Demolishing our city hall

I am not happy. Why not?  City council has just voted to have our century-old city hall building torn down. It will join the old high school, the old city hall and the old train station in old-building heaven, I guess.

 

City hall, previously the post office, is slated for demolition.

 

The powers-that-be want a one-storey combination service centre, city hall and library (costing over three million dollars) to be built on vacant land behind the existing building.

 

The butterfly garden is right behind city hall.

 

Apparently, renovating and adding to the structure is not an option, despite one architect’s report to that effect.  Well, goodness, an elevator alone could cost a prohibitive $150,000.  Also, the councillors feel Parkhill could use the area it now occupies for green space once the new building is constructed. That’s a lot of respect for grass, given the fields to the north and west of the proposed site, not to mention Coronation Park, barely a block away.

 

Coronation Park is well used - even by aliens.
 

 

Selling the building is not a possibility either, it seems.

Built in 1908, the structure originally housed the post office. It has been so carelessly  “renovated“ over the years that, unfortunately, aside from a spectacular oak staircase, little of its original interior remains. Many of its contents, including all the wooden wickets through which post office business was conducted were removed when the post office moved down the street to new premises, a squat one-store building where the previous city hall once stood.  

 



The new post office,the  bell from the previous city hall and the Carnegie library are down the street.

 

The latter housed a jail in the basement, council chambers on the first floor and a concert hall on the second. One of Greg’s parishioners remembers Christmas concerts held there in his youth. But all that remains of it now is the bell:

 

 

Oddly, a similar building in neighbouring Ailsa Craig was restored by its "Friends" and is now a popular concert hall. Our mayor, who hails from Ailsa Craig but must still be reeling from the shock of such restoration, was quoted as saying you can get “swamped with old buildings.”

According to another source, he feels the municipal government can manage only one “old building”:  the present Carnegie Library beside the new Post Office. By the way, this library is one of 111 libraries in Ontario , endowed by the Carnegie Foundation circa 1913, most of which still function as originally intended; however, about 15 have been destroyed by fire or were demolished in the “enlightened” 60s and 70s.

See this web-site for more information: http://www.mtc.gov.on.ca/en/libraries/carnegie.shtml

 

I love the steps leading up to the library with their short rise and longish run (there is a ramp around back at the parking lot).

 

Our library lacks an elevator and public washrooms, but apparently these and other renovations can’t be undertaken because the wide swath of land behind it is a right of way for the new Post Office.  Other municipalities have been able to find the answers to similar dilemmas, but apparently not ours.

Also puzzling is the wish of some councillors to incorporate elements of the façade of the soon-to-be-demolished city hall into the planned new structure. That implies a pretty meticulous — and expensive — demolition.   Also, their hope that the new structure will reflect the old buildings still standing across the street kind of begs the question — and I think I am using that phrase correctly — as to why they would go to all the trouble of destroying a building, albeit too vertical in nature, in order to erect its horizontal twin.

The old post office/ city hall building anchors the downtown streetscape,  and although not a masterpiece, nevertheless embodies our past.  It reflects Edwardian civic virtues (which in this neck of the woods were likely still very Victorian). Upright, unsparing, functional and stolid, it is a monument to what hard work, civic duty and sober Sunday worship could achieve and symbolizes an ethos which was, and to an extent still is, prosperous, solid, unyielding — and,  sadly, also acquiescent.

Kind of like the roads around here, caging the flat land under a grid where it is woefully hard to get lost, we seem to be immobilized by a similar lack of vision. Taking the easiest path is great for driving, but not so great for preserving our heritage and its buildings for future inhabitants of Parkhill.



This photo was taken in May 2011.