Quote:
Originally Posted by Hali87
^Winnipeg felt like an interesting analogue for Halifax where the urban form/building style is in many ways the opposite (as is the landscape, for that matter). In downtown Halifax, there are a lot of fine-grained streetscapes made up of narrow, largely "human scaled" buildings that are packed very tightly together (on a hill). In Winnipeg, there are a lot of large, monumental buildings that are a bit more spread out and there is consequently a lot more "open space"/less crowding, and it's very flat. Halifax does the eclectic and fine-grained very well but is missing the sense of "monumentalism", whereas Winnipeg has the monumental architecture but is missing the sense of "crowdedness". An analogy, that could be extended to the rest of the city, is to look at what the provincial legislatures in both cities are like, and what their surroundings are like. Obviously, you could find examples of "both" in each city, but each skews heavily one way or the other.
At least that was my impression, having only really spent a couple days in Winnipeg over 2 separate trips. Montreal and Victoria are both cities that seem more "balanced" in this regard (not that this is necessarily better or worse, just observably different).
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The public spaces and buildings that are most prominent in Halifax are much older than those of just about any other city in Canada.
The central square in Halifax and a handful of buildings around it are from the 1750's and 60's (St. Paul's, Carleton, Auction House). The town clock is 1802. Province House is 1819, and Government House is also circa 1800.
These buildings in Halifax weren't small or less monumental than average for their time, they're just older than comparable buildings in other cities, and comparatively few newer landmarks were built. It's unfortunate that Halifax missed out on the 1880-1930 boom that generated so many nice buildings elsewhere but the city has a pretty unique flavour as a result.
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