Pre-war apartments buildings in your town

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

It's a weird British thing. Whether in the UK, their Canadian colonies (i.e. the Atlantic and Ontario, not so much Quebec or the West), Australia, or even their early colonies in New England, there's an obvious historical aversion to large apartment buildings.

Yeah. That makes buildings like The Claridge and Balmoral in Toronto even more stand-out--they're grander than almost anything else in the city, and they're not even downtown. I remember being shocked at first encountering them, long after I moved to Toronto. Who would've thought the best residential buildings in town would be so far from the centre?

It's too bad Toronto had such a puritanical city government during exactly the timeframe when big grand apartment houses were going up elsewhere. The inner city would probably be full of them otherwise.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

A not totally dissimilar and more run-down one in the North End.

Ha! You're sure not kidding about the run-down part. I lived there for 6 months as a poverty-stricken 19 year old and spent the whole time at war with mice and cockroaches. Couldn't get away fast enough. Had never seen a roach before in real life and fortunately haven't seen one since.

[someone123]

In the case of Halifax I think there aren't many larger, higher-end ones because the city wasn't growing as much as cities farther west during the 1890-1940 period when these were being built.

Originally Posted by Drybrain

The original building burned down and was rebuilt in 2002, from what I understand.

There was no fire. The developer of the condos in behind chose to demolish all of it except the facade. The building was much nicer before the redevelopment (they could have at least chosen something other than "contractor beige"). There was also a brick apartment building on the corner that was torn down:


Source

I can think of a few more apartments, like one on College Street and the Coburg Apartments. The West End also has some triple-decker type apartment buildings.

[Darkoshvilli]

jchsnx

[lio45]

I have a question: when you guys say "apartments" in English, does that mean condos or rentals?

Or can it be both? In which case there's no way to tell?

[SignalHillHiker]

Here you can say flat/suite/apartment for a rental (or, now that I think about it, you can just say rental too), but if you own it, it's always a condo.

In most of the world, you can use apartment for any of it, if I understand it correctly.

[Nathan]

Originally Posted by lio45

I have a question: when you guys say "apartments" in English, does that mean condos or rentals?

Or can it be both? In which case there's no way to tell?

Generally rentals. You can have "Apartment Style" condos though.

And sometimes buildings that have been converted to condos will hold their building name over from when they were apartments (at least in speech). For example, in Regina what's generally called the "Balfour Apartments" have been condos for years. When people talk specifically about their unit, they would say condo though.

At least this is the way it works here; you could of course have slight variations in usage from region to region.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

An example of a typical St. John's boarding house would be the Carriagehouse:



It has been renovated to add the balconies and the signage on the exterior is far grander than it would have been before. But otherwise, this is a good example.

That one was a carriage factory (hence the name), Lawrence Brothers, they also made caskets etc. until about 1960, according to the link below. I never really understood why there seemed to be no actual apartment buildings in St. John's before the mid 20th century, but your post gives a clue.

http://journals.hil.unb.ca/journalim...7art02_ta1.jpg

[SignalHillHiker]

Damn it. I thought for sure it was built as a boarding house. Thanks for the info, Architype!

[Architype]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

Here you can say flat/suite/apartment for a rental (or, now that I think about it, you can just say rental too), but if you own it, it's always a condo.

In most of the world, you can use apartment for any of it, if I understand it correctly.

The word "condo" is commonly used incorrectly in North America because "condo" refers to the type of ownership rather than the type of building or unit. I often use the term "apartment" to describe either a condo or a rental, since there may be no difference in terms of form, yet people are confused by it. Most condos these days are actually just self owned apartments, whereas "condo" can also refer to townhouses or free standing houses in a development, or even a non-residential unit.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Architype

The word "condo" is commonly used incorrectly in North America because "condo" refers to the type of ownership rather than the type of building or unit. I often use the term "apartment" to describe either a condo or a rental, since there may be no difference in terms of form, yet people are confused by it. Most condos these days are actually just self owned apartments, whereas "condo" can also refer to townhouses or free standing houses in a development, or even a non-residential unit.

In New York it's common for people to talk about buying and selling apartments, but you don't hear it so much in Canada.

[someone123]

Here's an old apartment building that was torn down a few years ago in Halifax. It was one of those things that always looked like it was bound to disappear one day. Back in the 1950's and earlier there were a lot more of these 3-4 storey wooden structures around the city. Most of them are long gone:


(photo is mine)

Some more buildings like this from streetview:

[Scruff Bucket]

Originally Posted by Nathan

... For example, in Regina what's generally called the "Balfour Apartments" have been condos for years.

The Balfour Apartments (Google Street View) were constructed pre-WWII (1929 to 1930) near Regina's City Centre - more images/info at Historicplaces.ca.

The Warehouse District to the north (which comprised Regina's original business hub, as it serviced the nearby rail line) contains numerous pre-WWI buildings that have also been converted to condos, like the Strathdee Warehouse (Google Street View) (1913 to 1914), which also boasts a ghost! - image and more info at Historicplaces.ca

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by someone123

Here's an old apartment building that was torn down a few years ago in Halifax. It was one of those things that always looked like it was bound to disappear one day. Back in the 1950's and earlier there were a lot more of these 3-4 storey wooden structures around the city. Most of them are long gone:

Too bad, in this case. Run-down as hell, but this one almost has a French Quarter vibe with the recessed balconies. A few of these, rehabbed like the ones I posted up above, would really add a bit character around town--the typical Maritime or New England vernacular applied to larger, more urban-scaled buildings.

