly Opa!, formerly the Graduate and Blues Corner, on Argyle and Blowers, from 1983.

The bookstore on the left was run by the infamous O'Brien, a fixture in town in those days, a wizened, rumpled, heavily bearded old fellow who always had a cigar in his mouth and who for years was squiring around town a young female companion. They were the subject of much gossip. After a few years you would always see her smoking a large cigar as well as they made their rounds. It was a much-discussed relationship.

Thank heavens, HT didn't want to reserve these buildings as is... the one to the left was an eyesore. I wonder what will become of this site now that Ela is leaving this site?

I remember the bookstore, and the couple.

The building on the left is the one shown earlier as a Radio Shack store on the corner of SGR and Queen, where Cornwallis Place now stands. The church on the right is the site of the present-day Bank of Montreal building that some love so much. Photo date is 1894.

This is from the site of the Nova Scotia Museum.

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/l.../SGR_Queen.jpg

Nice find. I wish the church was still there although I like the Bank of Montreal building also. Do you know what church it was and when it was demolished?

The site describes it as First Baptist Church. No info on demo date.

tragically destroyed by fire
http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/e...es.asp?ID=2999
http://spacingatlantic.ca/2009/10/22...orial-library/

Hindenburg
http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/e...D=32&Language=

Here is a picture from 1962 from the HRM Archives that shows the Pentagon Building in the lower right-hand corner.

(source: http://gencat1.eloquent-systems.com/...halifax_public)

http://gencat1.eloquent-systems.com/..._5006196_1.jpg

Even once the Cogswell Interchange is removed, Scotia Square and the Trade Mart will stand in the way of a significant recovery of the street grid - http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=rf7...da&form=LMLTCC . However, if the Trade Mart were demolished and replaced with slender highrises then that part of the street grid could be almost completed restored.

If only the developers of Scotia Square (Halifax Developments Ltd) could have seen into the future they could have built a couple of smaller scale malls (about the size of Park Lane) built tall, slender, glass office towers and kept the entire street grid. And the Pentagon building could have been saved if the Cogswell Interchange was never built. What a difference it would be.

We were doing some work on the house last week and found this old bottle behind one of the bedroom walls. I have no idea how old it is but the address of the brewery is on Buckingham Street, which was in the central redevelopment district where Scotia Square was built.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8347/8...662c742f_c.jpg

If they had been smart they could have used the 'Core' shopping centre as a bit of an idea, although the covered street areas could be done way better. The Core is a shopping centre in each block, connected by pedways. I believe it came up in a couple other threads when talking about the Nova Centre mainly.

I still believe there is always the chance that if the economics are right, Scotia Square could be redeveloped and the street grid restored (along with the Cogswell Interchange removal). It would just depend on how the redevelopment occurs.

But you got me thinking about reviving that thread and idea.
One thing I would want to see incorporated into a new Scotia Square is something we have here as part of the Core. You can see it talked about in Christopher Hume's column that he did on Calgary. The video is here.

Interesting. It looks like a Bass ale made under license by the Thompson & Sons (?) brewery in Halifax. Bass is an English brand, so this must be an early form of contract brewing.

I found this drawing of the old Moirs factory on flickr. I thought the factory was around Argyle/Duke Street, but the large, flat block isn't really consistent with that (maybe it's just some artistic license). I haven't seen any photos of the factory in this state:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8349/8...143659a6_o.jpg
Source

One thing that I find interesting is how much industrial development there was in the Maritimes around 1900 and earlier. The region's often presented (in "Canadian History") as overwhelmingly rural area. Often people argue that it never progressed past, say, wooden sailing ships that were used to transport raw materials. That clearly wasn't true. Halifax had steamship lines in the early 1800s. There were also textile mills, breweries, refineries (Imperial Oil goes back to something like 1910), big infrastructure projects like the railcut, etc. I think the real story is that there was a lot of development during the 1800s and then a post-Confederation relative decline that happened mostly in the 1880-1930 period, when Halifax and Saint John stagnated but Toronto and Montreal boomed.

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...147357&page=16

the postcard does look odd, can't see how it would be in that area
sort of related, anyone remember the original location of Atlantic News?

http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-...u.aspx?id=2755
could the postcard be from the factory in bedford?

http://www.imagescn.technomuses.ca/i...oid=1290320172
maybe not

I'm thinking that this is due to the artist not capturing the elevation of the area very well in the drawing.

Looking at the drawing, I believe that we are looking at Argyle St. with Duke on the right (from the perspective of somebody sitting on a flagpole in the Grand Parade).

In 1903, the company changed from 'Moir, Son and Company' to 'Moirs, Limited' as they were transitioning from a bakery to a chocolate manufacturer. The larger 9-story factory that most of us are familar with wasn't added on until 1927.

Given that all the conveyances depicted in the drawing are horse-driven, and the date displayed on the building is 1903, I believe this to be from the first decade of the 20th century. It looks like the drawing is from the period, probably a postcard or some kind of promotional material from Moirs. The drawing doesn't show the buildings in the background of the 1913 pic below, which I'm guessing might have been built after this drawing was done?

