| When writer and activist Jane Jacobs passed away last April, she left behind one of the most influential bodies of work on cities and city planning ever written. Her best-known book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is an unequivocal condemnation of everything she felt was wrong with modern city planning, and some of Jacobs’s sharpest barbs were reserved for real estate developers and planners who thoughtlessly and needlessly tore down old buildings to make way for anything newer, bigger, shinier and, usually, more expensive.
"Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them," she wrote, and a quick jaunt around Calgary bears her out. The only Calgary neighbourhoods where you’ll find a wide-ranging mix of businesses and people, where pedestrians are afoot at all hours of the day and night, and where there’s a real sense of urban life, are the ones that still have a good number of old structures that haven’t yet had a date with the wrecking ball, from Inglewood to 17th Avenue to Kensington to Mission. The reason is simple economics.
"By old buildings I mean not museum piece buildings," Jacobs wrote, "but a good lot of plain, ordinary, low-value old buildings, including some rundown old buildings…. There is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction."
In other words, that avant-garde art gallery or quirky new business idea will have a way easier time getting started in a ramshackle old walk-up than it will in a brand-new structure. The problem in Calgary is finding an old building – they’ve been disappearing in recent years, but a new group is working hard to save what’s left.
The Calgary Heritage Initiative formed in 2005 and is dedicated to the preservation of buildings and sites of historic and architectural interest in Calgary. The CHI’s top five priorities are researching heritage buildings, public awareness, heritage networking, monitoring developments and the creation of a good heritage policy (www.calgaryheritage.org).
Bob van Wegen, director of policy and development watch for CHI, says most of the older character areas we value are mostly made up of so-called "ordinary" older buildings, such as the Mount Royal block on 17th Avenue S.W., which evoked a great public outcry when it was demolished.
"When you lose those old buildings, you often lose the variety of businesses and customers that make an area successful. Having said that, you obviously can’t save every building, and not every building is worth a big effort to save it."
Chris Edwards, director of communication for the Calgary Heritage Initiative, says "plain" buildings tend to be more of a record of who came before us and how they lived, but they’re often more at risk than "museum pieces" with beautiful architectural style and detailing.
"Both are important aspects of creating a well-rounded ‘story’ of the history of the city," he adds. "Besides, there’s a big thrust these days to build ‘walkable" communities, and turn of the century communities were inherently walkable due to the absence of cars when they were designed."
Van Wegen says some high-profile buildings have helped increase awareness about the value of preserving Calgary’s history, and as a result, the city is now moving in the right direction.
"The demolition of the old St. Mary’s (School) showed the cost of failure, and the restoration of the Lougheed Building and Grand Theatre shows the great benefits of success. I think these were watershed events in public and political awareness of heritage preservation issue in Calgary," says van Wegen.
He notes that the city’s recent efforts, including developing policies that support heritage, such as density transfers, and creating a comprehensive Heritage Resource Management Plan, should be commended.
"I think these moves in favour of heritage reflect the experience of the St. Mary’s failure and the Lougheed success. But it also comes from a growing appreciation among Calgarians that heritage helps to make our city interesting."
Unfortunately, there have also been major disappointments for preservation activists lately. Last month, the Calgary Board of Education announced that Western Canada High School, a landmark in the Beltline for more than 100 years, is at risk due to damage wrought by decades of neglect and disrepair. The board has requested $32 million from the province to build a new school, and has pledged to try to maintain the façade of the original building. This week, a proposal that would have saved the Hart House from demolition lost in a tie vote at city council. It was the latest of many, many frustrations for those engaged in the struggle to preserve Calgary’s heritage.
"Calgary does have a poor record of historical preservation," says Neil Richardson, the man largely responsible for saving the Lougheed Building and Grand Theatre from destruction. His company, Heritage Property Corporation, buys at-risk old buildings and finds new buyers who can put them to good use.
"It’s especially unfortunate in a city with such a small historical inventory to begin with. We’ve lost enough heritage already that people are starting to see how important it is to preserve them. The city has two heritage planners now, which is unheard of. So it’s good to see us moving in the right direction, but it has to ultimately come down to action."
With that in mind, here are five of Calgary’s more notable, although not necessarily high-profile, endangered landmarks, as selected by CHI and senior city heritage planner Darryl Cariou:
Penny Lane
A twin tower office development is currently slated to rise on the block where the Penny Lane Mall (1906), currently home to an eclectic mix of upscale specialty retailers and restaurants, is located, although no start date has been set for construction.
