Phase I - Halifax Regional Municipality

Archaeological Resource Impact Assessment
Pre-development Assessment
Spring Garden Road/Queen Street Public Lands Plan
After World War II, Dundonald Street and the Bellevue property began to undergo
significant changes. In 1948 the Bellevue property was turned over to the city of Halifax
as military surplus, and subsequently sold to Maritime Telegraph and Telephone
Company 9 . In 1955 the property was expropriated by the Nova Scotia Technical College
and Bellevue house was torn down 10 to make way for a parking lot (Plates 7 and 8).
Significant changes also occurred in this block with the construction of the New Halifax
Infirmary on Queen Street. In 1886, the Sisters of Charity opened a Home for Aged
Women on the corner of Barrington and Blower Streets, a building which would later be
known as the Halifax Infirmary 11 . This was the first of three buildings built by the Sisters
of Charity, with the second building built in 1903 and the third, on Queen Street, in
1933 12 . In the late 1920s, architectural plans for the New Infirmary were created by S.P.
Dumaresq, and by 1936 the building dominated the lot from the top of the northern
Dundonald Street buildings to the bottom of the Bellevue lot 13 . Fire insurance plans from
1949, 1951, and 1971 detail the growth of the Infirmary property (Figures 3.2.1-18 –
3.2.1-20).
In 1959 the infirmary was given the right to expand their property onto the former
Bellevue property, which was not extensive, and down into Dundonald Street, which
caused the eventual closure of the street in 1966 14 . A notable property which was
destroyed by the closing of Dundonald Street was the Gordon & Keith furniture factory, a
property which appears on the 1879 panoramic view of Halifax, Hopkin’s Land Atlas for
1878 (Fig. 3.2.1-12), and the 1892 plans for a new Drill Shed (Fig. 3.2.1-13). The factory,
known for producing furniture in good style and of lasting quality, was burnt down twice
and rebuilt each time until the turn of the century 15 , when it appears on an 1895 fire
insurance plan as ‘ruins’ (Fig.3.2.1-14).
9 Halifax Mail Star 16 January 1948 p.1 c.7-8
10 Halifax Mail Star 4 August 1955 p.1, 23 August 1955 p.6
11 Halifax Chronicle-Herald 26 April 1986 p.4-7.
12 NSARM Scrapbook #42 pg. 63.
13 The Catholic Diocesan Directory of Nova Scotia 1936 p.63.
14 Mail Star 1966 March 7 pg.31.
15 Mail Star 1966 March 7 pg.31.
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