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

Halifax Waterfront Buildings: An Historical Report

by Susan Buggey

Wooden Storehouse

Historical Information

A structure of some architectural interest, the wooden store at the eastern end of the Central Wharf is the most recent of the historical buildings in the complex. The building has been styled a "wooden loft," but there is no evidence to suggest that it was ever used for sail-making as such nomenclature implies.

By 1830, a small building stood on filled land east of the Privateer's Warehouse. Its north wall was flush with that of the adjoining stone store and its width that of the present structure (Figs. 10, 11). Architectural examination suggests that the east wall of the Privateer's Warehouse has never been exposed to weathering and that this easterly building was therefore erected about 1815. Why such a structure was built can only be speculated upon, but part of its function may have been to protect the adjoining stone wall from the driving salty spray of winter storms. The building still stood in 1859 when Clark's Wharf was sold to R. W. Fraser and immediately to William Tarr and William Chisholm (Fig. 12). They occupied the building, presumably as a warehouse, until 1862 when Enos Collins foreclosed their unpaid mortgage.¹ Two years later George C. Harvey, a West Indies and commission merchant, bought the property² including the building which stood until at least 1866 (Figs. 13, 14),³ Within the following decade, he replaced it by the present structure (Fig. 15).

Harvey himself probably used the building until the early 1880s, while from 1886 until about 1940 it was occupied as a general warehouse, seemingly by Joseph Wood & Company, shipping agents.⁴ Subsequently, C. J. Burke & Company owned the property⁵ and appear from the apparatus remaining in the building to have let it most recently as a fish-packing plant. The structure was purchased by the City of Halifax in 1962.⁶

Architectural Information

The most immediately noticeable characteristic of the three-and-one-half storey building (Figs. 16, 17) is its north-south orientation, in contrast with the east-west alignment of the other structures of the complex. It has, however, further distinctions. Constructed primarily of spruce, it symbolizes the region's long and prosperous connections with the forest and the sea. Its heavy beams are mounted upon hardwood corbels of birch and are braced by the strong roots of the tamarack known as ship's knees. Its mortise and tenon framing is complemented by offset scarfes.⁷ The east wall of the stone Privateer's Warehouse serves as the west wall of this otherwise wooden store.⁸

Outside, the gable ends of the building lead to a pitched roof. Architectural investigation failed to confirm the representation in a panoramic view of 1879 of two ground-floor accesses on the north side of the building and the rows of four and three windows lighting the second and third floors respectively. The single attic window was accurately depicted (Fig. 23).⁹ On the east side, two gable dormers, fitted by the 1890s with double-hung sashes, protruded from the roof. Beneath, plain-trimmed windows on the second and third storeys stood in two parallel rows of three apertures each (Figs. 23, 32). This symmetrical pattern appears, however, to have been broken by the last decade of the century by a larger opening, perhaps a loading door, situated below and slightly to the south of the central window (Fig. 32). By the early 1930s, further alterations had introduced the present window pattern along the east front (Fig. 53). On the narrow west wall was a row of windows opposite the northern row on the second and third storeys of the east side and extended to the ground level. By the early 20th century, the middle window appears to have been a double-hung sash, while the upper one may have been a casement; the number of panes cannot be distinguished (Fig. 43). The brick chimney, evident in photographs of the 1930s, was probably knocked down to its present attic level in the mid-1940s, when the dormers were also removed¹⁰ and the necessary roof repairs effected (Fig. 55).