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Old Posted Dec 30, 2018, 5:51 AM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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Join Date: May 2010
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Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123 View Post
I agree that Canada tends to have low standards and Halifax is particularly bad for applying utilitarian standards to exceptional heritage buildings. It's pretty common to see debates over whether or not to allow a condo developer to gut a 200 year old building, even national heritage sites. In most wealthy countries such sites would be very carefully preserved. The number of buildings like this is so small that preserving them well is not an expensive proposition for the city, province, or country as a whole.

How many 5 storey Victorian office buildings are there in all of Canada? Maybe in the hundreds?

Here's an old picture of that building from the NS archives:



The good news is that if one day someone wants to restore the building it's still possible without much reconstruction. Based on how things have evolved over the past 20 years I think standards probably will continue to improve.
Here's the source of someone123's photo above:
Source

Archive gives 1900 as a date, but not sure how accurate that is as sometimes I've seen them give approximations. If you click on the source link you can blow up the shot to see greater detail. At the top of the building it looks like it is labeled "ST. PAUL BUILDg"? Possibly after the famous church across the street?

Here's another shot:


Source

Here's a shot from 1951, visible just behind St. Paul's church at the upper right of the photo. It appears that the cornice change (removal?) had already been done at that point, possibly when it was a 50-60 year old building?



Source

In Halifax (and many other cities I'm sure) back then, when elements of older stone/masonry buildings started to crumble, the weak elements were typically removed and replaced with a functional less ornate (less expensive) piece, but the goal was just to keep the building functional. We didn't start to think much about restoration until decades later (and/or arguably haven't really started yet...).
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