Tuesday, October 08, 2002
Ian Elliot
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The Kingston Whig-Standard
A previously unknown piece of Kingston history has been uncovered on Brock Street. While gutting the interior of the former fish market at 70 Brock St., workers discovered part of the building had been standing longer than City Hall.
Kincore, which bought the building and is developing several properties on the block including the British Whig building, discovered the former fish market building is actually built on a massive old post-and-beam structure that dated back to between 1825 and 1829. Based on the architecture of the existing former fish market, Kincore officials figured they were dealing with a building from the mid-1940s. But once inside - while trying to rid the basement of the smell of fish after decades of use - they discovered that for the past 175 years, builders had been using the old wooden frame as a skeleton for their projects.
The huge, 20-centimetre square beams, probably made of cedar, are hand-hewn and bear the scars of several fires over the years. The building faced an alley on the south side that no longer exists and spaces that once housed windows can be seen. "We knew it was significant because they were hand-hewn but we didn't know anything more about it," said Andrew Dobson, Kincore's vice-president of design and construction. He has a professional's appreciation for the wall's continuing survival, saying it is a testament to how well it was built. "It withstood all the fires and it's continuing to do what it was built to do," he said, examining one of the posts still holding up the roof of the building.
The earliest known building above King Street, according to the Kingston Buildings Of Architectural Significance, is 56-60 Brock, but it was built circa 1839, at least 10 years later. The company commissioned a history of the site and was able to trace the land back to the early 1800s, when the whole area - Block G as it was denoted on maps - was opened up for development. The land had been put aside for the Church of England and came on the market when St. George's moved to its current site in 1825. The church leased many of the parcels to businesses and used the money for its building campaigns. After use as a shoemaker's shop and a barber shop, it was a fish market for decades, which explains the fragrant basement. Andre Schienman, who prepared the history, wrote that the building is "a remarkable survivor and is clearly one of the earliest, if not the earliest, timber-frame commercial structures remaining in the city."
Only about a quarter of the original building, about eight metres of frontage, is left. The three-quarters on the north side was demolished when the Speale Building was erected, and the beams abutting the wall of that building have been sawn off at the property line. Schienman's report also finds construction was of the highest quality, which may account for its continued survival. Having found the remains, the company must now decide what to do with them. President Kim Donovan said that decision has not been made.
"If it had been a tremendous community asset, we would have been confronted with some care and custody issues," he said. But the building is not a designated heritage building, although the company has had informal discussions with the Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee. There are other post-and-beam structures from that era in the city and 70 Brock is not a complete building, nor is the old architecture visible from outside. Because there isn't a masonry firewall between it and the building on the south, however, it can't be left where it is and unexposed, especially as live electrical wires snake through it.
Kincore has had discussions with a local high school about having the old building's supports studied by history and art classes, Dobson said. The old timbers could be displayed somewhere or incorporated into an art display or alleyway that could be built on the site, Donovan mused.
Kincore's Brock Street project across the street includes a limestone alley, but he noted builders include them at their own cost and have no tax incentive to turn leasable space into a public area.
The one thing the company doesn't have are pictures of how the old buildings at 70 Brock St. looked over the years, or in fact, what the whole block looked like historically. Pictures tended to be taken at public events in the early days of photography and due to the shortcomings of cameras and film, east- and south-facing buildings were in shade at that time of the day. That meant they were often never recorded or only seen in silhouette, making it impossible for architects to study their details. For example, Dobson said Kincore had to design the two vine-wrapped urns that sit atop the Whig building facing King Street as only their bare outlines could be discerned from photographs. Records of how the buildings looked would help guide the company as it designs new buildings for the area, he said.
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History Discovered on Brock Street: Behind Walls, a 175-year-old Wooden Frame |
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