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Sunday February 05, 2012 |
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History of Trinity Royal (Page 2) Trinity Royal: "The dearest spot on earth to me"Page 2 of 3 <Prev [1][2][3] Next> Writing a few days after the Great Fire, a Saint John native noted to a friend that her parents, Mr. and Mrs. James Lawton, had watched the flames from the Digby steamer as they engulfed her father's wharf. Recalling her childhood home on Germain Street, which also had burned to the ground, she wrote: "I cannot help grieving for the loss of the dear old home, almost as much as for a human friend, for it was most truly, the dearest spot on earth to me." Reaching across more than a century, the poignancy of these words from the pen of Janie Nisbet Lawton Thompson evoke more than individual sorrow. They offer some perspective on Saint John's collective grief in the late 1870s.For several years prior to the fire the city had been confronting a transformation in transport technology. Slowly, but irrevocably, this change was disrupting the base of Saint John's lumber and wooden sailing-ship wealth. In addition to the technological revolution, the 1867 political evolution of the British North American provinces into the Confederation of Canada, served to focus Canadian national attention on continental development with an emphasis on railroads. Into the midst of this socially and economically challenging period Saint John endured one of the worst recorded North American fires of the nineteenth century.As a pedestrian or "walking city" Saint John's commercial and residential areas were largely intertwined. The Great Fire, clearly visible to the Lawtons as they stood on the deck of the Digby steamer, had started at a waterfront site and quickly eliminated the commercial area. This upheaval of the city's central business district caused severe disruption in Saint John's import-export activities as well as in the retail distribution network upon which the city's populace relied. Lawton's Wharf and the core business area destroyed on that June afternoon in 1877 began to be rebuilt within days after the embers had cooled. In the meantime, the business community established a temporary tent city on King Square to maintain the rudiments of the city's socio-economic life. [see map of Shanty Town in King Square] Elsewhere on Queen Square a number of the city's residents established temporary homes pending the reconstruction of residential accommodation.Responding to the urgency wrought by the fire, Saint John's business and civic leaders urged detailed building regulations which were passed by the provincial legislature in August of 1877. Supported by a building inspection system the new code was designed to prevent a repeat of the disaster that in some manner had touched every resident in the city. The intensity and degree of construction activity resulted in the creation of a new architectural street scape in the central business district ... and the reestablishment of an elite residential area, particularly on Germain Street. Many of the edifices, commercial and residential, erected in the flurry of activity between 1877 and 1881, as well as thereafter, comprise the building stock of the designated historic preservation area known today as Trinity Royal.The present day existence of structures such as the Old City Hall, the Old Post Office, the Pugsley Building and the Palatine Building are in some ways a testament to the economic misfortunes of Saint John in the eighty years following Confederation. Had Saint John experienced growth comparable to other North American cities during those years, there might have been pressure to level the post-fire buildings in favor of newer construction. Instead for much of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century the post-fire reconstruction, which essentially retained the spatial limits of the pre-fire city, remained largely unchallenged as there was little demand for land to accommodate large manufacturing or commercial enterprises near the port. As a result Germain Street reemerged in the 1880s as a residential street for the upper class with shops located on the blocks closest to King Street. Moreover, the city's principal pre-fire commercial streets, King and Prince William, remained in that role, with Water Street retaining its warehouse function. The ensuing years, characterized largely by economic stagnation, witnessed changes in the population composition and land uses of Trinity Royal but not in its rich architectural heritage which included some of the finest examples of late nineteenth century commercial buildings on the continent. During the post-WW II period the city's leaders initiated plans to improve Saint John. An urban study in 1946 identified the city's waterfront area as one of the worst slums in North America. A subsequent study in the mid-1950s enumerated several areas in need of improvement. These assessments prompted massive urban renewal projects in the 1960s. Entire sections of the city's east end fronting on Courtenay Bay were demolished. The old North End anchored by Main Street was also razed.Removal of much of the city's least desirable structures drew attention to those edifices embodying a past architectural elegance which had been constructed in the years immediately following the Great Fire. During the urban renewal years a number of citizens from a cross section of the community had been advocating heritage preservation. Gradually the idea that the visual wealth of Saint John's Uptown South End area rested on the rejuvenation and preservation of its architectural heritage came to be shared with increasing support by the broader civic and business community. It was in this climate of urban renewal that the greater central business district also received attention during the 1960s and 1970s. Page 2 of 3 <Prev [1][2][3] Next> |
