Neon in Nipigon

Just back from three mind-altering weeks of camping in the provincial parks along the mythical north shore of Lake Superior. Needless to say, I have spent more time lately marvelling at bald eagles, tall pines and cobble beaches than I have in honouring old buildings.

On our one rainy day we made an exception and spent the day with 4 fine Thunder Bay architectural walking tour guides, playing scavenger hunt and discovering the Bay's significant built heritage...more later.

And pictured above - the pleasant surprise of Nipigon, which we encountered when we dropped off highway 17 in search of a place for lunch. As we rounded the corner I spied the familiar neon sign of the Nipigon Cafe!...familiar as it was featured in my history of Ontario architecture course two years ago, as a fine example of Art Moderne or Machine Age styling.

The curved glass block entry and the large horizontal cornice band (to quote my prof Shannon Kyles) are typical of the style, as is the wonderful sign. These signs are still common in the north (usually on empty and forgotten buildings of this era), and recall a time when owners of these businesses would pay a fee to a sign company to create and maintain these 'moderne' calling cards, and would retain them when the companies folded.

We toasted Shannon with pretty good coffee, enjoyed our Nipigon Cafe lunch, then went on to explore the tiny town which had celebrated its architectural history with a number of interpretive plaques. The photo on the left is of the jazzy sign on the Nipigon Inn which stands in place of an earlier hotel built to house bush and railway workers in the earliest days of the nineteenth century. The current Inn, itself now empty and abandoned, built in 1955 after a fire destroyed the original structure, is unlovely and but a pale copy of the original. Looking at an archival photo of the old hotel, it wasn't difficult to imagine those long-ago nights at the tavern!

stay cool

A simple homestead in Sidney township...shelter for a farm family and their livestock. A windbreak around the house to provide some respite from hard winter winds. Crops and pasture protected from the cold by a coverlet of snow, drifting into patterns. A proud accomplishment, wrestling a small living from a hard country almost two centuries ago.

As I stand on the roadside in bright sun, the wind adding a keen edge to the temperature of minus 21 celsius, I am anxious to return to the shelter of the car, but also feel blessed by the incredible variety of Canadian seasons, and embrace them all.

On this day when Ontarians gasp in 34 to 39 degrees and high humidity, I am appreciating being able to travel back to this little farmstead in January.

Do not resuscitate

The sign on the fence below troubles me - it's like a 'do not resuscitate' sign on the chart of a dying patient. The fence encircles Kingston's former Rockwood Lunatic Asylum. True, it has had a tarnished past, as an institution for the criminally insane, then for people with psychiatric illnesses, and in its last iteration as an institution for individuals with developmental disabilities.

Structures that housed former institutions are often abandoned and demolished. Ironic...Rockwood was an important public building in the c19; plans by William Cloverdale incorporated the newest and most humane approaches for "the insane". It was an "ideal asylum", a source of some pride.

The imposing limestone structure to the right, a masterpiece of classical symmetry and Renaissance motifs (its important dome, cupolas and roof towers were removed last century) is the main building on the park-like lakeside property. Today, folks with a great deal more freedom than Rockwood's original inhabitants walk or cycle the waterfront trail, sail the lake or wander the grounds beneath its walls.

The grand house to the left is called Leahurst. I wasn't able to find out much about it. It has a grand verandah and elegant doorway, dormers, bay window and a turret. Could have been offices or staff accommodation I suppose. Kingston readers may mock - "oh everybody knows that!".

Both the Asylum and Leahurst are vacant and boarded up. Are they dying or just dormant?

I wonder if as a society we don't just feel a bit awkward about former institutions and their histories, so that decision-makers in their never-ending quest for 'correctness' and fiscal responsibility delay decisions about adaptive reuse until it's too late, and doom to demolition otherwise beautiful structures. Certainly like all institutions, places like Rockwood were once thought of as "the best and only" way, the custodial solution to meeting extraordinary needs. Today we know better. Decades of deinstitutionalization (ref. Wolf Wolfensberger whose book Normalization provided guidance to my work in a former life, with folks with developmental disabilities) have brought awareness that institutional solutions often lead to abuses (via procedures, or efficiencies, not necessarily deliberate attempts to harm) that result in dehumanizing fellow humans.

Whoops, must take care not to trip over that soapbox while I'm putting it away.

The good news on the property is Rockwood House (the yellow house, above right). It's a great place, its style Palladian classicism, its date 1842, its architect George Browne. It was built as a country villa for lawyer and future member of legislative assemblies of Upper Canada and later Canada, John Solomon Cartwright. It was purchased by the government in 1856 to become part of the new asylum complex. Today Rockwood House sports a blue and gold Historic Sites plaque which identifies its style as "monumental Regency". Rockwood House is the home of some Ontario government offices.

