Nothing is Forever

Nothing is forever...with Blogger. I am feeling especially curmudgeonly this weekend. Blogger is broken and my most recent posts and photos have disappeared. Reading the commentary on the Help forums has been interesting - curmudgeonly is definitely one of the calmer responses to this mini-catastrophe. So much timeless prose...lost. Maybe forever. Below the radar on the scope of the disasters facing our world. I know. Stuff happens. Get over it.

But I hate doing things twice. I have always liked moving on. So, several conversations with some very fine folk whom I've met lately - the owner of a unique stone house near Myrtle, and several citizens of the truly lovely Glen Williams - will have to wait 'til I'm motivated to repeat myself. And who knows, maybe Blogger will find my stuff and put it back where they found it.

L. John Calder House, 1886, near Whitby

R. The Copper Kettle pub, 1825 general store, Glen Williams

Che Bella Cosa

Simple things amaze me. Without regret I have let the technological revolution stampede past me, probably while I was looking at something nineteenth century growing from a rough-hewn stone foundation. I have readily eschewed PDA's, Blackberries, iPads, MP3 players, GPS, texting, tweeting, and doubtless, dozens of other life-saving electronic inventions. Mind you, I must admit I don't know how I survived before that remedy for the terminally curious, Google!

The simple thing that amazes me is our scanner. Not only do I love the power of house-hold photocopying, but it is a sheer joy to be able to translate old photos into digitally accessible images for admiring and sharing. Last week, during a bout of the lurgies, I sat in my bathrobe (I know, TMI) and scanned all the important (ie. architectural) photos from our 1995 Italy trip. It's great to be able to see these images screen-size, to enhance or eliminate details depending on their importance to my quest.

It's also super to be able to check on the names, dates etc. for buildings which my guide-books did not note, or which the photographer forgot to record. Sharing some favourite images here. Another neat by-product of my time over a glowing scanner. As Martha would say, "Che bella cosa".

McKendry's McKingston

The planets were in alignment last Saturday. The perfect combination of sunny warm weather falling on a committment-free Saturday led to several enjoyable hours of traipsing the old town's daffodilly residential streets, admiring her lovely heritage homes, and bringing home 137 photos of great buildings with history, to enjoy, research and study.

We wandered through the long ago absorbed village of Portsmouth with its higgledy-piggeldy streets, inviting public park and community flowerbeds. Had a nice chat with a Bernese Mountain dog and her most gracious human (one of the community gardeners), whose neighbour was the brick Georgian featured here - one of the oldest in the village. Learned that these houses were once at waterside, the park appearing and King Street West developing as the bay and marsh were progressively filled in. We wandered up the driveway, as BMD was expected there anyway for her customary treat, and had a look at the plaque (which my telephoto had already sussed for me) - 1819, pretty good for Ontario. And in brick too. And totally restored, with careful ongoing maintenance. Special seat on the bus for those folks!

Another delight was to return home to find an account of this home in Jennifer McKendry's fine book With our Past Before Us about c19 architecture in the Kingston area (UofT Press 1995). According to her introduction, this book is one of the first to celebrate Kingston's early buildings and architects since Margaret Angus' Old Stones of Kingston (1966 & 89). McKendry has produced an impressive list of work (she has a special spot for picturesque old cemeteries, and is a great photographer), and I turn to her books often when researching Kingston buildings. I have still not determined how active and effective local historical societies are in that area - I would expect they would be well established with a base of scholarship to draw on, and some mighty impressive buildings to preserve.

McKendry records that this house was built in 1819 by James Gardiner, a farmer with 50 acres of crop land. His house was built tight against the original road that followed the shoreline of Hatter's Bay, and he eschewed a more picturesque location in favour of direct access to water, the transportation route for his market-bound crops.

Nice day, nice house, nice to know :-)

Home, James

Here's a Markham Heritage Estates story to help you plan your visit. The lovely brick (warm, soft, handmade) Georgian style house with the excellent doorway and the "Gothicized Palladian window" under its low pitched central gable is just one of the resurrection stories in the 'hood. From the plaque in the parkette in front of the house (from which the archival photo is copied), we learned that this house is one of the few examples of this mid c19 regional style peculiar to Markham, Pickering and Scarborough.

The house sat abandoned near the corner of Highway 48 and Major Mackenzie Drive, no place for a nice girl like this. Fortunately, someone saw her hidden virtues and brought her to live in the estate in the 1990's.

The house was built about 1856 by James Thomas, from England. During his lifetime he was an innkeeper in Box Grove and a successful farmer north of Mount Joy. I saw enough 'rescued' buildings originating from these two communities in my visits to Markham to doubt that they are even detectable today, their identities lost in the rapid growth of the area. Go on, surprise me.

Miracle on David Gohn Street

At right is a photo of my dear Den musing about what a pleasant change this vista is, from the miles upon countless miles of newly built subdivisions of no particular pedigree that we have just winced our way past on our trip from Kleinburg to Markham. Oh, and let's pause for a moment to think about the good Ontario farmland that's just been paved over ("if you ate today...)

What LOML is looking at is a small corner of Markham's 42-lot heritage subdivision. Despite being an 'artificial' construct, it has such an aura of authenticity with its houses of beautiful design, fine workmanship - and history. This place has soul in the midst of soul-less urban sprawl. That's due in large part to the ages of the buildings - from 1820's to 1870's. Something like that cannot be replicated, only preserved.

