Moving house.

When you hear that someone is moving house, you assume that they are moving and not the house.

Slated for demolition in 2009, the 249 year-old Morris House was saved by the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia -- which bought the structure from the City for one dollar. The catch was that house had to be moved from its original location.  The Trust along with other organizations raised the $30,000 that was needed to move the home to its new location.

Image courtesy of Heritage Trust.

The house began its move in the dead of the night last Saturday.  The trip of 4.5 kilometres through downtown Halifax, was to take 34 hours.  It wasn't going to be moved during the day but in the overnight period on Saturday and Sunday.  This was disappointing news as it meant that  I wouldn't be able to take photos of the move.

The moving company had to call in two front-end loaders to push the truck as it hauled its  72 tons load up the hills.  Countless utility crews had to move hundreds of wires to enable the safe passage of the house through downtown.

You can imagine my surprise when they mentioned on the radio on Sunday morning that the move had fallen behind schedule and the house had still not reached its destination.

As it was still perishing cold, I piled on several layers of clothes and bundled into the car and headed into town. 

I arrived in time to see the house just turning the corner in front of its final resting place.

Wires littered the ground as power trucks lined the surrounding streets. I was amazed at how close I was allowed to get to the building.

Workers in the photo below are placing blocks of wood under the back wheels in a effort keep the building from tilting any further.

Here a back hoe is pulling the front of the house, helping it turn onto the lot that would be its final home.

It's nice that the efforts of a tireless group of volunteers resulted the preservation of this historic old house.  Too often we are all too ready to destroy the old in favour of the new.

Founded Upon A Rock

The book, "Founded Upon A Rock" is sub-titled "Historic Buildings in Halifax and Vicinity, Standing in 1967".  Produced by the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia, my copy is from the seventh printing, produced in 1975.  Sadly, in the intervening eight years, four of these historic buildings had already been destroyed.

I love the marvellous, colourful architecture that can be found in this historic city.  In an effort to see these important buildings for myself, I created a map of Halifax with all the places cited in the book marked with the appropriate page number from the book.

Today, between the Lunch Bunch choir and an evening concert with a different choir, I had several hours to kill.  I am happy to report that the hours were killed productively and I located all six of the homes displayed on the section of map shown above.

Fernwood - 700 Francklyn Street - #94 on the map

While searching for some of the marvellous buildings from this book, I stopped to capture other striking dwellings that for some reason had been omitted.

This impressive home is located on the busy corner of Inglis and Tower Road.  How would you like to live in a round room with all those wonderful windows ?

  

I love the blue paint job, and the contrasting pointed detail on this home.

This building, marked as #72 on the map, is called The Bower.  A large hedge prevented me from getting a good photo of it from the front.

Built around 1790 it has been greatly added to over the years, as demonstrated by the lower photo from the 1860's.

Six down, only 67 more to go.