Here's a view from 1913 that I believe shows the storefront depicted in the lower right of the drawing. Note that the signage is different than that depicted on the drawing:

http://i47.tinypic.com/2ic8vfk.jpg
Source: NS archives http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/B...ves.asp?ID=206

Here's a shot of the larger addition to the factory from 1934 (also sourced from the NS archives - zoomed in from a wider perspective):

http://i48.tinypic.com/nyeikl.jpg

Thanks for posting that drawing. I hadn't seen it before and it prompted me to think about this building a little more.

Here is a picture from the Vintage Halifax Facebook Page. I believe this is the corner of Hollis & Terminal.

Pic - http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fb...type=1&theater

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8224/8...05788106_b.jpg

beautiful photo

In today's Herald:

Souce

...The original MSVU building is a huge loss.

That is one of the more interesting aerial photos in the set. I've seen the old MSV building in postcards before, but the aerial view shows it a bit more clearly. The busy Rockingham railyard is also interesting.

Halifax has lost a huge number of Victorian institutional buildings. Some of them would have been difficult to reuse, and many of them probably had a bad reputation by the time they were torn down (old asylums etc.), but it's too bad that so few survived.

Here's another example:

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/HALIFAX-Deaf-...WpQ~~60_57.JPG
Source

Those aerials are awesome, it would be really cool to see comparison shots.

That's the old School for the Blind on University Ave, I believe, where the VGH parking lot is now. I remember it from the 1980s - a girlfriend worked there for a time. I recall it looking far less impressive than this version, with white siding and a generally rundown appearance. She told me it was pretty awful inside. So many of Halifax's old buildings were never properly maintained and upgraded that they became slummy. That is even true for government buildings. And few people want to work in an environment where the modern necessities like A/C are not available.

I see a reference to the MSVU building, but no image and a search returns nothing.

That archives website is really dated. The tool they use to show the images is designed for a 640x480 monitor. There really is no excuse in this day and age not to give full-screen resolution of these images.

Sorry, it's listed as St. Vincent's College. I agree that they chose an odd interface for viewing the photos.

Keith, if you're remembering siding, I wonder if you are thinking about the addition that was added to the back of the building. I think that the original building remained brick until it was demolished
http://thechronicleherald.ca/hcw/169...-for-the-blind
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/imagesns/html/20208.html
I remember the back of this buiding from the mid 80's and there was a small playground where the pond was, I think that this bulding was built a while after the orginal building. There was a more modern addition that connected the two old buildings and I think that had siding on it and lots of windows

You may be right. Certainly I don't remember anything like what is shown in that old postcard.

I think the School For The Blind was a different building than that pictured above. This is probably the one that you remember:
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/imagesns/bin...3-DEV01514.jpg

Source: http://museum.gov.ns.ca/imagesns/html/20212.html

Yes, I think the one I posted was on Gottingen Street near where the strange lawn bowling area (or whatever it is) is still located today. The two buildings were quite similar.

it was located where the George Dixon building is now. The field (horseshoes) that is next to the George Dixon was known as 'the dummy field'.

My Father was born in Africville in 1920. Thank You for posting this!:):yes:

Here's another pic of that area found at the Nova Scotia Archives site:

http://i48.tinypic.com/351625y.jpg

Here's the source page:
http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/A...hives.asp?ID=1

Click on that link and you can actually zoom in to the areas you'd like to see better.

Also, if you do a search for "africville" on that site you will find many more photos of that area.

Happy searching! :)

Hardly the idyllic place the revisionists would have one believe.

I suppose that 'community' and 'home' are qualities which are easily discernible via aerial photographs?

Idyllic or not, it was pretty nasty stuff, even by 1960s standards, to destroy a centuries-old community (home to many tax-paying citizens), without their consent, by expropriating their property for a pittance.

That was...what's the word?

Oh yeah: Paternalistic, racist, and shitty.

They did not pay property taxes since they did not own the properties. The land was required so expropriation was appropriate. I do not accept the revisionist version that has been mythologized in the decades since. It was a third-world slum.

No offense intended, Keith, but I don't think this is the appropriate place for that "argument". Let it rest, please.

Here, here. You're not going to change anybody's mind, and likely the only things that will result will be hard feelings and a poor outside opinion of the area.

To OldDartmouthMark: thanks for the pictures. Very cool.

You're welcome! Happy to do it. :cheers:

Not correct Keith, many Africville residents did own their own properties and paid taxes:

"7.
What City is received in return for taxes paid on Africville properties?
The 1960 tax roll contains 39 assessments for the Africville area. The total tax levied on these 39 properties amounted to $1,598.68. The total taxes owing on properties assessed in the Africville area as at August 29, 1962 amounts to $6,392.24. Tax arrears in the Africville area are, therefore, approximately four times the 1962 tax levy. The services provided by the City for the Africville area fall into two main categories. These are:
Welfare
Schools
Other services are provided on a much more limited basis."
http://www.library.dal.ca/ebooks/afr...pendix%20D.pdf
Keith, since this is information from a City of Halifax official. I would hope that you would accept it, and not not perpetuate myths and revisionist versions of facts.
While parts of Africville may have been slum like, Halifax helped create and maintain it; charging taxes but not providing basic amenities like water and sewerage; pretty poor governance.