Nova Scotia Archives
Built Heritage Resource Guide
Argyle Street at the Corner of George Street, Halifax,
The photo shows pine coffins supplied to Snow & Co., Undertakers, second building from right, for victims of the Halifax Explosion.
Joseph Partridge’s “National School at Halifax, NS” 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 6 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: [December 1917]
Format: Copy print from original photograph
Photographer: W.G. MacLaughlan
Reference: Halifax Relief Commission Nova Scotia Archives accession no. 1976-166 no. 64 / negative N-4273