"As far as I know, that whole thing is going," says van Wegen. "That was approved a few years ago and recently got re-approved. I really don’t know if there’s much hope for (Penny Lane) unless the project falls through, but in this economy, I don’t think there’s much chance of that. What else can you say – they’re definitely and imminently endangered."
According to a development permit issued by the city in 2002, the new office towers will be "a distinctly Calgary building…. The design concept uses ‘a geological metaphor of shifting mountain plates and a horizontal glass composition of mountain scree at the base.’"
The city has determined that the Penny Lane Mall is not worth saving and is insignificant from a historical perspective due to renovations the building has undergone in the past 25 years.
"When I found out they were going to tear down Penny Lane, I got so angry I went home and started to pack," writes Calgary-based author Will Ferguson in his essay "Sandstone City." "‘I can't live in a place that values character so little,’ I told my wife. ‘We're moving back east.’ She nodded and said nothing, knowing full well it was all bluff and bluster. The moment passed, but the sadness lingered. Sometimes Calgary is simply ruthless."
York (1930) and Regis (1912)
The York Hotel (1930) made the news last October when the city told its 130 residents, currently living in the building as tenants of a housing project for low-income people, that they would be moved out in eight months to accommodate construction of EnCana Corporation’s new office tower development, slated to be the tallest in Western Canada. The development may also affect other buildings on the same block, including the Regis Hotel (1912).
"In fairness to EnCana, their business is not preserving buildings," says Richardson. "But with some creativity and planning, you can still get your spectacular new building and keep the gems. That is part of their responsibility to this community."
EnCana has hired famed British architect Norman Foster, and according to CHI, that’s reason to be hopeful. Foster has a history of incorporating the old with the new, as he did with the Hearst headquarters in New York, a unique glass and steel skyscraper built on top of a six-storey art deco block (in the page about that project on Foster’s website, he speaks of a "creative dialogue between old and new").
News about the development has been sporadic and difficult to confirm. According to van Wegen, EnCana will be announcing their plans to the city’s Heritage Authority on July 21, but it isn’t known at this time if the meeting will be open to the public.
President Apartments (1927)
The President was built during a mini-boom in Calgary at the end of the 1920s. Originally an upper-class building designed to attract posh tenants, it was built by Samuel Diamond, nephew of Jacob and Rachel Diamond, Calgary’s first ever Jewish family, who settled here in 1888. The architect is unknown, but many believe him to have been Alexander Pirie, who also designed the St. Regis Hotel, the Devenish Apartments and the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute.
Among the President’s famous tenants were Diamond himself, as well as local entrepreneurs and philanthropists Harry and Martha Cohen (she of the Epcor Centre’s Martha Cohen Theatre).
Right now there’s nothing but a big weedy lot beside the building. The land was slated to be used for the development of the Renoir Suites condominium tower, but a demolition permit issued to the developer has been revoked. The future of the building is still up in the air.
"The intent is now to preserve it, because that’s what’s been expressed by the community and the city, but I can’t say too much more about it," says Bruce Abugov of Abugov-Kaspar, the architectural firm behind the new condo. "What we’re proposing is to move the President off-site to install underground parking, then move it back."
Van Wegen is still withholding judgement. "The project still has a lot of potential hurdles and the building itself is sitting vacant, which is never a safe situation," he says.
Westbourne Baptist Church (1910)
Like a number of other buildings in the East Village, this innocuous looking little church is threatened by the Stampede’s expansion plans. The city wants to see it preserved but negotiations are still underway with the Stampede.
The Westbourne briefly served as the home of former premier William Aberhart’s Prophetic Bible Institute, and today is home to Victory Outreach Centre, a street church that has served as something of a rock in a troubled neighbourhood for 13 years. If the building is destroyed, the centre will be forced to find a new home. The Outreach Centre also used to have seven houses in Victoria Park they rented out to the homeless, but five are gone due to Stampede expansion.
King Edward Hotel (1906)
Anyone who ever visited the Eddy, even in recent years when it was well past its prime as Calgary’s premier jazz and blues venue, has a soft spot for it. A genuine booze-soaked, old-school dive, the Eddy has been a Calgary landmark for almost a century.
But in 2004 the building was deemed a little too dilapidated and booze-soaked for human habitation, and was condemned due to mould and insect infestation. Getting it back into inhabitable shape will take some money, according to van Wegen, but it can be done.
"It’s a question of who’s going to be willing to clean it up," he says.
Right now the building may be threatened by plans to build an underpass to bring 4th Street S.E. underneath the railroad tracks, but nothing has been decided as of yet. There is a local group working to save the building, with a website at www.savethekingeddy.ca. |
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