Historic Halifax

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by HalifaxRetales

Thanks

Those are cool shots. I don’t recall seeing the movie but remember the city when it looked like that.

One note that I can add is that when those buildings below the Texpark were slated for demolition in the early or mid 1980s I used to walk by them on the way to the ferry. As abandoned buildings I recall a very strong smell of sewage as you passed by them, and that remains my strongest memory of them. I remember thinking that it was too bad they were left to deteriorate like that, because they seemed like they were probably cool buildings in their day. In my relative innocence, I just thought oh well, that’s the way it has to be because all old buildings tended to be neglected, abandoned and then torn down in Halifax, sometimes to be left as vacant lots for years (or decades). It’s just the way it was, and our city leaders didn’t pay it much mind. The older generations tended to have the “out with the old, in with the new” mentality as well.

Now when I see the pics I realize that we lost a lot in a relatively short time. Only now is it being built up in a way that I would have been happy with back then, but I would have been even more thrilled if some of these older buildings with character had been maintained and repurposed. Too late for that, though, so on we go.

[someone123]

It's a bit wild how many mid-tier buildings in Halifax were demolished around 1960-1990. I sort of thought the lesson was learned but then another round of later historic buildings like Maritime Life or the Bank of Canada were torn down in the 2010s. I think, basically, all of the development that took place downtown since then could have been accommodated without demolishing anything substantial, and Halifax is an outlier in how easily it let buildings go not due to decline but due to growth. I think often it was development potential that led to demolition and not a lack of economic capacity.

That being said, I'm not an absolutist about it; it doesn't bother me if some wooden houses or small commercial buildings go. Or even a mid-tier building for something really architecturally exceptional. But in Halifax the demolitions were often a downgrade even though the city and downtown were growing.

I remember around 2000 there were debates about demolishing even the Lord Nelson or Nova Scotian hotels. Some people were sentimental about it but a lot of the feel was that it was merely a kind of business decision, and if a spreadsheet showed a Wal-Mart would make more than the Lord Nelson then it was time for the Lord Nelson to go. It was similar with the Kelly facade on Granville which in retrospect would have made perfect sense to save. At the same time, people were fiercely sentimental about abstractions like the ramparts rule.

[OldDartmouthMark]

I stumbled upon this earlier and felt it was a really good example on how removing detail affects the appearance of historic buildings. I don't know when the steeple was removed, but will say that it looks a little top heavy and even the 1899 photo looks like there has already been some significant masonry repair to it.

Regardless, the conversion to condos was done in the 1980s and while I'm glad they decided to not knock down the old building, I am somewhat astounded as to how relatively bland it appears today compared to the 1800s.


Source


Source