1. You too Can be a BHN Reporter
Catherine Nasmith

I am always grateful to colleagues from across Canada who submit articles, links to BHN. This issue has tons of great stuff from Winnipeg. Thanks for those.

If you want to share your news, publicize your event, or post a link, please go to http://www.builtheritagenews.ca and click on the submit keys, or you can go directly from the keys at the left column of any BHN issue. 

The postings from others are particularly welcome this issue as I have been ill. I let myself get a bit rundown while attending to a family member who was in hospital. We are both on the mend now.

Cheers 

Cathy

2. North York Preservation Panel Pleas for Downsview Hangars
Catherine Nasmith

North York Community Preservation Panel

c/o Geoff Kettel

March 9, 2012

David Soknacki
Chair
Parc Downsview Park

RE: Heritage Protection of 65 Carl Hall Road (Parc Downsview Park)

Dear Mr. Soknacki,

The North York Community Preservation Panel (Panel) is a City of Toronto appointed committee with a mandate for identification and preservation of built heritage in the North York part of the city. The Panel has become increasingly concerned regarding the reported imminent loss of the heritage property of 65 Carl Hall Road. We would request that the Parc Downsview Park (PDP) board release its current plans for the property and respond to the public’s widely expressed concerns.
65 Carl Hall Road, formerly known as Canadian Forces Base Downsview Plant No.1, has heritage value for architectural reasons, for its association with Canada’s air force and aircraft production, and as the site of the Canadian Air and Space Museum. During WWII, Canada trained 73,000 Canadian pilots at 231 locations across the country and tens of thousands of pilots from member nations of the British Empire, costing Canadians $1.6Bn. The use of the property by the Canadian Air and Space Museum is fitting as a memorial and sanctuary in recognition of Canadians’ investment in lives, money, and time associated with the former air base, and with the building of aircraft during WWII.

While the property had heritage protection when it was owned by the federal department, the heritage designation was removed when it was transferred to the PDP.

It is our understanding that 65 Carl Hall Road was to be demolished as part of a scheme for a private hockey arena. The Panel has recently been informed that this may have changed but the current status of plans for the site is unclear.

Toronto City Council at its meeting of September 21/22, 2011adopted the following resolution:

“ ...City Council calls on the Federal Government to recognize the contributions of Canadian aerospace and aviation innovation; grant the Canadian Air and Space Museum (CASM) located on the site of the former military base in Downsview a long-term reprieve; and, provide assurances of its preservation on the Downsview lands…”

The Panel became aware of the threat to the property last October and engaged with the Mayor and the local Councillors to express our concerns.

There has been a dearth of public information or engagement from PDP regarding their plans for this site.

Yours sincerely,

Geoff Kettel

Chair, North York Community Preservation Panel

Editor's Note:
ACTION: Call or write your MP. There are great models in Toronto for heritage buildings incorporated into parks, who would wish Wychwood Barns away now.

3. National Post: Semi-Detached: Miss-matched houses show a neighbourhoods changing ethnic makeup
Peter Kuitenbrouwer

Architect William Greer poses on Northcote Avenue in Toronto Monday, March 5, 2012. "How do you judge today whether a building is good or bad? Does the building contribute to the heritage value?

On Monday afternoon, William Greer, who grew up in Toronto and is among the city’s most noted heritage architects (and has the groovy glasses to prove it) joined me for a stroll on Northcote Avenue. I was a little bit worried to hear his view of what has happened to this strip of historic homes.

Northcote has on it perhaps 100 dwellings — single houses, semi-detached houses and row houses — in close to 100 styles. One house, attached to a classic Victoria, boasts angel-brick glued on the front. One has a round picture window. Some have removed the gables, replaced the double-hung windows with aluminum windows that have small sliding openings at the bottom, and switched the wood front porch posts for wrought-iron pillars. Some have bricked-in or poured-concrete front lawns.

Mr. Greer chooses to view the overall results charitably.

“Maybe they wanted to make it look different,” he says. “You would need to be a sociologist to understand it. They are modernizing. How do you judge today whether a building is good or bad? Does the building contribute to the heritage value? Well, frankly, each of these buildings contributes to our heritage in its own way.”

