Quote:
Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker
Nice, Knox. Interesting, especially in the first, how it's relatively well built up for the middle of nowhere. That's at the far southwestern edge of the harbour, right?
|
You can't really see it in the first picture but the Northwest Arm extends beyond the developed area, cutting it off from the mainland. There's a rail cut running along the peninsula side as well. The isthmus is a few kilometres to the left, so back then suburban development hadn't yet spread that far south on the mainland side. Even today the road access isn't great and the area is not very heavily developed. There are a lot of houses on large lots on both sides of the water and both sides are steep.
There's also a provincial park just beyond what's now Armdale so this part of town remains the closest wilderness to the city, not counting islands. Heading north or east there is more sprawl.
As far as Canadian cities go, Halifax was a pretty substantial town in 1931, and you can see it in the extent of the developed area. The city and suburbs hit 100,000 in the 1931 census. This wasn't a whole lot higher than 67,000 in 1881 though, given how the rest of the country (everywhere but the Maritimes) was growing by leaps and bounds during that period. Halifax started to grow again the 1940's for the war and that continued through a few later decades. In retrospect, 1931 (or maybe 1929) was the nadir of the city's relative importance. The post-Confederation decline in industry had pretty much reached its conclusion, activity had not yet ramped up for WWII, and there weren't a lot of white collar jobs to be had either; there were no tech jobs or cheap flights to bigger cities, and the provincial government, universities, and hospitals were small.
Prev
Instead what was in 1924 is like 20% of the city at most today.
Hybrid Mode