1. City, Ashland Inc. and Friends of Freeman announce move for historic Freeman Station
City of Burlington/Friends of Freeman Station

Freeman Station ca. 2003

Burlington, Ont. May 9, 2011  Freeman Station, built in 1906 by the Grand Trunk Railway, is being moved from Burlington Fire Department headquarters to corporately-owned land, thanks to an agreement between the city and manufacturer Ashland Inc.

The relocation was approved April 30, 2012, by City Council, based on a proposal by the non-profit community group Friends of Freeman Station. The historical structure, bought by the city in 2005, will move to land offered by Ashland, a global company that specializes in chemical solutions for consumer and industrial markets.

"Im thrilled weve found a home for the station so restoration can begin soon," said James Smith, president of the Friends of Freeman Station. "Our volunteers have worked very hard to achieve this arrangement. Im excited by the opportunity and impressed by the positive response from Ashland.

The city, challenged with finding an agreeable home for historic Freeman Station, in January 2011 approved the creation of an ad hoc committee under the leadership of Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward and Ward 6 Councillor Blair Lancaster to look at options for saving Freeman Station. Sites that had already been rejected by the previous City Council were not to be considered.

The Friends of Freeman Station has done a phenomenal job, and has grown to 243 members, said Councillor Meed Ward. The community has really come through for the station, donating more than $30,000. I would like to send a special thanks to Rob and Laura Freeman and Don and Wendy Smith for their lead donations of $5,000 each.

The relocation of the station is expected to take place later this year.

It is thrilling to be part of a community success story, said Councillor Lancaster. The Friends of Freeman should be proud of the work that you have done. And, on behalf of my colleagues on council, I would like to thank Ashland for stepping up and playing an important role.

Ashland celebrates a 100th anniversary this year. The current Ashland facility was built in 1912 by the Vera Chemical Company of Canada Ltd. Its four employees manufactured rosin sizing to supply Canadian paper mills. The Hercules Powder Company of Wilmington, Delaware bought the company in 1931. Ashland bought Hercules in 2008.

We look forward to working with the Friends of Freeman Station to achieve a successful and timely completion of the restoration to Freeman Station, said Scott Thomson, Ashland plant manager.

This is a winning situation for all involved, said Steve Zorbas, Acting General Manager of Development and Infrastructure with the city. Finding a location where restoration of Freeman Station can take place is an example of how the community directly contributes to developing a vibrant, prosperous city where partners in government and the private sector can work together to achieve success.

For more about Freeman Station, visit www.burlington.ca/freemanstation. For more about the Friends of Freeman Station, visit www.freemanstation.ca

Facts about the Friends of Freeman Station

The Friends of Freeman Station is a non-profit community group and registered charity whose aim is to relocate, restore and preserve the historic Freeman Station for the enjoyment of current and future generations. Freeman Station is recognized for its architectural and historic significance by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Culture and Heritage Burlington.

While the group and many members of the public are still hopeful that the station ultimately can be located in Beachway Park, an immediate move will allow FOFS members to begin restoration and continue fundraising and public education in a new and more visible location. Public events are planned in co-operation with Ashland Inc., whose site is celebrating 100 years in Burlington this year.

The City of Burlington owns the station. Restoration is expected to cost $350,000. The station, which used to sit on the CN tracks just west of Brant Street, is being stored behind the Burlington Fire headquarters on Fairview Street.

2. First Parliament Buildings Site: Possible Consolidation of Site in Public Ownership
Rollo Myers

BHN readers will recall that the return of site of Upper Canada’s First Parliament Buildings 1798 (Front & Berkeley) to public ownership has been sought by the Old Town community and others for many years. The archaeological dig in 2000 showed foundations and evidence of burnt floorboards dating to the American attack in 1813, adding to the need for action. This is the only legislature in Canada to be attacked by invading troops, and was the cause of the retaliatory raid on Washington that caused the White House to be set alight.

There are three parcels involved: one owned by the City; one acquired by the Province and now home to the Ontario Heritage Trust’s new interpretive centre commemorating the site and the War of 1812 (http://www.heritagetrust.on.ca -- “Parliament”); and one still in private ownership, recently proposed as the site for a 57-story residential condominium tower.

The Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada is holding back on national listing (there are over 80 in Toronto) until the permission of all owners is given. Returning the remaining parcel to public ownership is doubly important if things are to move forward during the anniversary of the War of 1812.

