Built Heritage Resource Guide

Documentary art and photographs can often show additions or changes to buildings over time. The present Five Fisherman Restaurant, Argyle Street, Halifax, is a good example. Joseph Partridge’s “National School at Halifax, N.S.” shows a dormer-less building about 1819 (far right). When the Grand Parade wall was under construction about 1887, the building had two five-sided Scottish dormers. The Victoria School of Art and Design occupied the building thirty years later when pine coffins were stacked at the corner of Argyle and George streets following the devastating Halifax Explosion of 6 December 1917. A five-sided dormer is still visible above the rooftop. The present dormers are now three-sided rather than the ubiquitous five-sided Scottish dormers so popular in nineteenth century Halifax.

Date: ca. 1819

Format: watercolour with touches of pencil and ink, 27 cm. x 39 cm.

Artist: Joseph Partridge

Reference: Nova Scotia Archives Documentary Art: 1979-147.178 / negative N-0328