Much of the heart of Toronto consists of semi-detached houses that developers built in the 19th century. In areas such as Blythwood, Cabbagetown, the east Annex, Harbord Village, Rosedale, Wychwood and Yorkville, city-approved “heritage conservation districts” require homeowners to respect history when they remodel. Northcote has no such rules: in jaw-dropping fashion, the owners of its semis and row houses have modified their homes without regard to their original design.

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4. Toronto Star: Time to improve Life Under the Gardiner
Christopher Hume

Toronto

A model from Guadalajara Mexico

If you liked the concrete curtain, you’ll love the glass wall.

Proposals brought before the Toronto Waterfront Design Review Panel last week include a 75-storey mixed-use condo tower at 10 York St., and a little further east, a massive scheme with two 30-plus-storey condos and 70-storey office tower.

The new Southcore Financial Centre is also taking shape. The PwC Tower just opened and two more — a second office building and a hotel — are underway.

East of that, by Air Canada Centre, the triple towers of Maple Leaf Square are already established fixtures on the skyline.

Meanwhile, up at Yonge and Gerrard, another condo tower, this one 78 storeys, is under construction. It will be the tallest residential skyscraper in Canada.

Toronto is growing at an unprecedented rate, onward, but more than ever, upward. Though many hate to admit it, this is Tower City, a spreading agglomeration of vertical villages, some no larger than a single building.

Yet even as the city fills up with condos and their inhabitants, little thought has been given to what’s happening down below where glass meet grass. This becomes especially interesting on the waterfront where a unique set of conditions prevail. In addition to the lake, there’s the Gardiner Expressway and the roads that feed it — Bay, York, Spadina and Jarvis.

Editor's Note:
I thought of the Gardiner when I was in Guadalajara last year and encountered this rather stunning new overpass and landscape below. Perhaps not all that heavily used, but beautiful to look at.

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5. Toronto Star: War of 1812 Exhibit
Raju Mudhar

Battle of York soldiers remembered in War of 1812 exhibit

In our peace-loving society, there are many people who don’t know that Toronto was once the site of war, and one that changed everything about this city’s history.

The Battle of York is a seminal event in the history of this city, as well as this nation, but many Torontonians do not know very much about it. The city of Toronto is hoping that will change with a number of events observing the bicentennial anniversary of the War of 1812.

“Finding the Fallen: Battle of York Remembered” at the St. Lawrence Market Gallery opened March 3, and in addition to maps, artifacts and written excerpts of soldiers’ letters and reports from the battle, the centrepiece of the exhibit is a book of remembrance filled with the names of the battle’s fallen combatants, including casualties from the American, British, First Nations and Canadian sides.

On April 27, 1813. Toronto (then known as the Town of York) was captured and burned by invading American forces.

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6. Globe and Mail: Victorian with a side of Cold War
Dave LeBlanc

A charming farmhouse - with a Cold War bunker in the basement

Even today, the crush of big city congestion seems distant when viewed from the north edge of Aurora; back in 1962, before the highway came along, this would have been a world away.

And that's exactly why Toronto built this secret place underneath an old farmhouse.

Well above the protective slope of the Oak Ridges Moraine, our city's response to the Cold War was created towards the end of 1961 in the Town of Aurora. Operational by January, 1962, the Metropolitan Toronto Emergency Preparedness Centre is a concrete, cinderblock and steel beam manifestation of the fear that existed after the botched Bay of Pigs Invasion of April, 1961 and the buildup to October, 1962's Cuban Missile Crisis – think of it as a novella sandwiched between two major tomes. It exists today thanks to history-loving homeowners.

Werner and Orianna Brodbeck didn't go looking to buy a piece of our collective past. They simply wanted an Aurora “fixer-upper” when Mrs. Brodbeck, a letter carrier, spotted a newspaper advertisement listing a City of Toronto asset sale in 1996. One “asset” was only a bike ride away, so she pedaled over and spied a beautiful, boarded-up Victorian farmhouse. Smitten, she decided to find out why the home had been left abandoned, and why there was barbed wire around the roof and strange antennas on the property.

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7. Call for Volunteers to Lead a Heritage Rides in Toronto
Bike Union/Heritage Toronto

Toronto Heritage Rides

In cooperation with Heritage Toronto, the City of Toronto, the Toronto Cyclists Union and other partners, a new initiative is calling for volunteers interested in developing a series of themed bike rides in the city.