After a number of land-swap proposals had been proposed and abandoned in the recent past, Council has just voted on a motion -- Deemed Urgent -- by Councillor Pam McConnell, seconded by Councillor Paul Ainslie, to instruct City staff to investigate the possibility of a proposal that secures the First Parliament Site under public ownership, at no net cost to the City. The vote was unanimous.

A stiff challenge, but there’s a sense of hopefulness that with the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games approaching, the Athlete’s Village nearby, and the Old Town, West Don Lands, and Distillery District developments gaining momentum,, that the time is right to commemorate this founding site in an appropriate manner.

May 10, 2012 

Editor's Note:
Congrats Rollo, and so many others who have been moving this rather large rock slowly uphill for years.

3. BUILT HAMILTON: Won
Spacing.ca

BUILT HAMILTON: Won

Much like other post-industrial cities in the American Rust Belt, Hamilton has been traversing a period of revitalization in its downtown core. As the largely suburban city has begun to take note of its new-found urban potential, there is an ongoing debate over what to do with the abundance of vacant old buildings downtown....

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4. Chatham-Kent Daily Post: blacksmith shop restroration
Dave Benson

Local "Time Capsule" Blacksmith Shop under Restoration

Dave Benson was highlighted in the most recent ACORN magazine. The saving of an early blacksmith shop on private property by a private owner is an example of best practices taking place in Chatham-Kent.
 

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5. Globe and Mail: Doors Open makes Business Section!
Brenda Dalglish

Doors opened and a phenomenon was born

When Doors Open began in 2000 as a one-time millennium event to celebrate Toronto’s architectural heritage, organizers never imagined the enthusiasm with which residents would greet it.

The weather was warm, an important factor determining turnout each year, and tens of thousands streamed through the city’s most distinctive buildings, making Toronto the first city in North America to recognize the interest that its architecture would generate.

“Doors Open gives people one weekend to take the pulse of the ‘built city’ and find out where in the city the pulse is beating faster that year,” said Jane French, who developed the Doors Open program for Toronto based on a heritage program that started in Europe in the 1990s.

Editor's Note:
Doors Open is a phenomena that I am proud to have been involved in founding. It began in a lecture I organized in 1998, Sir James Dunbar-Nasmith speaking to a lunch audience introduced the idea from Scotland to Toronto. Heritage Toronto started to explore it, but it didn't gain strength until 1999 when Margie Zeidler, Jane French, Karen Black, and myself headed for Scotland to see first hand how it was done. We stayed with James and he opened doors for us to all the Scottish organizers were most generous in sharing stuff about the business end. When we came back I organized a group to gain access to buildings, Mayor Lastman wrote to property owners to invite them to participate, and Jane and Karen were magical in working the ropes at the City, finding sponsors and building the program. I introduced the idea to Heritage Canada. Margie sponsored the initial website. My husband's office, DTAH was the first building to sign on in Canada. Ontario Heritage Trust has run the program in Ontario for ten years now. It would be much bigger in the U.S. if 911 hadn't made people overly security conscious. When I became the chair of the Toronto Preservation Board in 1999 I had two goals, one to get Doors Open off the ground, the second was to get the Ontario Heritage Act changed. One of my proudest moments was sitting in the Leg watching MPP's debate the improved OHA in 2005. Many of the MPP's mentioned how successful Doors Open had been in their communities as an argument for passing the OHA. So both wishes came true.

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6. Globe and Mail: Governor General's Medals in Architecture

Five notable winners of the Governor-Generals Medals in Architecture

Five notable winners of the Governor-General’s Medals in Architecture

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7. Globe and Mail: Interesting New Museums to Visit

War and Pieces: new Museums, enticing exhibits

Outstanding architecture and new exhibits engage visitors at three new or newly renovated museums

WATERLOO REGION MUSEUM
When you first approach the new Waterloo Region Museum your eye sees a patchwork quilt rendered in pieces of multi-coloured glass —a folksy tribute to the neighbouring farm country. But in a nod to the region’s tech-savvy entrepreneurs and educators, the 16 colours of glass are more than just a pretty arrangement; they contain a message in hexadecimal computer code, an excerpt from a stirring 1905 speech by Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier:

“We do not want, that any individuals should forget the land of their origin or their ancestors. Let them look to the past, but let them also look to the future; let them look to the land of their ancestors, but let them look also to the land of their children.”

From the bamboo splint rice basket that Tom Lee used to pack his belongings in the late 1800s to the plastic milk crates used by recent university students, artifacts weave together to tell a fascinating story of settlement and enterprise in a sleek new building designed by architects Moriyama & Teshima, in association with the Walter Fedy Partnership of Kitchener. Among the highlights: Beck’s circus, a promotional truck that travelled the region’s backroads and ploughing matches in the early 1900s, introducing farmers to the marvels of electric lights, milking machines, butter churns and water pumps. It worked. The farmers were convinced of electricity’s benefits and Berlin (now Kitchener) was the first municipality in Ontario with electric streetlights powered by Niagara Falls.

