Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 9

Halifax Waterfront Buildings: An Historical Report

by Susan Buggey

Pickford & Black Building

Historical Information

The stone warehouse fronting Water Street on the south side of the wharf has stood solidly for nearly a century and a half. Its appendage to the south, less than half a century old, has already settled four inches. Such is the permanence of the four-storey building erected in 1830.

This structure was not the first on the site. In the mid-1780s three of the stores erected on the wharf by Alexander Brymer stood in this significant location (Fig. 5). In the loft of one of them the prominent navy victualler at Halifax, John Grant, stored biscuit, peas and flour.¹ By 1803, when Quebec merchant Robert Lester attempted unsuccessfully to sell the property to the British Ordnance department, there was "a neat and compact Dwelling House and good Stores"² on the spot (Fig. 6). Part of this establishment was apparently occupied until 1809 by the glass and crockery warehouse in which Michael Forrestall featured a variety of tumblers and "a few neat and elegantly cut oval Dishes and Pickle Urns" imported from London. Mrs. Ann Bell then fitted up the dwelling "in a genteel manner" as "a House of Entertainment (italics in original)."³ From 1819 to 1823 William Skinner rented the house and premises, while in 1827 G. P. Lawson carried on his trade with the southern states in pitch, tar, staves and shingles from the office at the head of the wharf and the store on the south side.⁴ By 1830 the house and stores were occupied by the firm of Pringle & Downie. These, as well as "the next building ... occupied as a Sail Loft, and Cooperage," were demolished that year, and the materials, except bricks and foundations, sold.⁵ In their place Enos Collins, owner of the south side of the wharf since 1811, immediately erected the present stone edifice.

Toler's map of Halifax, published in 1830, provides the first evidence of the new "immense ranges of stone stores" that appeared on the wharf (Fig. 10). In July of the following year they were lauded as among the most conspicuous of recent improvements to the town which afforded "undeniable evidence of the extension of [its] commerce."⁶ By the spring of 1831 the warehouse was the scene of auctions and private sales. E. Collins & Company probably occupied the building from shortly after its completion until the dissolution of the firm, by Collins' retirement, in 1833. Thereafter, the wharf experienced the economic depression which enveloped the Halifax business community during the mid-1830s, and in 1836 the building apparently stood vacant.⁷ William Fairbanks and Jonathan C. Allison, the continuing partners of Collins' firm, united in 1840 with David Allison, the surviving partner of Joseph Allison & Company; as Fairbanks & Allisons, they rented the premises until 1855. They pursued the trade of their predecessors, sending ships regularly not only to North American ports and Britain but also to the West Indies and occasionally to South America, Iberia, India and Russia. In 1839, for example. Fairbanks & Allison's imports from Russia included 2,500 bushels of prime red wheat, 100 pieces of Russian sail cloth, two bales of black grain skins, and one case of furs consisting of cloaks, gloves and cloak linings; the pièce de résistance was a case of reindeers' tongues.⁸ In 1855 S. A. White & Company moved from the head of Clark's Wharf and continued their commission trade at the head of Collins' Wharf until 1863,⁹ when Collins sold the property. From 1863 to 1876 it was both owned and occupied by Joseph and Robert Seeton, commission merchants and agents for the Inman Steamship Company.¹⁰ In the latter year, Pickford & Black, a recently established and aggressive firm of shipchandlers, purchased the property. Taking advantage of the transition from sail to steam, they transformed the office facing Water Street into a busy shipping agency where a variety of international lines as well as their own passenger, freight and mail steamers were booked. With the former Cunarders Alpha and Beta, Pickford & Black established a regular steamship service between Halifax and the West Indies. They also ran ships to Jamaica, Demerara and Turk's Island, bringing to Nova Scotia tropical fruits and sugar products in exchange for North American lumber, fish and flour. Nearer home they operated lines to Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton and Newfoundland. By the early 20th century they were believed to be the second largest owners of tonnage in the Maritime Provinces, and in their office the prestigious Lloyd's agency was located.¹¹ The partners of the firm also held other influential positions and significant reputations. For instance, in addition to being the consul for Panama, William A. Black was a Conservative member of the Nova Scotia legislature from 1894 to 1897, the representative for Halifax in the House of Commons from 1923 until his death in 1934, and a federal cabinet minister in the Meighen administration.¹²

A series of commission merchants, including the former owners, rented the adjoining stone warehouses.¹³ Swelling of grain stored damp by one of these tenants during the late 19th century is said to have caused some of the beams to split.¹⁴ The principal occupants of the warehouse during the 20th century were Messrs Bryant & McDonald, tea merchants, whose premises could accommodate their product to an estimated value of $100,000 in 1909.¹⁵ Subsequently, this firm amalgamated with Morse's Teas, which also owned the fine early Victorian stone building opposite the head of the wharf (Figs. 34, 48).¹⁶