So I'm keeping a cautious eye on the Rockwood Asylum. I have hopes for its future. In these ironic days, I think folks might appreciate the rightness of converting a former lunatic asylum into up market condos for the perennially stressed business elite , or into student housing or government offices. I must admit, I know not what wheels may currently be turning. Plans are afoot to convert an old government property on King Street closer to town into an arts centre, so maybe something good will come for Rockwood from this period of waiting. We have a fine building here, the product of style and workmanship that will never be achieved again.

Let's not let embarrassment about its past, and slow-as-treacle- government decision-making, result in Rockwood's being relegated to landfill.

Credit for the facts goes to Kingston's McKendry - Jennifer McKendry's fine book With our Past Before Us, on c.19 Kingston architecture (1995, UofT press) has a fascinating chapter called 'Controlling Society Through Architectural Design.

Sidney under Snow

I'm not exactly wishing for snow, but am enjoying looking at photos of historic Sidney Township homes which just happen to have been taken on a bitingly cold late January afternoon.

These are all very interesting places. I thank ACO Quinte (David Bentley) for the 1990 tour notes which led me to these lovely spots. Lois Foster alerted me to the existence of the notes.

top: Sine Homestead - the Sine family, UEL's, were the pioneers in this area, called the Sine Settlement. This house sits on the original property, settled in 1820. It dates from 1870. A lovely working farm, with beautiful rolling fields (and a great tobogganing hill)

left: Windover-Ketcheson house - a unique tin-clad building

right: Williams -Manfreda house (1825), reportedly a plank wall house.

Hot chocolate anyone?

The Barn

I love barns. I grew up on a farm, so barns evoke so many intense memories for me. Barns are beautiful structures, and a disappearing part of our built heritage. But for today, this very hot day, I just want to look at them. I especially want to look at them with piles of snow in their driveways and drifts of snow on their fields, and a sparkling icing of snow on their roofs.

The great Eric Arthur wrote a book called The Barn in 1972. Sadly, many more barns were standing, and many more of them were working, 39 years ago. One quote from the book resonates: "nothing remains so vivid in the mind of man (sic) as childhood memories of the barn, of...listening in the mow to the hooting of the owl, the acrobatic display of swallows and the echoing beating of pigeons' wings". I remember the vastness of the hay mow - a small child's glimpse of infinity.

I think I will write more about barns later. Today I just want to think of them in the winter, their beams snapping with the cold, their stables warm with the steamy sweet breath of dairy cows, and outside, sharp cold and the crunch of boots in the snow.

it's all somebody's history

Instead of a having a screensaver, I set my computer to cycle through my photo files. Every so often, after a period of inactivity on the keyboard, I am treated to a mini slide-show of my photos. Occasionally I have a "wow did I take that?" moment when I see something quite good. More often I am reminded of photos taken and not revisited, images I wouldn't necessarily go looking for.

The photo on the left popped up the other day - not a great photo, but something to think about. I took this, and several other houses, in an old area west of the Moira River in Belleville. This house is old, it's dilapidated, it's not beautiful. But there is something about its proportions that I like. And someone's taking care of it - well, they put vinyl siding on the front, anyway.

It's just a reminder to me - this humble house has many memories (I hope they're good ones). It sheltered generations of working folks, shared their hopes and aspirations for a better life. It may not be an Old East Hill beauty, and its story and its family's story are likely not recorded... but it's still somebody's history.

the case for quality

The corner of Bridge and Pinnacle Streets in Belleville is an historic spot - it's at the centre of downtown now, as it was in the early days of the last century. Despite the progress inflicted on heritage buildings in the 1960's and 70's this intersection is unique. Anchoring three of its four corners are really significant early buildings - the Belleville Armouries (1909), the Hotel Quinte (1895, rebuilt1909), the corner block containing the Post Office Block at 44 Bridge Street and the Belleville Club (1909), and the cultural landscape of the shady Armouries lawns.

And then there's the south-west corner. It was occupied until the 1970's by the Old Post Office (1890's), a pretty impressive French Second Empire structure. I don't know, I wasn't there, but I suppose it had deteriorated after nearly 100 years. However, with the quality of materials and the level of craftsmanship we know from many early buildings, my guess is that it was a far superior structure to the white brick box which replaced it. As no less an Intelligencer correspondent than Eugene Lang said - [the Old Post Office was] "solid as the rock of Gibraltar but had outlived its usefulness. " Today, with our growing awareness of the imperative of sustainability, there's a chance it would be renovated and reused, its Victorian finery making it a showplace in a mundane world of progressive replacements. Alas, the Old Post Office was demolished to make way for the Intelligencer Building, now itself a white elephant - an a very unlovely one it is too.

And to repeat the Joni Mitchell line, all too often used in connection with heritage "you don't know what you've got til it's gone".

Quote from Eugene Lang: Belleville Intelligencer, January 1990

Left: old post card view of the 1890 Post Office, Mika publication

Right: the Intelligencer building