S'no Joke

I enjoyed a photo trip around Snow Road on a sunny day last fall.

I expect they get their fair share of jokes about snow.
Indeed, they no doubt get their fair share of snow, being in the most northerly part of Frontenac County.


But in the buttery fall light, I fell in love with the place - it's beautiful and picturesque in a rugged sort of way. There are lots of elevation changes, a nice turn and swoop in the curve through the village. Houses and outbuildings snuggle up against cozy wooded hills, and in the countryside about, a few small-scale farms, some with log buildings, still survive. A gracefully ageing  log barn, and an impressive stone house distinguish the village.

The natural terrain can in no way diminish the more dramatic effect of the man-made landscape - a yawning gravel pit creeping perilously close to the back yard of the 1885 Presbyterian church.  Prayer intention?

There's a nice feeling of community in Snow Road, of enterprise and make-do, judging from the adaptive reuse of the old school (and of its sign!) and the enduring presence of the greying John Thomson Hall. Just 4 years ago that family-owned hall rang with the sound of an internationally known bluegrass band, the Abrams Brothers, in a benefit concert for a local charity.


Here's the Frontenac News coverage of that standing room only event.

The place is officially called Snow Road Station, one of a string of towns linked by the Kingston and Pembroke Railway. There was a Mississippi Station south of the river of the same name, perhaps named after a homesick American lumber baron?

Community identity which was created here from the mid 1800's, at great cost, was eroded through township amalgamation and the inevitable centralization of services into larger centres by the late 1900's.

From the township history County of a Thousand Lakes (1973) I learned that Snow Road was named for the surveyor who found a way through marsh, hill and rockland, to lead the stalwart lumbering workers north.

The railway brought William Richards to Snow Road Station in 1883. From the Mississippi River he had stone quarried to build this three storey "castle", and lived in relative grandeur among his log and plank peers.

Camp Life

I have been wanting to post some of these photos for ages, since enjoying a Prince Edward Historical Society walking tour here last July. This is the former Camp Picton, built for the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, during those desperate days in 1940, when flyers had to be trained outside the reach of the Luftwaffe. Imagine the young men billeted here, receiving basic flight instruction, dancing with the girls from the town, anxious for  great adventure in the skies over Germany.

This incredibly picturesque, evocative collection of the crumbling WWII era buildings has attracted many photographers and film-makers over the years.

Fortunately, the property has also attracted a resourceful and enterprising company, Loch Sloy Holdings,  which is working to preserve and re-purpose this astonishing facility. These days a number of construction, workshop, storage - and as of last summer, an artist studio - spaces are housed in a number of the upgraded buildings.

The difference between a failing building and a viable one? A new red steel roof.

In 2013, journalist researcher Ian Robertson released his fine book Camp Picton: Wartime to Peacetime. Here's a great CountyLive review. Fabulous book. Well worth the small investment.

Another book, Camp Picton: A Storied 70 Years in a Military Training Camp, by Joanne Courneya-Fralick, came out late last year.

And Bay of Quinte Living took us behind the fence in this article on their website, written by Catherine Stutt, photos by Daniel Vaughan

I'll let these folks tell all the stories. For me, just want to wander among the greying shingled buildings, hearing the breeze whistle in the grasses, listening for distant voices.


Oh yes, and the drone of aircraft engines.

Fabulous Fakes II

photo courtesy Susan Ratcliffe, ACO

photo courtesy Susan Ratcliffe, ACO

The Petrie building in Guelph has been on my mind. The story popped up on my Facebook last week, thanks to ACO.  Last December the Guelph Mercury carried the story of this celebrated case of demolition by neglect, and the hopeful news of a possible sale. Thanks to Susan Ratcliffe of ACO, I am able to show you this incredibly ornate facade. For more details, check it out on the Canadian Register of Historic Places.

Belleville's endangered Henderson Building (1857)

What is particularly sad about the fate of the unheated top floors of this majestic 1882 commercial building is that among all the other fails that are taking place due to cold and damp, the facade is rusting. Rusting, because this amazing building front is made of "stamped galvanized iron. At the top of the facade is a broken pediment topped with a mortar and pestle - for the influential businessman who built this treasure, Alexander Bain Petrie, was a pharmacist, and liked the idea of identifying his trade with a bit of style.

There's a Facebook Group dedicated to saving the Petrie Building...here's a link.




