The Great Canadian Heritage Restoration Thread

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by SL123

Found some pictures on the Linebox studio website regarding the Block 210B on Albert Island.

https://linebox.ca/work/zibi-albert-island

Originally, the courtyard was supposed to be covered. Disappointing that was removed.

Do hope this does not represent the final site-plan/landscaping.

Current state vs original proposal.


http://www.pastottawa.com/tag/albert-island/893/


http://www.pastottawa.com/tag/albert-island/893/

[J.OT13]

Occupation in Downtown Ottawa has halted progress on the Centre Block rehabilitation:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/cent...test-1.5773350

[Martin Mtl]

Lovely and very respectful restoration finished for this row of townhouses on the little Pierce street in Guy-Concordia (Montreal).


(my pic)

[J.OT13]

Beauties!

[J.OT13]

Some images of the new Parliament Visitors Centre u/c.

Presentation from the NCC earlier this week:

https://ncc-website-2.s3.amazonaws.c...esentation.pdf

A few images:























https://ncc-website-2.s3.amazonaws.c...esentation.pdf

[Martin Mtl]

Victorian greystones facadism, at the base of enticy condos (first pic) and Link Appartements (my pics).

[TorontoDrew]

Such a fun building.

[J.OT13]

Facadism is always disappointing to see. That said, first one has been done relatively well, leaving plenty of space around and over the heritage row, even including a full side wall.

Second one is quite egregious for the most part however, they at least attempted to design the tower in a way that touch on some feature of the townhomes below.

[SignalHillHiker]

Finally got inside our former Parliament, the Colonial Building. It is now reopened to the public as a museum of our political history as an independent country. (An aside, our tour guide had to be about 10 and a half months pregnant, hilarious, sweet, pointed out all the embarrassing/dirty/controversial stuff, out of breath after every step. It was surreal lol)

And one more note... unless I was ever in here as a child when it was the Provincial Archives (before they were moved to The Rooms and this building was closed to the public), which is extremely unlikely, this would be my first time ever inside.

Exterior. The most notable feature is the lantern on top.











The "Senate". (We used different terms than the United Kingdom, and also Canada. Our Canadian equivalents were House of Assembly for House of Commons, Legislative Council for Senate, and Governor for Governor General). Funny aside, our Terms of Union with Canada explicitly allow us to re-establish our Senate. But... why bother? lol















The House of Assembly. Most notable feature is the fireplace on the right. For that reason our government always sits on the right, still today, whereas the opposition is on the right in most Parliaments.



















And all the other odds and ends…

EDIT: One thing I do want to call out specifically. This entrance is restored to its exact appearance in 1850. There is absolutely no historical evidence for anything significant ever being displayed in this alcove. In the early 1900s they decided to add a statue of Queen Victoria but when it arrived from London it was too big. So... hilariously... the only concrete historical record we have of anything in this alcove is a fire extinguisher mounted there throughout the 1950s. God guard thee, indeed lol

[J.OT13]

Was the lantern on when Parliament was in session, or every night? Surprised it was never lost, honestly.

[kwoldtimer]

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Was the lantern on when Parliament was in session, or every night? Surprised it was never lost, honestly.

It was removed not too many decades after the building was erected due to concerns about it leaking - but restored as part of the restoration.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

It was removed not too many decades after the building was erected due to concerns about it leaking - but restored as part of the restoration.

Of course

Well, nice to see the feature reinstated then!

[J.OT13]

Infoman had a segment on the Molson Brewery a few weeks ago. Such a fascinating history. Seems development plans include significant heritage preservation.




https://ici.radio-canada.ca/tele/inf...toire-montreal

[J.OT13]

Update from Ottawa. We dug a hole to dump the big rigs next time they come to town.

Originally Posted by zzptichka

Pretty big hole

[Martin Mtl]

Montreal, corner of Dézéry and Ste-Catherine East

Before



After







Source: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1456...0013982885565/

[OldDartmouthMark]

That's really nice, but I wonder why they changed the exterior materials? The original brickwork wouldn't have looked bad if it had been cleaned up a little.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

That's really nice, but I wonder why they changed the exterior materials? The original brickwork wouldn't have looked bad if it had been cleaned up a little.