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8. Globe and Mail: R.C. Harris
John Lorinc

Meet the man who shaped 20th-century Toronto

His familiar initials, R.C., are indelibly linked to the city’s magnificent art deco water-treatment plant, the Bloor viaduct and Michael Ondaatje’s 1987 best-seller, In the Skin of a Lion.

But Rowland Caldwell Harris – who began a 33-year term as works commissioner a century ago this week – left his civic fingerprints all over Toronto, building hundreds of kilometres of sidewalks, sewers, paved roads, streetcar tracks, public baths and washrooms, landmark bridges and even the precursor plans to the GO commuter rail network.

“The significance of Harris a hundred years later is that we’re still living fundamentally in the city he imagined,” observes Dalhousie architecture professor Steven Mannell, who studies his career and has advised city officials on an extensive rehabilitation of the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant, due to be finished next year.

Mr. Harris famously added a second deck to the Prince Edward Viaduct in anticipation of a subway line that wasn’t built for decades. What’s less well known is that Mr. Harris was a photo buff who, in 1930, presided over the city’s first planning exercise – a process that led to construction of congestion-easing arterials such as Dundas Street East and the parkway extension of Mount Pleasant through Rosedale and up towards St. Clair.

Unlike his predecessors, he insisted on high architectural and landscaping quality in the design of his works projects. He regarded structures such as the St. Clair Reservoir, built in the late 1920s, in both aesthetic and functional terms.

Editor's Note:
BHN's Does Anybody Know helped John Lorinc connect with R.C. Harris descendants in California, yielding a family album.

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9. Toronto Star: Canary Neighbourhood
Christopher Hume

Modern city taking flight through Canary May 18, 2012

This Canary isn’t in a coal mine, but it’s just as much a sign of things ahead, in this case, entirely positive.

We’re talking about the mixed-use residential neighbourhood now under construction in the West Don Lands. Named for the greasy spoon that occupied the corner of Cherry and Front for decades, Canary District is being hyped as Toronto’s first 21st-century community; that means it will be sustainable, urban, connected, transit-oriented and diverse.

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10. Toronto Star: Future of Ontario Place
David Rider

Can sad, empty Ontario Place become magical again?

For the first May long weekend in 41 years, the Ontario Place gates will not swing open on a summer of wholesome, waterlogged, government-prescribed fun.

They remain locked until at least 2017. Where map-clutching crowds once surged across the bridge, only security guards now saunter.

Folks still file to the marina, Molson Canadian Amphitheatre and Atlantis Pavilion banquet hall. But those water-spouting bikes, seemingly powered by shrieks of delight, are still and dry. The Wilderness Adventure Ride is as forlorn as an actual gold-rush outpost.

“You would be horrified,” says John Tory — whose panel will tell the province how to breathe life back into Ontario Place — to a reporter who played there as a child, worked there multiple summers as a student, has a sister on the O.P. board, and has splashed there with his own kids.

“It’s sad to walk through. The outside looks pretty much the same but inside, for example in the pods where there was a smaller theatre and rooms with exhibits, it’s empty and abandoned. You’d just be shaking your head saying, ‘How did this happen?’”

Still, Tory is glad the provincial Liberal government, faced with ever-shrinking attendance and ever-growing deficits, “decided to suck it up and do what probably had to be done in terms of closing it for now and having a rapid process to say ‘What are we going to do with this?’”

There remains among many, including those who know the educational amusement park needs a big reboot, potent nostalgia for its past, and hopes some of the magic will survive.

My strongest memories are of late 1980s summers — selling tickets at the gate and, later, as a media/public relations assistant. The pay was great (later cut to minimum wage) and official parties so wild we were blacklisted by venues including O.P. itself.

We kept order at The Forum (the much-missed, grass-hilled amphitheatre with a rotating stage and nightly shows by big-name bands), patrolled the swinging punching bags in Children’s Village, gassed up Bumper Boats and consoled crowds broiling in line on the Cinesphere ramps.