The arrival of the story on Facebook, and the haunting image of this deteriorating cast iron facade is timely, as I was thinking of posting about cast iron building facades as a follow-up to my recent posts about terra cotta and insulbrick siding,  two other fabulous fakes.





In recent years, the Henderson building in Belleville has been under the same death watch as the Petrie. I don't know what's happening currently, despair and optimism ebb and flow. I've done a few posts about it - here's one.

brackets, ,window hood detail

 According to the republished local resource Heritage Buildings East of the Moira (Heritage Belleville, 2012) the Henderson building possesses "the only complete cast iron main floor [facade] remaining in Belleville."

I have to learn more - which bits? Who supplied them?

Hotel Quinte - stone carving or prefab iron

Have to pack a magnet and look more closely at some local buildings. It's pretty likely that the crisply defined window hoods and brackets on the otherwise mouldering facade of the Nathan Jones building (1862) are cast iron or more likely, moulded sheet metal. "The decorative window heads on the second and third floors consist of large flat lintels made of cast iron with two corbels, one on each side of the upper sashes." (HBEMR)

arched pediment with brackets

arched cornice, by 1890

Nathan Jones building

I was always pretty sure that the cornices on the Hotel Quinte must have been stamped metal, given their crisp detail after a hundred years of on and off attention. See the egg and dart moulding? (Did you know that represented life and death to the Romans?) And the rosettes on the brackets?

Here's another proud commercial building crest in downtown Belleville.The Albert Filliter Block is crowned by a round-headed arch with the owner's name still bold after 125 years (the cornice modification was sometime before 1890). The brackets are still crisp, but to me the giveaway is the seams in the moulding on the crest, which are separating. Cast iron, or maybe pressed metal. The two terms seem to be used interchangeably in the literature. Can't think the material would?



A cursory look through photo files unearthed a few more examples.

You have to love Cobourg. They enlisted Craig Sims, heritage building crusader, to design a reproduction Victorian shop front for Beebe's Bootery, to complement all that remained after a modernization - the original cast iron columns.

by their rust ye shall know them

Kelly/Collison/Koerber store, Mallorytown

Then there's this gem in Mallorytown. Rockfaced concrete block, with sandstone quoins and window headers. A bracketed cornice, with a central rounded pediment, containing a swag. Pressed metal? My guess. The rust on the outside edge of the moulding tells the tale.

My copy of The History of Mallorytown describes this building as the General Store at 55 McQuabbin Road - lots of owners. Wonder if it was built in 1925, when David Wells reports that Ernie Kelly started his own store? The 1920's were the heyday of residential concrete block.

and of course, those pressed tin ceilings
this one at the Marmora Historical Society

This is all very nice, but it leaves me wondering. Who produced the cast iron and galvanized sheet metal architectural components we find in Ontario? Certainly there were small foundries abounding. A look at any early fire insurance map shows them, along with hotels, stables, commercial and residential structures, even in downtown Belleville at one time. But my guess is that fine quality architectural iron was transported by rail from producers farther afield. I've just read of a Toronto example provided by a foundry in Ohio.So...are these fabulous fakes as rare as I think, or have I just not been looking?

The (metal?) crown of Bridge Street Church
overlooking the destroyed Hotel Quinte

More on sheet metal and cast iron architectural elements to come. Just requested several fine books by Margot Gayle from ILLO at wonderful Belleville Public Library.

And if my new-found interest in iron wasn't compelling enough, a book jumped out at me from the local history shelves yesterday. A Species of Adventure: The Story of the Ironmasters of Upper Canada, by Andre l. Philpot, of Marmora. Stay tuned.

Join the Club

I love this building, one of downtown Kingston's well-bred limestone presences. At the corner of King and William Streets, it was built in 1845 for the Bank of Montreal. In a custom which seems strange today, the second floor housed the bank manager and his family, the top floor the male bank tellers, required to live on site.

The bank outgrew its quarters and moved in 1906 nearer the City Hall and Market Square, and this lovely ashlar with its pilasters, window surrounds, masterful cornice and pedimented doorway was sold to the post Frontenac Club.

William Street entrance

King Street entrance

In 1908, the impressive building was reopened as a gentleman's club, where hobnobbed "leading Kingstonians, garrison officers, faculty of Queen's University and the Royal Military College, along with members of the 14th Battalion (Princess of Wales Own Regiment) Officer's Club." *

Incidentally, I just found a YouTube clip posted by Brian Judge,  of Lady Diana visiting POWOR in 1991 - begins at about 2:00 minutes.

