Reinventing Brantford. Leo Groarke
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Название: Reinventing Brantford
Автор: Leo Groarke
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Архитектура
isbn: 9781770705616
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In downtown Brantford, the Carnegie Building housed the public library for almost ninety years. It served, not only as a centre for reading and the borrowing of books, but as a place of culture and public education, sometimes serving as a home for the city’s museum, archives, and art gallery. During its tenure as the public library, the building was one of Brantford’s most successful public buildings, but it was showing signs of wear by the 1980s. In 1979, the public library’s chief librarian, Lavinka Clark, complained that “the premises have been put to the fullest possible use and the building is grossly inadequate for our ever-expanding needs and programs beneficial to the public.”10 After repeated entreaties, complaints, and submissions to city council, it agreed to move the public library.
The Carnegie Building was closed in December 1991. Its impressive exterior remained, but the interior of the building was worn out from almost ninety years of constant wear and tear. The Brantford Public Library was moved to less elegant but more spacious premises in an empty Woolco store on Colborne Street. The library won an award for its clever renovation of its new building. In other cities, vacated Carnegie libraries were converted into banks, office buildings, law offices, government buildings, and even private homes, but the architectural masterpiece that Carnegie gave Brantford sat empty and forlorn, unable to attract a tenant. Local rumours suggested that the building would become a provincial courthouse. The president of the Historical Society, David Judd, proposed that it become the home of the Brant County Museum and Archives.11 He was successful in attracting some support but not the necessary funding. At one point the city put the building up for sale and a local firm, MMMC Architects, looked at a possible renovation on behalf of a private insurance group. In 1996–97, the city considered turning the building into offices for the Planning and Building Department.
As the 1990s progressed, the building seemed to have no future. The future of its setting seemed even bleaker. On one side of the building, the harsh aesthetics of the 1967 city hall undermined the historical integrity of Victoria Square. On the other side, the integrity of the square was being challenged by a new owner who had bought Park Church and decided to demolish it in favour of a parking lot. As Peter Muir wrote in Brant News:
The Carnegie building is part of an impressive grouping of buildings that surround Victoria Square in the centre of Brantford. The “neo-classical” building with its temple like front steps, massive pillars, domed hall and mosaic floor, now sits vacant and lifeless beside Park Church.
The Church has brought attention to the fate of “one of the most impressive public squares in the Province of Ontario.” It has been granted a temporary reprieve from the wreckers’ ball but is slated for destruction in the spring. The Carnegie building may be next on death row. It has been empty for three years and needs work if a suitable tenant is to be found.12
These were difficult times for Brantford’s most historic square. The old YWCA and Old One Hundred were already gone. The city hall had not retained any vestiges of heritage. The Carnegie Building had been vacant for almost a decade. Park Church was slated for demolition. The impressive home that E.L. Goold had built across the street from Park Church was in a state of serious disrepair. And the decline on the perimeter of the square was compounded by the deterioration in the buildings that lined the blocks surrounding it.
Park Baptist Church, beside the Carnegie Library, circa 1900–05. The church was saved from demolition only when the province assigned it a heritage designation in recognition of its unique stained glass window above the vestibule. The building now houses Brant Community Church.
In the midst of these discouraging circumstances, the Brantford Heritage Committee initiated a push in a better direction. In a context in which most of Brantford favoured the demolition of the old buildings downtown, it opposed such action and did its best to save the architectural heritage that could still be found in downtown Brantford. The committee found a way to save Park Church from the wreckers’ ball by securing a provincial heritage designation that prevented its new owner from demolishing the building. The designation was awarded in order to preserve the unique circular stained glass window on the front of the church. With the church saved, at least for the foreseeable future, one could not help but wonder whether the former Carnegie Library, so long a sign of Brantford’s prominence but now quickly deteriorating, might be saved as well.
According to a local story, Winston Churchill bought his cigars in Brantford. Like many urban legends, this one contains some strands of truth. Churchill did go to Brantford. He visited on January 3, 1901, while on a lecture tour he had arranged before taking his seat in the British House of Commons. In the United States he met with President McKinley, Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt, and Mark Twain. In Canada, he came to Brantford. You can still see his signature on the registry at The Brantford Club, an exclusive downtown club (for most of its history, too exclusive to allow women members).
Churchill became a serious cigar smoker during a trip to Cuba in 1895. Afterward, he smoked eight to ten cigars a day, so he must have smoked in Brantford. His iconic image as a cigar-smoker was established by a famous portrait by Yousuf Karsh in which he scowls after Karsh has taken his cigar away. In Brantford, Churchill must have smoked cigars. It is possible that he smoked a Brantford-made cigar, but he did not come to Brantford to buy cigars; he imported them from Cuba. The Brantford legend ties together a local visit, a popular image of Churchill that made him the world’s most famous cigar smoker, and one forgotten facet of the city’s manufacturing past: Brantford was once the home of a number of successful cigar manufacturers — the Alexander Fair Cigar Company, S.W. Cornell and Company, Halloran and Haskett, and Bunnell and Busch.
Other local folklore is relevant to the rise and fall, and the subsequent rebirth, of Brantford’s downtown. In the end, the turnaround downtown, which began with the saving of the Carnegie Building, was rooted in the idea that Brantford should have a university. This was an idea that represented a major break from the city’s past. When I went to Brantford and asked why the city did not already have a university, I was told two stories. One attributed the lack of a university to Brantford’s industrial, blue collar past, and, more particularly, to the wealthy owners of Brantford’s manufacturing interests who were said to vehemently oppose the development of a university because they did not want to deal with an educated workforce that might not do what it was told. The second pointed the finger at the provincial government, which was alleged to have rejected Brantford’s requests for post-secondary education in favour of other cities in Ontario — London, Guelph, St. Catharines, Peterborough, et cetera.
When I looked for evidence that might support these accounts, it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that they are, like the story of Churchill buying his cigars in Brantford, the stuff of urban legend. Historically, Brantford’s focus on industry and especially manufacturing made it a city that showed little interest in universities. So as far as I can determine, it was city, not provincial attitudes that made Brantford a place without a university. The historical record suggests that the key attitude was indifference — Brantford had no university because it had, in the course of its history, shown little interest in having one. It was only when the city’s industrial base began to collapse that those who cared about the city showed some interest, but this was too late, long after the government had founded the province’s most recent universities in the 1960s.
Through most of its history, Brantford saw СКАЧАТЬ