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11. MetropolisMag.com: Rudolph's Orange County Legislature Reprieve
Anthony Paletta

Saving Rudolph in Goshen

A narrow victory for Brutalism was scored on May 3, in Goshen, New York, as the Orange County Legislature rejected, 11 to 10, a proposal to demolish the Paul Rudolph-designed Orange County Government Center, built in 1967. The proposal, which had succeeded in two prior committees, would have replaced the much-hated complex with a neo-Georgian structure. It’s unclear whether the vote reflects a sense of history or of financial rectitude. But with an architectural legacy as endangered as Brutalism, any success is to be valued.

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12. Ottawa West EMC / emcottawawest.ca: City pushing ahead on Lansdowne work
Laura Mueller

The city wants to move forward with $12.6 million worth of work at Lansdowne Park.EMC news - Even before the fate of the Lansdowne Park reconstruction was decided by the courts, the city began looking to push forward with the ambitious project.

A report approved by the city's finance and economic development committee on May 1 will allow work to begin on the remediation of contaminated soil and moving the heritage Horticulture Building.

That work is recommended because the Friends of Lansdowne's legal challenge at the Ontario Court of Appeal had been preventing the city from finalizing its partnership with the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group.

Although the original estimate for moving the Horticulture Building, which was stripped of its heritage designation to allow it to be moved, was around $2 million, city planner John Smit said in November of 2010, the city now says it will cost $5 million to move the structure, $1.3 million to renovate it, add an info centre and perhaps a café or restaurant, plus another $200,000 to relocate memorials and do related work and $3.8 million to rebuild the building's foundation, for a total of $10.3 million.

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13. recursion: Goad
Nathan Ng

Easily access Goad

I recently cobbled together a simple online site for viewing the 1884, 1890, 1893, 1899, 1903, and 1910 editions of the classic reference, Goads *Atlas of the City of Toronto*, as well as the 1889/1892 Insurance Plan of Toronto.

These large-format, detailed colour maps were used for fire insurance and real estate purposes, and include information about building shapes, construction materials, and relation to other structures. (As I'm sure you know already)

I think that many of your readers would enjoy accessing these maps as they are both beautiful and informative. The maps provide considerable insight into the built-form of Toronto at that time period, as well as direct evidence of the city's rapid growth when different years are compared.

The site is intended as a complementary (and complimentary) means of accessing the maps, which are also available via the Toronto Archives, the Toronto Public Library, and Library and Archives Canada. Unfortunately, the existing online mechanisms provided by the aforementioned organizations are either somewhat difficult to navigate or in restrictive formats which are problematic for a wide set of users.

This prompted me to create the site, which has been positively received to date. (e.g. the Ontario Genealogical Society called it "an excellent alternative".) I am trying to share the resource with as wide an audience as possible, and was hoping that you might be able to share the website in a link.

Thanks for your attention,

Nathan Ng

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14. Saskatoon: Friends of Third Avenue United church
Friends of Third Avenue United

Friends of Third Avenue United

Friends of Third Avenue United is a grassroots group of Saskatoon citizens working to protect Third Avenue United Church from demolition and to support the Third Avenue Centre so that the building can be converted to a premier dedicated downtown performance venue for Saskatoon....

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15. Saskatoon: Historic church must be saved
Saskatoon Star Phoenix

Historic church must be saved

A dwindling congregation might not be able to afford to repair and preserve the majestic Third Avenue United Church building downtown, but a rapidly growing and booming Saskatoon and Saskatchewan cannot afford to let the historic structure be sold off to face an uncertain fate....

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16. Wall Street Journal: .Challenging Brutalist Building Under Threat
ROBBIE WHELAN

Robbie Whelan/The Wall Street Journal: The Orange County Government Center in Goshen, N.Y., is designed in the Brutalist architecture style particularly suited to institutional buildings.

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17. Chicago Tribune: Trying to save a piece of architectural history
John P. Huston Tribune

Historic cottage is safe, but home could be razed

A self-described architecture buff is scrambling to dismantle a Frank Lloyd Wright-connected cottage in Wilmette and move it to Wauconda, saving the structure from demolition and earning applause from preservationists. But the wrecking ball could still swing on a second historic Prairie School-home next door if a buyer is not found within four months. Schaumburg developer George Hausen recently purchased the adjoining properties and had planned to redevelop the site before the provenance of the two homes was revealed, showing links to three prominent architects: Wright, Rudolph Schindler and John Van Bergen. In response, Hausen offered to donate the cottage and temporarily put the larger home on the market. Joseph Catrambone, an Oak Brook-based contractor and real estate manager, read news accounts of the endangered cottage at 1320 Isabella St. and, after a selection process, took ownership recently for $1. The 594- square- foot Prairie-style cottage was designed in 1920 by the Austrian-born Schindler, who ran Wright’s Oak Park studio at the time, according to records.

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