Along the lines of Heritage Toronto's popular series of Heritage Walks held from May through October every year, these relaxed, easy-to-ride, informative and fun bike tours, or Heritage Rides, will enable more ground and subjects to be covered over the same 1-2 hour time period.

Using existing cycling routes wherever possible (including on-street bike lanes and multi-use paths through parks) as well as reaching areas not easily accessible by foot, the rides will be of interest to new and old residents of Toronto alike as well as to visitors and tourists who want discover many of the great things this city has to offer while being active and keeping a low carbon footprint.

Heritage Rides will include historical architecture rides, nature & environmental rides, fashion & style rides, arts & culture rides, gastro & farmers' market rides, as well as other themes and combinations thereof. The rides will be delivered as both guided bike tours led by a Ride Leader (a local community historian or subject expert) on dates to be announced and as self-guided interactive tours viewable on popular Internet-connected smartphone platforms. Rides will have something of interest to the history buff, the treehugger, the hipster and the foodie alike.

Editor's Note:
For all you heritage fans with bikes...hmm that would be me.

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8. Raise The Hammer: Dundas Stone Houses
Gerard Middleton

Dundas has a rich history that produced a fine heritage of stone buildings. This tour will introduce you to some of them.

The town of Dundas has a rich history that produced a fine heritage of stone buildings. By the end of the nineteenth century they included many industrial and public buildings as well as about 40 private houses. Of these, perhaps 30 still remain.

To construct these buildings, the residents made use of the local stone resources and imported relatively little stone from other parts of Ontario. The Niagara escarpment that encloses the Dundas valley was the source. At the top, forming the Dundas "Peak" is the Lockport Formation, composed mainly of a stone, resistant to weathering, which is popularly called "limestone," but more precisely known to geologists as dolomite (a calcium, magnesium carbonate).

Below this is a largely shaly section, which weathers to form the escarpment slope. About 100 feet below the base of the Lockport there are two other resistant formations, seen in only a few natural exposures: the Manitoulin dolomite and the Whirlpool sandstone.

The Whirlpool, about 10 feet thick, is the lower unit of Silurian strata, and is an excellent building stone, that was once extensively quarried along the front of the escarpment from Queenston to the Forks of the Credit.

...

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9. Toronto Star: Balsillie School by KPMB
Christopher Hume

Jim Balsillie

WATERLOO—It was a different world in 2007 when Jim Balsillie launched his great philanthropic work, a school of international studies. The business over which he presided, Research in Motion, was riding high, well along the road to ubiquity, and the money rolled in.

Though he had failed in his bid for an NHL team, the time had come to make a grand gesture. His partner at RIM, Mike Lazaridis, had already built the Perimeter Institute, an intellectual playpen for top-drawer theoretical physicists from around the world. Now it was Balsillie’s turn.

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10. Hamilton Spectator: Demolition of downtown Hamilton church
Danielle Wong

OMB gives All Saints green light to demolish downtown Hamilton church

Barry Gray/The Hamilton Spectator - All Saints Church All Saints Church, at 15 Queen St. S., near King Street West, will be demolished to make way for affordable housing.

A downtown congregation has won a battle with local heritage advocates to demolish its more-than-century-old church and construct affordable housing.

The Ontario Municipal Board delivered a decision to dismiss appeals made by a group of Hamiltonians looking to stop two minor variances that exempted the All Saints Anglican Church project from zoning restrictions for parking and building height.

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11. Cottage Country Now: St. George the Martyr Magnetawan
forwarded by Steve Otto

Church receives heritage protection

MAGNETAWAN – St. George the Martyr watches over the village of Magnetawan today as it has for more than 130 years and there is now an assurance that it will stand for many more.
July Flemming has been working to attain a heritage designation for the Anglican Church and is pleased with the results that came out of Magnetawan council’s August 10 meeting.

“It’s the second best but it’s a very good second best,” she said. “The best for the church would be Ontario Heritage Designation.”

Flemming says that on July 3 they met with Harry Huskins, the executive assistant to the Bishop of Algoma, at the church.

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12. Brandon Sun: Vandals Target Rural Manitoba Landmark

Vandals Target Rural Landmark

Vandals continue to destroy a Manitoba gem southeast of Brandon.