Architectural Information

The Pickford & Black Building reflects the practical-mindedness and foresight of its original owner, Enos Collins. Set upon a six-foot stone foundation, the thick outer walls were constructed of "iron-stone of Acadia," popular and prevalent in early 19th-century Halifax.¹⁷ The roof was pitched "to keep the snow off" and made of slate. Within, heavy timber beams measured 18 in. square, and gabled brick fire walls subdivided the 132 ft. length into three essentially separate warehouses (Figs. 16, 17, 18).¹⁸ The structure was designed, therefore, to withstand not only weathering but also the most destructive urban enemy of the age, fire.

As late as the 1890s, much of the principal style of the original building remained; the north view revealed its balanced proportions (Fig. 25). Three sets of wooden loading doors marked the main divisions. Each was topped by a dormer containing a hoist, and each ground floor door afforded access to the building. The only interruption of this neatly executed pattern occurred where the most westerly door was exchanged with the window west of it. Forty windows, which allowed light to reach the interior, otherwise symmetrically flanked the loading doors in horizontal and vertical rows. The double-hung sashes contained six panes per sash, except on the upper storey where the topmost sash had only three. The quoins of both the doors and the windows were made of sandstone. Four pipes capped with ornate cornices drained the narrow eavestrough (Figs. 24, 25).

By the 1880s, several alterations had updated the appearance of the building. Mastic¹⁹ covered the west front and the north wall as far as the first loading doors, that is, the exterior walls of Pickford & Black's office (Figs. 24. 25). The pillars flanking the glass-topped west door suggest that the renovations belonged to the Classical Revival of the previous decade. The windows north and south of the door each contained a single sash of nine large panes, while the three older, smaller windows to the north each had six similar panes; the windows of the upper storey remained unchanged. Unornamented drain pipes carried off the accumulations of the overhanging eavestrough (Figs. 24, 25, 26, 27). A hipped truncated roof connected the Pickford & Black Building with the Black Brothers' brick edifice which abutted the structure to the south by 1862 (Figs. 16, 17, 23, 24).²⁰ The sides of the roof were slated and its false top wooden (Figs. 16, 17) or tarred. A skylight of wood covered with zinc and situated "in the front on top" gave access to the roof,²¹ above which towered two huge stone chimneys (Fig. 25). Within, old ironclad doors, with the metal partly off, blocked the apertures in the fire walls, and by the mid-1890s openings 30 in. by 30 in. had been cut in several portions of the brick walls. A hot-water heating system and a hoist in the easterly warehouse had also been installed (Figs. 16, 17).

The greatest alteration to the structure occurred as the aftermath of a devastating fire which "gutted" the edifice in 1904; only the "strong, well built walls" of the "fine stone building" were left standing (Fig. 34) when the seven-hour conflagration was finally extinguished. Renewal began immediately on what the owners modestly described as "more convenient premises than even those occupied before the fire."²² The original one storey office facing Water Street was opened to double-storey height, lending grandeur to a successful firm nearing the zenith of its power. Three broad, full-length windows along the west wall brightened the office, while similar desk-to-ceiling level windows supplanted the small apertures in the north wall. The door remained in its northerly location, though its small lobby may have been added at this time. Extensive changes were also made to the interior decor. A delicately ornamented ceiling replaced the previous heavy wooden beams, while pressed tin, popular at the turn of the century, covered the walls in place of plaster (Figs. 27, 28, 29). Through the enlarged window in the central section of the warehouse, spectators might watch the employees of Bryant & McDonald blending and tasting teas.²³ A motorized hoist was also installed on the east side of this warehouse (Fig. 18). A flat composition roof topped the modernized structure (Fig. 52) on which the mastic or stucco covering was renewed.

A transfer of the ownership of Pickford & Black in 1936 was followed two years later by further alterations to the century-old building. The south wall of the office was opened and an archway constructed to give entrance to a double-storey appendage to the south. At the same time not only the entrance to the office but the casing of the door itself was removed from the wharf passageway to the southwest front. Executive offices along the north side were subdivided off the main room, and a mezzanine in the addition replaced a spiral staircase in the southeast corner. The new president, Ralph P. Bell, successfully obtained a sufficient further supply of the existing tin wall covering from the manufacturer to sheathe the expanded interior.²⁴

The Pickford & Black Building remained in possession of the firm whose name it bears until expropriated by the City of Halifax in 1968.²⁵