Halifax's Gritty North End

[Empire]

Photos by Empire:

[haligonia]

Man, I love the North End. It's already so awesome and yet is has so much potential to be a truly great urban neighbourhood.

[Empire]

Originally Posted by haligonia

Man, I love the North End. It's already so awesome and yet is has so much potential to be a truly great urban neighbourhood.

I would like to see the north end retain much of its flavour. As it develops I would hope that it will take on a Byward Market atmosphere with densified residential, retail on Agricola and Gottingen and more tourist appeal. The potential is endless.

[JET]

Nice shots; must include some old ones, Diamonds is now gone. Some of the old houses look reaaly good, some of the 'industrial' lots are real eyesores.

[beyeas]

It is always interesting how much of a mix there is between some absolutely beautiful well cared for olders homes sitting next to ones that were just not looked after.
I really hope that as the NE develops that it keeps the overall feel of the original Irish/German working class grittiness of the area.

PS: Love that pic of the bicyclist carrying the drum. In a lot of ways that to epitomizes what I like about the feel of the area.

[Jstaleness]

I like the shot of the 4 color buildings next to the Time and Space building. It would be cool to have more housing like that in front of some new developments as opposed modern cookie cutter townhouses.

[Keith P.]

Hate to get all technical on you, but that is not the "North End", except for the shot of Gus', which is on the boundary. The "North End" is generally considered to be bounded on the south side by North St. What you have posted are pictures of central Halifax.

[eastcoastal]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Hate to get all technical on you....

Hate is such a strong word... lol

[Empire]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Hate to get all technical on you, but that is not the "North End", except for the shot of Gus', which is on the boundary. The "North End" is generally considered to be bounded on the south side by North St. What you have posted are pictures of central Halifax.

Are you always this confusing?

Boundaries:
The neighbourhood referred to as the "North End" by Halifax residents was bounded on the east and north by "The Narrows" of Halifax Harbour and the Bedford Basin. Its other boundaries as not as sharply defined, but the western limit of the neighbourhood is generally agreed to lie somewhere between Oxford Street and Robie Street, with many settling on Windsor Street as a convenient delimiting line.

The southern boundary was, traditionally, the northern limit of General Cornwallis's original Halifax settlement along the slope of Citadel Hill (now Cogswell Street), and continuing along the northern edge of the North Common to Quinpool Road.

The northern boundary has steadily migrated toward the Bedford Basin since Halifax's founding. The boundary originally ended at North Street, just as the South End ended at South Street. Another community further to the north was Richmond, and was located on the eastern slope of Fort Needham. Further north of Richmond, at the end of the Campbell Road, was the black community of Africville.

By the end of the 19th century, the perception of the North End had come to generally include Richmond as well. Following its total destruction in the Halifax Explosion (December, 1917), Richmond never again regained its individual identity. The area underwent significant redevelopment during the inter-war period and gradually became an extension of the original North End.

[Empire]

double post

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by Empire

Are you always this confusing?

Boundaries:
The neighbourhood referred to as the "North End" by Halifax residents was bounded on the east and north by "The Narrows" of Halifax Harbour and the Bedford Basin. Its other boundaries as not as sharply defined, but the western limit of the neighbourhood is generally agreed to lie somewhere between Oxford Street and Robie Street, with many settling on Windsor Street as a convenient delimiting line.

The southern boundary was, traditionally, the northern limit of General Cornwallis's original Halifax settlement along the slope of Citadel Hill (now Cogswell Street), and continuing along the northern edge of the North Common to Quinpool Road.

The northern boundary has steadily migrated toward the Bedford Basin since Halifax's founding. The boundary originally ended at North Street, just as the South End ended at South Street. Another community further to the north was Richmond, and was located on the eastern slope of Fort Needham. Further north of Richmond, at the end of the Campbell Road, was the black community of Africville.

By the end of the 19th century, the perception of the North End had come to generally include Richmond as well. Following its total destruction in the Halifax Explosion (December, 1917), Richmond never again regained its individual identity. The area underwent significant redevelopment during the inter-war period and gradually became an extension of the original North End.

Seems pretty clear to me.

While historical references are academically interesting, they bear little relevance to this. What you referenced is from an area where the North End was undeveloped, hence the reference to the northern boundary migrating. It cannot migrate since it is bounded by Bedford Basin. You are referencing something that is talking about the Halifax of the 18th century; it is irrelevant now.

I grew up in the North End. What those pictures show is not the North End. They are pictures of Central Halifax.

[GUB]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Hate to get all technical on you, but that is not the "North End", except for the shot of Gus', which is on the boundary. The "North End" is generally considered to be bounded on the south side by North St. What you have posted are pictures of central Halifax.

This is the North End to the vast majority of Haligonians.
Your technicality is too far.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by GUB

This is the North End to the vast majority of Haligonians.