The Criddle/Vane Homestead committee has worked tirelessly to protect the site from the elements; they never thought their biggest foe would be the destructive work of vandals....

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13. CBC Saskatchewan: Jail sentence imposed for arson of Fleming SK grain elevator

Jail sentence imposed for arson of grain elevator

The Fleming elevator, which was built in 1895, was the known as the last example of its style in Canada still on its original site and had been a tourist draw for the town. It was originally built for a flour milling company....

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14. Industrial Heritage Website
forwarded by Michael McLelland

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15. Demolition has begun on Winnipeg's Portage Ave at Donald St.
Christian Cassidy, West End Dumplings

Demolition has begun on Portage Avenue

Demolition has begun on three familiar buildings on Portage Avenue at Doanld Street to make way for a new hotel development.

Here is a look back at the history of the Clarendon hotel (ca 1920), Donalda Building (ca 1951) and Kennedy/Mitchell Copp Building (ca 1906 & 1919).

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16. Globe and Mail: Historic Properties for Sale in Montreal

Hot properties in Old Montreal

After languishing for decades behind boarded-up windows, dozens of Old Montreal's centuries-old

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17. Globe and Mail: imageHeritage buildings - Prestige returning to Old Montreal
Graham Lanktree Special to Globe and Mail

Graham Hughes for The Globe and Mail - The citys first skyscraper, the 1887 red sandstone New York Life building at 511 Place dArmes, has had its lobby gutted and the rest of the building redone.

The 350-year-old cobblestone streets of Old Montreal are always good for a romantic walk, but these days they hold some of Canada’s hottest commercial real estate opportunities.

After languishing for decades behind boarded-up windows, dozens of the area’s centuries-old buildings are being transformed.

Once again people are pouring into the area as old commercial structures are given new life as condo developments. “Within the last 10 years, the number of people living there has jumped from 5,000 to 50,000,” says Mickael Chaput, a broker with McGill Real Estate, who represents multiple properties in the area.

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18. Globe and Mail: Pickering Airport Lands
Ian Merringer

Proposed Pickering airport leaves agricultural future up in the air

With a change of season coming to north Pickering, local residents know the spring will bring three things: Crops will come up, houses will come down and the fight against the proposed Pickering airport will move forward into its fourth decade.

Residents are currently celebrating 40 years of airport resistance – a rally brought out 200 people in Brougham last week. They are repudiating the federal study that last summer predicted an airport would be needed by 2027, worrying about the accelerated demolition of area houses and, finally, hoping that the community might be revived by rethinking the way farming is done in the area.

Underpinning all these issues was the spring day in 1972 when farmers turned on the radio while milking cows and learned their farms would soon be owned by Transport Canada. In all, 750 families were stripped of their property when Ottawa expropriated 7,500 hectares of prime agricultural land and raised the possibility of constructing a major airport there to take pressure off of Pearson International Airport in Toronto.

Editor's Note:
The uncertainty of this situation has led to unforgivable losses of perfectly usable buildings. A decision on the future of these lands would be a welcome turn of events.

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19. Toronto Star: 100 Mile House Competition
Chantaie Allick

From the land of the 100-mile diet comes the 100-mile house.

The Architecture Foundation of B.C. has organized an international design competition that challenges architects, engineers, designers, artists, students and any other green-thinking individuals to design a home in Vancouver made from 100 per cent local materials.

The 1,200-square-foot home must use materials and systems made, manufactured or recycled within 100 miles of the city.

Editor's Note:
Almost any house built before 1950 is a 100 mile house.....only the rich could bring materials from elsewhere

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20. Toronto Star: Habitat remains a Favourite
Sidhartha Banerjee

Montreal landmark wins Lego contest

MONTREAL—A Montreal landmark has won an international competition among Lego enthusiasts — but the thrill of victory has been tempered by the sting of rejection.

The Habitat 67 housing complex won an Internet vote, beating out iconic structures like Paris’ Eiffel Tower, Rome’s Coliseum and the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

The Lego company had — without making any promises — said it would consider creating a toy set inspired by the winning entry.

But it now turns out that the Montreal complex won’t necessarily be following the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Centre and the White House, all buildings previously immortalized by Lego under its Architecture series.

