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You are here: Home / Featured / BREAKING NEWS: Saint Mary’s University demolishes Infants Home

BREAKING NEWS: Saint Mary’s University demolishes Infants Home

June 27, 2014 By Tim Bousquet Leave a Comment

The Infants Home at the corner of Inglish Street and Tower Road was built it 1899.

The Infants Home at the corner of Inglish Street and Tower Road was built it 1899.

Saint Mary’s University is today demolishing the historic Infants Home at the corner of Inglis Street and Tower Road.

Heritage Trust has this to say about the building:

This building is a remarkable testament to the emerging role of women in late nineteenth-century Halifax. The Halifax Infants’ Home was built by a women’s society, founded in 1876. The society provided shelter and medical services for single mothers and their infants, who otherwise would have been ostracized. The society raised money and constructed this building in 1899 and 1900.

This work was done while these same women were struggling for the vote and for the right to serve on legislative bodies. In 1894 the Legislature had voted not to allow women to vote. Most organizations were run exclusively by men. When women cared deeply about an issue, they formed their own organization, and rented or built their own building. Today only two buildings bear testimony from that time: the Home for the Aged (Victoria Hall), and the Infants’ Home.

The building is a masterwork of James Charles Dumaresq, the leading architect in the Maritimes at the time. Here Dumaresq employed his full panoply of architectural embellishments – a projecting frontispiece with Dutch gable, rusticated sandstone string courses, segmental arched windows, corner box bay windows, a Mansard roof, several types of dormers, a turret, a balcony, and an ell. The result is a composition that delights the eye, carrying it up and down and around, constantly finding new secrets to discover.

In November, several interest groups urged the university to try to find a way to save the building. Those efforts have been rebuffed, evidently.

 

The Infants Home in better days. Photo courtesy Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia.

The Infants Home in better days. Photo courtesy Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia.

Filed Under: Featured, News Tagged With: Infants Home, Saint Mary's University

About Tim Bousquet

Tim Bousquet is the editor and publisher of the Halifax Examiner. email: [email protected]; Twitter

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Episode #18 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne is published.

Mo Kenney’s new record Covers is a perfect winter companion — songs from across the rock spectrum that she’s pared down to piano or guitar and turned them into sad ballads. She joins Tara to talk about choosing and arranging them, and opens up for a frank discussion of the alcohol dependency it took a pandemic for her to confront. Plus: Movies are back (again).

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Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

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