Still, in this case, the building that replaced it ended up actually being better, not just bigger, which is pretty encouraging.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Scruff Bucket

The Warehouse District to the north (which comprised Regina's original business hub, as it serviced the nearby rail line) contains numerous pre-WWI buildings that have also been converted to condos, like the Strathdee Warehouse, which also boasts a ghost![/IMG]

Adjacent to the Strathdee is this streetscape which is very Western Canada. Something about the character of the architecture, the solidity and plainness of it, the wide streets, couldn`t come from anywhere else but the midwest of the continent.

Anyway, those Regina buildings are interesting due to how aberrant they are in the cityscape. The neighbourhood around the Strathdee seems to mostly be one-storey post-war warehouses and parking lots. Were a whole bunch of buildings demolished?

Or were buildings like the Strathdee optimistic gambits, fore-runners to a brick-and-stone warehouse district that never ended up being built? Interesting to think about. Those buildings stand out as so different in character and scale from everything around them that they almost seem dropped in from a larger city, and kind of lonely, these big urban-scaled buildings twice the size of everything else around them. And yet they still fit, in a way—it's a very western thing that I sort of miss, weirdly.

[Nathan]

Originally Posted by Scruff Bucket

The Warehouse District to the north (which comprised Regina's original business hub, as it serviced the nearby rail line) contains numerous pre-WWI buildings that have also been converted to condos, like the Strathdee Warehouse (Google Street View) (1913 to 1914), which also boasts a ghost! - image and more info at Historicplaces.ca

I decided to limit myself to buildings that were originally built as apartments rather than later conversions like the Warehouse Condos (though these are some of my favourites in the city).

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Adjacent to the Strathdee is this streetscape which is very Western Canada. Something about the character of the architecture, the solidity and plainness of it, the wide streets, couldn`t come from anywhere else but the midwest of the continent.

Anyway, those Regina buildings are interesting due to how aberrant they are in the cityscape. The neighbourhood around the Strathdee seems to mostly be one-storey post-war warehouses and parking lots. Were a whole bunch of buildings demolished?

Or were buildings like the Strathdee optimistic gambits, fore-runners to a brick-and-stone warehouse district that never ended up being built? Interesting to think about. Those buildings stand out as so different in character and scale from everything around them that they almost seem dropped in from a larger city, and kind of lonely, these big urban-scaled buildings twice the size of everything else around them. And yet they still fit, in a way—it's a very western thing that I sort of miss, weirdly.

I could be mistaken... but I believe most of the large brick warehouse buildings (especially the ones on Dewdney) were built out when Regina started its huge boom in the pre-WWII era. The downtown district had the Railyards to the North of it and the warehouse district was built to the North of that for ease of access. You do notice the other side of the street there is basically nothing. This was the rail yard which is being shifted to be West of the city and will be redeveloped in the coming years as part of the Regina Revitalization Initiative which includes building the new Stadium (at the exhibition grounds), redeveloping the old stadium site, and developing those vacated rail yards.

In any case, it was definitely a time of great optimism. The Legislature was built to be one of the largest in the country and was to be expandable for when Saskatchewan reached a population of several millions (as was envisioned at the time). Stone and brick buildings were popping up everywhere, a GM assembly plant was built and the city and province were chugging along (being the 3rd most populated province in the country after Ontario and Quebec between 1911 and 1931). Then the Great Depression hit along with the disasterous years of drought and the whole province came to a screeching halt. Industries left, population declined and stagnated, and the optimistic building boom that had been occurring for the first 3 decades of the 20th century was over.

[thebasketballgeek]

Originally Posted by Nathan

I decided to limit myself to buildings that were originally built as apartments rather than later conversions like the Warehouse Condos (though these are some of my favourites in the city).

If we could do that Most of Winnipeg's exchange district would be already posted.

[MonkeyRonin]

As already mentioned, the pre-war apartment is not an overly common housing type the way it is in Montreal, but buildings like these nonetheless exist by the hundreds if not thousands, particularly in the outer parts (that were either separate municipalities or not developed until the early 20th century) of the inner city like Parkdale, North Toronto, Forest Hill, and the Beaches; as well as downtown, especially in the east end. It's in the 19th century residential neighbourhoods peripheral to the core where they're the least common.

They're generally of typical Edwardian design - 3 or 4 stories, brick, bay windows, classical ornamentation. There's some Gothic Revival and Art Deco, as per the other thread; as well as quite a bit of ugly neo Tudor and perhaps surprisingly, Spanish Colonial-type designs, which are rather out of place.

[kool maudit]

this is a great corner. i wish toronto's bay-and-gable streets were punctuated with a little more of this sort of thing.

[Echoes]

A few entries from Saskatoon, from my photo tours of the city: Part I | Part II


IMG_2106 by echoes320, on Flickr


IMG_2251 by echoes320, on Flickr


IMG_4191 by echoes320, on Flickr


IMG_3959 by echoes320, on Flickr


IMG_2817 by echoes320, on Flickr


IMG_3855 by echoes320, on Flickr


IMG_3958 by echoes320, on Flickr


IMG_2111 by echoes320, on Flickr