Markam Heritage Estates was established in 1989 by Markham city council as an emergency measure to deal with the loss of built heritage in the conflict between development pressure and heritage conservation. The development is unique in Canada, according to some sources, and I have found few examples anywhere, in my research to date. It 'rescues' dwellings in the path of developments like the 407, where retention on site isn't feasible. Only one building on site was extant - the original farmhouse. All of the other houses, some in pitiful condition, were moved here and renovated; Markham retains control over the types of landscaping and exterior features.

Markham has a good heritage preservation record, including many examples of on-site preservation of historic buildings within encircling subdivisions (again, not ideal, but it would take some kind of superhero to stop development around here.) And Markham downtown, though struggling, is putting up some heritage wannabe designs for new commercial buildings.

The parkette Den is standing in is in the David Gohn Circle, one of the streets in the small subdivision. Sure, it feels a bit like a house sanctuary, a touch Disney artificial. Reading a plaque about the stories of each of the houses is a very nice feature, but a tad Upper Canada Village. But the people were real - I spoke to a fresh faced adolescent skateboarder who bragged about the street hockey games, the safety for the little kids, and the awesome skating rink maintained by the guy in the white house. And the passion is real. Without Markham's early commitment to heritage rescue, prior to the stronger Heritage Act in 2005, these houses would all have been lost. There was concern at the time about the inherent danger of this model as the ideal, rather than an emergency measure, that (in the words of Adam on spacingtoronto.ca) developers will treat it as "a smiley-face dumpster for those pesky old wrecks they can't be bothered preserving. An architectural version of Springfield Retirement Castle." So far, so good. Good on ya, Markham.

So, I urge you to go visit. Take in the Markham Museum, while you're there - a great outdoor collection of even more local buildings. Just don't venture out on 16th street toward Kleinburg. No miracles there.

An Arch Look

Blame it on the Romans.

Actually there are indicators that earlier cultures had the arch, but didn't make much use of it.

But the Romans, consumate builders and practical souls, made their fortunes on the strong back of this simple structure.

Stretched, it made a vault, useful for triumphal arches or roofs.

Stretched and curved, it was handy for 'halls' in huge projects like coliseums.

Rotated around an axis into a circle, it became a dome which made possible wonders like the Pantheon of 120 AD, whose 45 metre wide dome was the world's largest until the 19th century!

Swotting for my history of architecture exam, I am savouring terminology like keystone, springline, intrados, impost and (Brenda's all-time favourite) voussoirs. The arch, useful for doorways and windows, paired as Byzantine or in multiples as arcades, structural or decorative, blind or open - infinitely adaptable in the hands of the inventive and resourceful across the centuries.

According to my course notes (www.lookuparchitecture.com) there are 67 types of arches - but even Shannon might have missed one or two in her travels around the architectural world. Many of the Roman arches are still standing today - will you be able to say that of your contractor's work in 1800 years?

If I had more time, more money, and more aptitude, I think I would like to take more architecture courses. But I guess some are destined just to appreciate the work of others.

One thing I have learned - if it's not trabeated, it's arcuated :-)

top centre: Bridge Street United Church, Belleville

above left: Denis and a Roman arch, Lincoln, UK

above right: Me with a Norman arch, Lindisfarne Priory, UK

Modern Heritage...not an oxymoron

I think I might just put together a walking tour of our local modern heritage. There's lots of talk these days about the loss of significant c20 buildings that have fallen under the wrecker's ball before they have even reached their 50th birthdays. I think I've blogged about this before - this is a growing concern among ACO types.

Our modern heritage includes the architectural styles that we tend to overlook, because they are 'modern' and somehow we feel we know them. Familiarity breeds contempt, showing up in other forms as hide-bound resistance to the new, irritation and downright dislike of the modern. Maybe we are drawn to early c19 buildings because of their rarity and because they evoke our history and emotions associated, even when we haven't studied their finer points of construction or design. And of course the buildings second half of the last century can't help to knock us off our feet, with their profusion of revival decoration, and their sheer eclectic excesses. Some of these houses are loud!!

But somehow, perhaps because they are more of our time (those of us with lots of decades on the odometer anyway) and not so decorated, and of materials more familiar, the buildings of more recent styles do not evoke such strong emotional reactions. I must admit to feeling the same way until my last two winters of architectural history courses. I've gained an appreciation for c20 architecture as I have learned about the styles - the architects and their vision, and the use of materials and methods which make these structures unique and worthy.

It's interesting that even up to the present day folks seek solace in old forms and decoration with the Colonial and Period revivals....or in fabulous fakes that incorporate easily machine-made bits from all sorts of periods, the more the merrier. We once visited a business associate of my husband's in a posh new snob-division north of Toronto. I waited in the car admiring the Hummer-equipped garage's door with the wide 'ashlar stone' surround and its three key-stones.....

But arts and crafts, deco, machine age/art moderne, mid-century modern/contempo, international style, post-modern - these are fabulous styles. The revolutionary ideas, the creativity, the innovation, the wit, the experimentation, the quality of workmanship and materials - they've certainly turned my head.