Based on what? Even Mr. Mason notes that half of his respondents consider my view to be correct. The others likely did not grow up in the area and do not know of what they speak.

Ignorance of something does not make that view correct.

[eastcoastal]

Originally Posted by GUB

This is the North End to the vast majority of Haligonians.
Your technicality is too far.

There really isn't a "technical" answer to this.

What percentage is the "vast majority?" What percentage of Haligonians voted? Are these the same Haligonians that elected the mayor?

[fenwick16]

Originally Posted by Empire

Photos by Empire:

Very interesting pictures. I am sure that I have seen something similar to your picture above, somewhere in Ontario, probably the GTA, but I can't remember where.

[pblaauw]

I remember going on a bus to the "north end" with a friend in the late 80s, and being a bit stunned that when he said "the north end", he meant Fort Needham, not Gottingen Street.

Then I went back to school at Leeds in 2013 and discovered there was an entire neighbourhood(s) I had never seen before. (And I finally knew what was over that hill I saw every time dad and I drove down "the Robie Street Extension".)

EDIT: I wouldn't really call Gottingen a "scary slum".

[Luisito]

Originally Posted by pblaauw

I remember going on a bus to the "north end" with a friend in the late 80s, and being a bit stunned that when he said "the north end", he meant Fort Needham, not Gottingen Street.

Then I went back to school at Leeds in 2013 and discovered there was an entire neighbourhood(s) I had never seen before. (And I finally knew what was over that hill I saw every time dad and I drove down "the Robie Street Extension".)

EDIT: I wouldn't really call Gottingen a "scary slum".

Yeah definitely not a scary slum. I wouldn't call anywhere in the North end "a scary slum". LOL

Those back streets in and around Gottingen were pretty run down though. Not so bad these days but back in the 80s and 90s it definitely did look gritty and run down. Lots of drugs in the early 90s. Creighton and Gerrish was a notorious crack spot.

The area around Leeds? Is that where st stephens used to be? I went to Highland on Robie in the 80s. Mulgrave Park Housing complex had a bit of a bad rep back then. No idea what it's like now.

[someone123]

This is a bit of a tangent but I've always found it weird how poorly and inconsistently defined Halifax's urban neighbourhoods are. I haven't seen a lot of examples in other cities of the North End phenomenon, where a major district of a city has unclear boundaries that many people disagree on.

The South End is pretty vague too. Is Quinpool Road in the South End? Spring Garden Road? And how far does the West End go?

Peninsular Halifax needs a few extra neighbourhood definitions beyond what it has to describe the parts that are qualitatively different. Hollis and Morris for example is completely different from the deep South End on the other side of the railway tracks.

[Luisito]

Originally Posted by someone123

This is a bit of a tangent but I've always found it weird how poorly and inconsistently defined Halifax's urban neighbourhoods are. I haven't seen a lot of examples in other cities of the North End phenomenon, where a major district of a city has unclear boundaries that many people disagree on.

The South End is pretty vague too. Is Quinpool Road in the South End? Spring Garden Road? And how far does the West End go?

Peninsular Halifax needs a few extra neighbourhood definitions beyond what it has to describe the parts that are qualitatively different. Hollis and Morris for example is completely different from the deep South End on the other side of the railway tracks.

I always considered everything south of Quinpool the South End. North End everything north of the Commons and the citadel between Barrington and Windsor. West End is what ever is left over down towards the West End Mall.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter. The South and North End are the only cool parts of Halifax. LOL (JK)

[Hali87]

^ That's basically how I've always seen it and how most in my peer group would define the "Ends" (ie born in the 80s or later). It is clear that the boundaries have changed over the years but in the present-day these are logical ways to define things (the area between Quinpool and Jubilee for example seems to "fit" much better with the South end in terms of overall look/feel, even though this was historically considered part of the West End).

I've never heard anyone refer to a specific neighbourhood called "Central Halifax" in the contemporary age except on this thread. I'm not sure when this would have fallen out of common use.

I would also not think of Gottingen as slum-like at all (in 2019... even in 2000 it was quite different). It is definitely still the non-conformist, countercultural hotspot though and is the main part of town that might be a bit unsettling to the very straight-laced. There are certainly neighbourhoods in HRM that feel poorer/bleaker than this one and neighbourhoods that are in overall worse repair as far as the physical environment goes. But there is still a certain in-your-face grittiness that is hard to express in photos of buildings - it's expressed more in the attitude and style of the people you'd meet there, or the nature and aesthetic of the businesses, etc. I would say it's neither slummy nor really gritty in a conventional sense - it's more "seedy" than anything at this point IMO.

I guess it depends on how you'd define these things - there are still things like a large homeless shelter and a needle exchange in this area; I don't think an area is automatically a "slum" or "gritty" just because they have these things though, and the users of these services tend to keep to themselves and make up maybe 5% of the people you'd encounter in the area.