Historic Halifax

[counterfactual]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

To be fair to ILove, a lot of the pics of the Halifax slums I've seen look pretty dire. But so did parts of the North End that are still intact and largely restored (especially the area up and down Falkland Street). ILove seems never to have met an old building he's not ready to condemn, so I'm gonna be skeptical about how far gone into ruin a building has to be before he writes it off.

In any case, it wasn't all rotten wooden slums:



Every building in this shot is gone, save for the one at the far left, and every one would have been worthy of preservation. But: DRINKING DENS!

Wow, if retained, this could have been an iconic Halifax building. Not quite NYC's flat iron, but a similar design concept, obviously. A building designed to connect an important intersection.

[ScovaNotian]

What was the purpose of that weird tower on the roof? The building wouldn't have had an elevator, would it?

[Ziobrop]

Originally Posted by ScovaNotian

What was the purpose of that weird tower on the roof? The building wouldn't have had an elevator, would it?

Probably a hoist way of some sort. Not for people, but most of these buildings had retail on the ground, and the upper floors were warehouse space.

[beyeas]

Originally Posted by Ziobrop

Probably a hoist way of some sort. Not for people, but most of these buildings had retail on the ground, and the upper floors were warehouse space.

Sounds like someone has been boning up on his architectural history of halifax 101!

[someone123]

You can see similar features on some of the surviving buildings in that area. The big upper-floor openings that look like doorways were for lifting up ship cargo with small cranes.

[Keith P.]

That building is called "The Pentagon Building". Someone123 and I had a discussion about it a while back. I remember it from the very early 1960s.

Possibly one of the unwanted casualties when the surrounding slummy buildings were cleared for Harbour Drive.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Two questions:

(1) Mods, is it possible to move this last part of the discussion to a new thread. I think it is an interesting conversation that I would like to see continue, but it is way off topic relating to 5504 Spring Garden Road.

(2) Does anybody have any pics of the area in its run-down state, just before demolition? I might have a few in my "stash" when I have time to go through it, but most pics I've seen are from earlier times when the buildings were in the prime of their life.

It's interesting to read the different perspectives that largely seem to be related to a particular time in Halifax's history. I have foggy recollections (I was quite young at the time) of the Halifax waterfront being a "working", more industrial place, but a lot of the mass-demolition that was popular at the time came about either before I was born or when I was a toddler.

The Pentagon Building above is, IMHO, a classic case of a building that would have been saved today, but was considered expendable 50 years ago because "progress" was more important at the time. It would be good to continue this thread and I'm interested to see what other buildings that were lost due to "progress" during that whole '50s '60s urban renewal/Harbour Drive wreck-fest.

[OldDartmouthMark]

As requested I have moved this discussion to a proper thread for the general discussion of Historic Halifax. Please keep all discussion around this topic in this thread unless it related directly to another thread (ie asking about the old Roy building in "The Roy Halifax" thread).

Thanks!

[Ziobrop]

I believe (but don't know for sure) that this are was part of the Slum Clearance from the 1957 report. It was done independently of Harbour Drive/ Scotia Square.
Historic Properties, Morse Teas and what are now part of the Waterside center were outside that clearance area, and hence the fight to save them, when future plans threatened their removal.

Lots has been said about affricville, i wonder what people in the North Clearance area thought?

[Keith P.]

The Pentagon Building was apparently near what is now the end of Granville Mall:



Here is the location as it looks today. The building on the far left is part of Historic Properties.



So it was taken down to accommodate the Cogswell interchange.

[someone123]

It would be interesting to find a detailed study of the buildings that existed in this area. The "slum" label doesn't do this part of town justice; it was a fine-grained mix of buildings of different levels of quality from different eras. Some of the buildings would have been simple wooden boxes but others would have been worth preserving.

I've read that Prince Edward's townhouse (Prince's Lodge along the Bedford Highway was the country estate) was on the north side of town near the Citadel, but I've never seen paintings or photos and I'm not sure what it looked like or how long it survived.

Another interesting set of buildings were in the Ordnance Yard. Many of these dated back more or less to the original naval dockyard construction in the 1700's. Here's a Notman photo of one of the old stone warehouses from that period. The clock on top is the one that's now on the ugly blue and yellow clock tower down near Nova Scotia Crystal; the mechanism, believe it or not, is from 1772: http://novascotia.ca/archives/virtua...ives.asp?ID=13

I think it would be great if some phase of waterfront redevelopment downtown involved faithfully reconstructing some of these old waterfront features that have been lost.

[someone123]

I was reading a report on the Barrington St heritage district (https://www.halifax.ca/heritage-prop...zationPlan.pdf) today and noticed a piece on the Forrester Building, the nondescript yellowish building with Idealbikes:


(from google streetview)

I never thought much of this building, but it turns out that it is much older than its late-Victorian neighbours. It was built out of ironstone (the darker slate-like stone) and sandstone in the 1820's. It's one of the oldest commercial buildings on the street. If it were well-restored it would look great.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by someone123

It would be interesting to find a detailed study of the buildings that existed in this area. The "slum" label doesn't do this part of town justice; it was a fine-grained mix of buildings of different levels of quality from different eras. Some of the buildings would have been simple wooden boxes but others would have been worth preserving.