It also looks like it has no entrance? In any case it looks nice.

I was looking at some of the Montreal and Quebec City before and after shots (from the link I posted in the "skylines of the past" thread) and a lot of the restoration projects include basically reinterpretation or rebuilding in historical styles. I don't think there's really anything wrong with that. A very big portion of the colonial-style Quebec City architecture has been reconstructed in some way.

I notice in Halifax these days there are a few different contingents. Some don't care at all about heritage or character or unique local styles and call anything that isn't a modern building Disneyfication. Others want basically perfect preservation of whatever is left (which by definition means you get less and less of this character over time); the Heritage Trust is more in this camp. And overall the amount of creative restoration work is very small these days compared to the total amount of construction, and the ratio has fallen since the 2000's. It could be worse but it's not a great situation, and I would argue the level of detailing restored in even the prime historic districts is mediocre. Maybe it has ticked upward again a bit as there have been a few more adaptive reuse projects. I wonder if part of it is the attitude that heritage architecture and character/style is just a "thing you have" rather than a mix of that and something cities promote and build over time.

[OldDartmouthMark]

To me it comes down to exterior finishes while retaining the historical character of a building. In this case, it looks nice, and it is fabulous if the finishing materials are high quality (in the photos I honestly can't tell if they used cut stone, or concrete facsimiles). My comment about the brick is that sometimes keeping original brickwork, even with patina remaining, gives the impression of an old building that has weathered decades of existence, but remains in good repair. My gut reaction when I first saw this, was that I wasn't sure immediately whether it was just a tear-down rebuilt in a similar style, while retaining some original elements, like the turret.

That's all fine... there's nothing wrong either way IMHO, in that some of it comes down to personal preference. My personal preference would be to retain original materials if possible, but all options are better than tear down and build new (IMHO), or facadism (also IMHO).

Montreal (and Quebec City) has it all over Halifax in both the sheer number of old structures retained (and the higher quality of them), and the efforts to retain or rebuild as much of it is possible. There have been some moves in the right direction (as you know), but unfortunately so much has already been lost that it seems almost pointless to care anymore.

If I were to guess, I'd say that Halifax as an entity has always undervalued its heritage and has self-esteem issues when comparing itself to large cities like Montreal. It almost feels as this has carried over to how much its historic structures are valued by the locals. As you know there are some members on the Halifax forum who would be more than happy to just tear down any older structure and build new, regardless of the situation.

[someone123]

The gap is much smaller than many think and for certain kinds of buildings there is no quality gap or Halifax might have some nicer or simply unique buildings. There are a lot of scenes in old Quebec where the "before" looks like Halifax buildings. Many landmark buildings in Halifax have national architectural significance, like Province House (from the 1810's) or the Bank of NS or armoury and so on. They're not really inferior to any similar buildings from around the same era in Canada. It is true that Quebec City and Montreal both have a lot more medium scale masonry buildings and Montreal is just a much larger city in general. The size and wealth gap between Quebec City and Halifax is much smaller than the heritage building investment gap.

The armouries are interesting. The one in Quebec suffered a major fire, was repaired to a high standard, and has a bunch of nice modern architecture around it while the stuff around the Halifax armoury is very ugly. We can debate if the French Chateau style armoury is nicer or the Romanesque Revival style is nicer but I think the Halifax one might be the larger and more architecturally impressive of the two or they are on par. The difference is really all about how the buildings have been treated. They were both constructed at about the same time. I think there are still some wooden structures up around the Hailfax armoury to protect people from falling masonry.

There have been some wins like the armoury work that's ongoing now or the Keith's renos. Keith Hall is another one that would still look impressive if you transported it to Quebec City or Montreal but looked just terrible until it was renovated. And it still wasn't quite fully renovated (it lost a storey).

I post this stuff not as some kind of competition. I just think Halifax could look a lot better than it does and could take some cues from Montreal and Quebec City. And I think the reasons people come up with for the difference are often wrong (we don't have the buildings here, this town is too small/poor, we just need developers to step in and do it all and they won't). If there were more focus on enhancing that type of character there would be a dramatic shift, probably only at the cost of maybe 1-3% of the municipal budget or so.