Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
To me there really seem to be two separate issues. There's the question of which city has more heritage buildings, Boston or Halifax. Boston obviously does. But then there's also the question of which city has done a better job of taking care of what's survived in the modern day. Boston has. Boston is a good example because for any given heritage building in Halifax you can usually find something similar in Boston.
Aside from being larger Boston also followed a different historic arc of development, and has a lot more construction from the 1890-1930 period when Halifax was barely growing. If you subtract those buildings from the mix the two cities start to look pretty similar. Have a look at Charlestown and you will see something eerily similar to the North End or Schmidtville, but more intact and in a better state of repair. The Falkland area could still look like that or better.
I don't think it's negative to point out that Halifax does a relatively poor job of maintaining its heritage buildings. In a way that outlook is actually much more positive than the defeatist attitude that nothing can or should be done and the city will slowly crumble. Halifax is a provincial and regional economic capital with a successful economy and it's on its way to having half a million people. It can and should have an extensive inventory of heritage buildings kept in great shape.
To take another example, I posted a picture of the newly-restored St. Paul's Building in the Canada section. Somebody immediately pointed out how incomplete the restoration looked because the cornice was still missing and the original sache windows were replaced by featureless oversized panes of glass. The good news is that if more investment happens in this building in the future it can still be restored to a higher standard. The bad news is that this barely seems to register in Halifax right now; the result that looks shoddy someplace else was created by newly increased heritage preservation grants (which are still inadequate, but a step in the right direction).
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It's interesting that you use the St. Paul's Building example, as I posted a photo in that very thread which showed that the cornice had been removed sometime before the photo was taken in 1951, when the building would have been just over half a century old. We both speculated on the possible reasons for its removal, but of course we won't know unless somebody finds documentation about it. Regardless, at the time it would have been considered just an old building, and it had some features changed (maybe due to structural integrity, maybe due to 'modernization', we don't know).
Here's that page in the thread:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...203463&page=17
To put it in perspective, the Ralston building, a federal government property, had steel reinforcements stuck in over the stone cladding to prevent it from falling on pedestrians when it was similar in age as the St. Paul's bldg in the photo I posted in said thread. Now, it's about 10 years older than that and it's being torn down, despite having a heritage designation on it. But it's a federal building... is that a Halifax or Nova Scotia failing as well? Is it because of Haligonians' "defeatist" attitude?
How about the fact that nobody except rich real estate investors can afford to buy a house in Vancouver? Is that because Vancouverites have a "defeatist" attitude? How come the citizens of Vancouver didn't step in and prevent this from happening? C'mon, you talk like Halifax is the worst of the worst, but every city has its issues.
The irony here is that we agree on most points, and the buildings you've mentioned were discussed on this forum many times and again I've agreed with your points, but am tiring of this continual denigration of Halifax and Haligonians as if these issues don't happen in any other cities.
I agree it needs to be better, the Heritage Trust has tried very hard to make it better, but even they are called idiots on this forum, because of some mistakes they have made in their philosophy/game plan. IIRC, there are other organizations trying to advocate for saving old architecture in Halifax as well. It's not like nobody cares or nobody tries, as has been alluded to.