I've read that Prince Edward's townhouse (Prince's Lodge along the Bedford Highway was the country estate) was on the north side of town near the Citadel, but I've never seen paintings or photos and I'm not sure what it looked like or how long it survived.

Another interesting set of buildings were in the Ordnance Yard. Many of these dated back more or less to the original naval dockyard construction in the 1700's. Here's a Notman photo of one of the old stone warehouses from that period. The clock on top is the one that's now on the ugly blue and yellow clock tower down near Nova Scotia Crystal; the mechanism, believe it or not, is from 1772: http://novascotia.ca/archives/virtua...ives.asp?ID=13

I think it would be great if some phase of waterfront redevelopment downtown involved faithfully reconstructing some of these old waterfront features that have been lost.

Very interesting information, I wasn't aware of the significance of that clock.

Reconstructing some of these waterfront features would be amazing. Would be expensive to do properly, which might make it a hard sell, but I'd love to see it.

Just started reading through the "slum study" document:

https://www.halifax.ca/archives/docu...Scotia1957.pdf

Some really interesting info there...

[fenwick16]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

.
.
Just started reading through the "slum study" document:

https://www.halifax.ca/archives/docu...Scotia1957.pdf

Some really interesting info there...

Very interesting. Some of the neighbourhoods looked very run down but the "slum study" showed better redevelopment ideas without the massive Scotia Square super-block.

I was looking through the Nova Scotia Archives and found some images of Argyle Street that I believe is where Scotia Square's Coswell Tower was built. I think the following images are at or near Argyle Street and Jacobs Street (Jacobs Street became an extension of Cogswell Street):

(source: http://novascotia.ca/archives/virtua...es.asp?ID=1126) from 1939


(source: http://novascotia.ca/archives/virtua...es.asp?ID=1586) from 1941


(source: http://novascotia.ca/archives/virtua...es.asp?ID=3051) from 1942


This is an image from 1890 looking north down Argyle Street past Halifax City Hall all the way to the Clayton and Sons factory at Jacobs Street:

(source: http://novascotia.ca/archives/virtua...ves.asp?ID=245) from 1890.


I don't know when the Clayton and Sons factory was torn down (I think that is where the Scotia Square Trade Mart now stands) but it still existed in 1935 in this image - http://novascotia.ca/archives/virtua...=479&Nav=false. Here is a postcard of the factory - http://stampauctionnetwork.com/zi/47/224.jpg and a drawing https://oldnorthend.files.wordpress....tory.jpg?w=848 from this website - https://oldnorthend.wordpress.com/category/history/


Wouldn't it be great if Argyle Street still extended down to Jacobs Street (or Cogswell Street) and that instead of the massive Scotia Square being built, smaller, city block sized, 20 - 30 storey tall slender towers were built. Maybe some facades of the more interesting buildings could have been saved with street level retail.

[Keith P.]

The part of Argyle north of Duke was what Stevenson described as some of the worst slums in the city.

[fenwick16]

I am interested in the neighbourhood that was torn down to build Scotia Square. One area that I haven't been able to find pictures of is Barrington Street between Duke Street and Jacobs Street (part of which became the extension of Cogswell Street) on the west side, which is the Scotia Square side.

There is this picture from the Nova Scotia Archives which shows that area from a distance in 1960:

(source: http://novascotia.ca/archives/virtua...es.asp?ID=1750). The source image allows one to zoom in.


Does anyone know of any pictures of this area prior to Scotia Square being built?

PS: I was able to get this zoomed in screen-shot from the NS Archives picture above: (there appears to be a tavern and "Central"(?) Hotel

[Keith P.]

Found these in the Stevenson report and at the Archives site:












Also found this interesting. The Dockyard, with slummy housing on a narrow Barrington St above, and look at that huge rail ROW. What an opportunity missed:

[ILoveHalifax]

I keep looking at those pics and trying to pick out which one I would want to be living in.

Of course I would have probably died along with the hundreds of others in the great Halifax fire of 19??

[Ziobrop]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Found these in the Stevenson report and at the Archives site:












Also found this interesting. The Dockyard, with slummy housing on a narrow Barrington St above, and look at that huge rail ROW. What an opportunity missed:

That rail right of way was a hold over from the north street station. The original deep water piers were located next to the casino. They have been reconstructed but still exist as Jetty nb and nc. That rail extended past the North station and went onto the piers. The piers were transfered in a land swap with the navy in the mid 1960's.

[cormiermax]

Some interesting images of the area can be found here, although they're fairly grainy.

http://parkscanadahistory.com/series/chs/9/chs9-3a.htm