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21. Westman Journal: Stately 'Aud' an enduring structure in Virden, MB

Stately 'Aud' an enduring structure in Virden

Visionaries in Virden's history have shaped the present and set the stage (pardon the pun) for the future in the life of this town. Can you picture Virden without the Aud Theatre? "If you build it they will come," is a quote from the famous film "Field of Dreams" and in Virden, 'they' have come...

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22. Winnipeg Free Press: Doom stalks Winnipeg's old airport

Doom Stalks Modernist Gem

For now, the suddenly empty shell of the old Winnipeg airport terminal still waits for the final punctuation on its life.

Not for much longer, though. While heritage groups press for a last-minute reprieve, the shadow of the wrecking ball looms large over the 48-year-old building. The Western Canadian Aviation Museum looked at moving into the place, but opted instead to build anew....

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23. Winnipeg Free Press: Farewell Core Eyesore

Farewell Core Eyesore

In a case of Winnipeg history repeating itself, demolition is underway at an intersection once regarded as one of downtown's original eyesores.

Back in 1883, when the city was a dirt-road frontier town scattered around Main Street, the five-storey Clarendon Hotel became the first major building on the north side of Portage Avenue. But the rapid development of downtown Winnipeg during the railway boom quickly bypassed the stone-and-brick structure, perhaps best known today as the A&B Sound building.

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24. Winnipeg Free Press: Lord Selkirk Monument easy to miss
Christian Cassidy

Monument easy to miss

He founded the Red River Settlement in 1812 with his own money, but is there a monument to him in the city that grew out of that settlement?

There is, but chances are, you have never stumbled upon it.

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25. Winnipeg Free Press: Rescued Virden, MB Concert Hall Going Strong Again

Rescued Concert Hall Going Strong Again

Thirty years ago, Gladys Carefoot asked Randy Rostecki what he thought of the town's old concert hall, the historic Virden Auditorium that was filled with bird droppings, fallen plaster, glass from broken windows and had water damage from the collapsing roof.

Rostecki told Carefoot it was the finest vintage concert hall between Winnipeg and Calgary...

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26. Toronto Star: Building A FLW Dog House
Sudhin Thanawala

Frank Lloyd Wright-designed doghouse set to tour with film about architect

SAN FRANCISCO—The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The Fallingwater home in southwestern Pennsylvania. But a child’s doghouse?

Frank Lloyd Wright designed hundreds of landmark buildings and homes during a prolific career that spanned more than seven decades. But in what is widely considered a first and only for the famed architect, Wright indulged a young boy’s humble request for a doghouse in 1956 and sent him designs for the structure.

“I was probably his youngest client and poorest client,” Jim Berger, now 68, said during a recent phone interview.

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27. The Atlantic Cities: What We Can Learn From Urban Nostalgia
Charles R. Wolfe

What We Can Learn From Urban Nostalgia

In 1980s "The Necessity for Ruins," landscape essayist J.B. Jackson explained that such leftover edifices often inspire us "to restore the world around us to something like its former beauty. I've often written of Jackson's advocacy for the use of ruins - not for what we now call "urban exploration" of abandoned places, but to reclaim what worked before....

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28. Apollo: Augustus Pugin, whose bicentenary falls this month, died ill, impoverished and insane aged 40. In recent years, following a major London exhibition and a popular biography, the illustrious architect is at last garnering the recognition he deserves
Gavin Stamp

Augustus Pugin

The frieze of architects on the podium of the Albert Memorial is a fascinating index of contemporary taste. Vanbrugh is there next to Wren, but Hawksmoor, Adam and Soane – all highly regarded today – are absent. Among the Victorians, Cockerell and Barry are represented, along with Pugin, who stands at the corner, dressed in a strange robe and looking away from all the others. But he is only there at the insistence of the designer of the memorial, George Gilbert Scott, whose own head is placed discreetly behind the figure of Pugin ‘to whom I desired to do all honour as the head of the revival of mediaeval architecture and in many respects the greatest genius in architectural art which our age has produced…He was our leader and our most able pioneer in every branch of architectural work and decorative art….’ Scott owed much to Pugin’s example, so his ambition was ‘to appear as his disciple, and to do him all the honour he deserves and which there is a strong tendency to deny him.’

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