The club added space south of the original bank building for entertainment rooms in around 1900, achieving a union with a third building along William Street. Despite all its attractions, the club succumbed to the Depression, and closed in the early 1930's.

In 1935, the Vosper family purchased the building, beginning a 60 year ownership which saw it converted to apartments housing students and arts and culture figures such as Michael Ondaatje, singer Colleen Peterson.

After renovations, the building was reopened in 2000 by Beare Weatherup and Susan Shaw, as Kingston's historic Frontenac Club Inn. How perfectly lovely.

ivy ageing gracefully

* from the Frontenac Club Inn website, History page

Lucky 14

 Recently, after a visit to Farmtown Park (about which I intend to enthuse in a post very soon) I asked my fellow traveller if he could stop safely on Sunday-drive busy County Road 14, to capture these three historic houses, which I have long admired.

On a hill just east of Stirling, holding its head proudly above the slow encroachment of car washes and industrial retail spots, is this fine home. Its wrap-around verandah with delicate trim appeals, as does the prim green and white treatment.






The ubiquitous Gothic gable window completes the Ontario farmhouse stying, which never looked better than on this well-treed hillside setting.

A few minutes east along Highway 14 is this other lovely green and white treasure sheltering amidst trees and gardens.A photo of the house appears in A Decade of Sundays - Quinte Walking Tours Volume 1, published by ACO Quinte Region in 1994.

The book explains that the kitchen tail (barely visible to the side) was likely built by a Peter Davidson in 1818-19. The place was bought by James Vanderwater in 1820 and willed to his son Peter. The original part of the house is said to be framed with 6"x 8"timbers.

As of the publication date, the house was still in the same family. So well-kept. Love the wrap-around verandah with its curved roof, and the two storey projecting vestibule.

Directly to the east is a tiny yellow frame cottage. In the notes for a 1990 ACO bus tour of Sidney Township (which I obtained years ago from old-house friend Lois) it is described as Vanderwater House #2, built in 1860 as a temporary family home while the main house addition was built.

For years it was called 'the little brown house', despite appearances to the contrary. Turns out, there was brown-painted tongue and groove under subsequent cladding; the mystery was solved by a clapboard malfunction in 1989.

Now, it only someone could tell me about the house at the top of this post!

The Heat Goes On

Some time ago I put up a post about my old house mentor/friend Shannon Kyles, and her mission to save heritage wooden windows, by demonstrating their cost-efficiency. Their aesthetic and historical appeal is unassailable, but folks do cave in before the vinyl salesman's promises, and the daunting prospect of the not inconsiderable work involved with repairing or even rebuilding wooden windows. Shannon has made several instructional videos and there are more to come; here's a link to Shannon's YouTube video In Praise of Older Windows, demonstrating that "restored wooden windows are every bit as efficient as replacement windows" (S.Kyles)

 Shannon uses an infrared camera to do thermal mass readings to help owners make informed decisions about energy conservation issues in old home restorations. Yesterday, on a brilliantly sunny minus 20 degree day, I revisited Alex Fida's new old house in Picton, and got to watch Shannon and Alex survey the Regency wooden windows, and the Gothic Revival front door, the wide entry doorcase, with an infrared camera

The yellow part of the infrared image of a window shows the warmest, the blue areas indicate coolest, providing accurate information about heat loss, and what needs doing to prevent it.

Outside, we shuddered in the cold, still gobsmacked at the beautiful distinctive architectural elements, while Alex and Shannon evaluated areas of good heat retention and heat leak. Data? You bet. An informed and aware homeowner? Ditto.

The more we looked, the more we saw. The beautiful rippled effect of the early window glass with the snow sparkling outside, was a stunner. One pane of glass bore a swoosh like a spoon mark on cake batter - the final flourish of the glass pourer onto the sheet of cooling poured glass?

How could anyone toss that kind of beauty and history into architectural salvage - or the dump?

Update:
Shannon has sent links to three more videos in the series In Praise of Older Windows, which she is creating with the assistance of Andrew Skuce. Shannon demonstrates the relative thermal efficiency of old wooden windows over modern vinyl replacements, and argues forcibly for retention of original windows to preserve the heritage character of older homes.

The second video features a visit to an Edwardian gable-front house with its high-performing 110 windows.
In the third video of the series, period window expert Alan Stacey explains the parts of wooden sash windows, and how to maintain them (or replicate them) to meet or exceed the thermal efficiency of modern replacements.
The fourth video talks about the heat that can be maintained by simply installing curtains.