Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
My point is that in many other cities, it would be considered unacceptable. Like in Montreal or Quebec City. I don't think there's any good reason for the standards along Barrington to be lower. Halifax actually should have a higher ability to pay for good quality restoration than Quebec City, because there are fewer buildings like this relative to the size of the economy. At this point, keeping buildings like this in good shape is a relatively small burden.
This ties in with what I meant about Nova Scotia being utilitarian. Day-to-day utility and property ownership are given a relatively high importance compared to what I see in other areas. So many brick Victorian buildings are "just another building" for property owners to do with as they see fit while in other cities their exteriors would be treated like public amenities. Halifax does this for some buildings like City Hall or the Citadel, but the line is drawn at a pretty extreme end of the spectrum and a lot of mid-range heritage buildings get left out.
If we're going to talk about Vancouver, almost nothing here would count as heritage in Halifax. A bunch of protected buildings are circa 1900 wooden houses. And Vancouver is considered to do relatively poorly when it comes to heritage preservation. Victoria or Portland for example are more historic (though their 19th century historic buildings are still modest compared to Halifax). Portland has a lot of historic neighbourhoods full of buildings that aren't particularly exceptional but come together to create a cohesive feel that you wouldn't get if you let property owners do whatever they felt like. Boston is like this too.
But it's obviously practical. It happens on some buildings in Halifax but not others. And in many other cities it happens for all buildings deemed to have heritage value.
The disparity I see is that Halifax is a place where you see ambitious new developments like the Nova Centre or Queen's Marque, but where it's considered potentially economically infeasible to rebuild a cornice on one of the most prominent street corners in the city. Maybe the property owners don't want to pay for it, but the money and capability to do this obviously exist, and the municipality and province have the ability to manipulate incentives to get it to happen. Within certain bounds, they determine what is and isn't economical.
I think people who live in Halifax should be demanding more; government apathy reflects apathy of the citizens. Maybe I am out of touch and this is happening. But at the end of the day we should judge that by successful restoration and preservation and so far I'm not seeing it. I think 2009-2019 was actually worse than 1999-2009, probably because development pressure rose without a commensurate increase in heritage protection. Hopefully something will change in the next decade. Maybe it should start with people demanding that all of the Dennis Building facade be maintained, not just the lower half.  |
Perhaps I'm being too 'Maritimer' when I take the standpoint that I feel lucky to have buildings like this at all. After reading through the documents and seeing the photos of all that happened with 'urban renewal' of the fifties and sixties, part of me wonders how the existing Barrington Street buildings made it through all that. Of course as we know many were lost subsequently (the CN building, the Birks Building, the Capitol Theatre, among others... and more recently the Roy building and the Zellers building - I think the last two are the most difficult to understand as they've happened within the last few years).
One thing that does occur to me is that perhaps the Barrington buildings were not razed during urban renewal because, they (A) weren't in the path of Harbour Drive, but more importantly, (B) they were recipients of better maintenance since they had the practical usage of housing businesses, offices, etc.
In that sense, I think I was selling your opinions short, as it would reinforce the idea that things which aren't utilitarian and practical are more likely to be ignored and not maintained.
I love the concept of restoring historical detail, and the
Barrington Street Heritage Conservation District By-law makes reference to it (as an option, apparently), but doesn't seem to have the teeth to make it happen, nor has the city gone out of its way to incentivize it (as you have mentioned). Regarding the cornice that was discussed, it seems like the building has been without it longer than it had it, so that it could loosely be perceived as conserving changes that have become character defining elements over time (which would definitely apply to the top 3 floors of the Dennis bldg, though it's not included in this district. Curiously the empty lot above it on Barrington is included which makes me wonder if the Barrington side of the Dennis development will have to mimic the heritage district, though hopefully better than the Roy).
I think the people do need to stand up for our built heritage, which is why I asked about the status of AGBANS in another thread. It seems that the Heritage Trust has little effect on the situation, but I was hoping that this group would be on top of the Dennis Building situation. After considering your comments about Boston, I was a little jealous to discover that they have developed what appears to be a relatively robust and effective heritage protection society - this is what I imagine the Heritage Trust was trying to do, but apparently failed in their attempt.
FWIW, I did do some quick googling of heritage properties in Canada and hit a surprising number of media articles about significant heritage properties all across the country that have been torn down, or are being threatened. This tells me that other parts of the country are struggling as well, and that there is still a healthy dose of heritage-apathy combined with a 'money trumps everything' mindset elsewhere - not just Halifax.
Through it all I want to make it abundantly clear that my strong reaction wasn't to your assertions about our historic buildings - I may argue some more minute points with you but on the whole I agree and concede that I feel your level of research and knowledge on the subject exceeds mine by a great deal. I was reacting to a feeling of Haligonians being shown in a negative light, especially in regards to the proliferation of 'journalism' such as that which I posted in the CFL thread from the Halifax Examiner. It seems like everybody has jumped on the 'Halifax is like Georgia in the 1950s' bandwagon, and to read more negativity about our citizens was becoming hard to bear.
Now, as I put aside my personal feelings about it and try to view the situation more pragmatically, I see that your assertions weren't off-base, as indicated by the article about the art gallery that I posted earlier.
My personal experience has been a little different, as just about everybody I speak to, including strangers, seem to reflect the opinion that heritage buildings are important and they are sad to see them being treated so shoddily. It gave me the opinion that the heritage detractors in places like this and other online forums are more fringe elements than mainstream. However, I'm starting to believe that my personal experience is the less-common one (as Hali87 pointed out).
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