Old Buildings Downtown

I certainly have been doing less touristy things in Halifax compared to my time in England. There are a number of reasons for this. While it was great to do a museum a week in London (and still not get to a lot of the museums I wanted to visit) it was a bit exhausting. It kind of started to feel like an extension of my internship. Not having two consecutive days off also makes it a little difficult- if I don’t get something done on my day off Wednesday it’s going to have to wait until Sunday. Also, I have to go to the laundry mat every Wednesday- living out of two suitcases means I can’t go two weeks between visits because I will literally run out of clean clothes.

But I don’t think the only way to see a city’s history is by visiting its museums, although that is obviously important because if no one went to museums I’d be out of a job. So I go for a lot of walks. Downtown Halifax has some really interesting buildings and I thought I’d share some of them with you. Here’s a pretty Bank of Nova Scotia near the waterfront.

Halifax is also has the issue many cities in Canada face of how to keep and develop old buildings. This particular one is using the method that is popular in Toronto- keep the shell of a historic building and then build condos on top of it.

But there are a number of old buildings that sit vacant downtown. It seems that the city and its citizens lack a clear vision of what the downtown core should look like, so a lot of progress gets stuck in red tape, so things are empty for a long time (sound familiar?). Here are three building on Barrington St. that caught fire after it was vacated by Sam the Record Man. There are people working in the building, clearing it out, but there is no indication what’s going to happen to it.

But don't get the impression that all of the old buildings in Halifax are disused or falling down. One of my favourites is this building.  

From a distance I thought it was a fort or a castle and wondered what it was. So I happened to cross paths with it a few weeks ago when I went to the yarn store and found that it was the local Armoury.