Quote:
Originally Posted by lio45
A nondescript building from the late 1800s in Vancouver should get heritage status (it wouldn't in Quebec City or Halifax); a building from ~1750 in Halifax gets the highest heritage status while in Europe you wouldn't blink before razing it if you had to; my 1830s Lévis duplex is uninteresting
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It is interesting how this varies between cities.
Halifax was a planned capital, similar to a mini Washington DC. When evil Mr. Cornwallis arrived on day 1 he brought around 2,500 settlers with him plus troops, preconstructed kits to build some public buildings like St. Paul's church, the street grid was immediately laid out, etc. Houses built a few years after the city was founded are not that big of a deal, although many have now famous (or infamous) people associated with them.
Quebec City in 1609 had a population of 8 surviving early explorer pioneer types. Halifax never was this type of settlement. There's no Jebediah Springfield log cabin from 1702.
Around Nova Scotia there's also a decent number of houses that predate 1749. Annapolis Royal is a much older town and was settled in 1605. Annapolis Royal + Halifax is the NS equivalent of Quebec City. Nova Scotia and Canada had around the same population in the late 1700's (there's an interesting assemblage of old census counts here:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/...151287-eng.htm). NS has an impressive collection of 1700's and early 1800's architecture, with lots of stuff that is very exceptional on a national basis. The same can't really be said of buildings from the 1880's or later, with only a few exceptions (my nominations would be the armoury and Bank of NS). That building above is considered a "filler" building that is merely part of a larger Victorian streetscape, not a landmark.