Stratford White House blues

Sticking with Stratford, our local Architectural Conservancy Ontario branch has just heard that the branch’s nomination of the city of Stratford for induction into the North America Railway Hall of Fame has been accepted.  Hooray!

The induction will happen in St. Thomas, Ontario — the home of the NARHF — later this month.

Stratford was nominated for its amazing railway history and heritage, touched on in last month’s post.  The Stratford Festival of its day, the railway, and the need to keep it running, really put Stratford on the map.

The induction of Stratford represents a great honour; but, just to be clear, the honour is for Stratford as a small “c” city, for the place, not for its municipal government.  It seems that, from the standpoint of preserving its railway (and other) heritage, Stratford city councils are — putting it kindly — not always at the forefront in terms of vision and commitment.

Remember the old story from last time about the Canadian Pacific Railway wanting to destroy the city’s parks system for a railway line?  The mayor and all but a few councillors were gung ho and had it been left to them….  But fortunately the question was put to Stratford residents who defeated it in a 1913 referendum.

Today, the biggest preservation challenge facing Stratford is the gigantic locomotive repair shops building on a huge city-owned site (known locally as the Cooper Site) adjacent to the downtown.  While the building moulders… and moulders… councillors and city administrators dither… and dither.  Yo, where’s the mojo to finally get something going here?

Another telling example of the current council’s interest (or lack thereof) in Stratford’s built heritage is the still-unfolding case of the White House.

Photo courtesy Scott Wishart, Stratford Beacon Herald

The White House: a very big old house on a highly visible corner lot on one of the most historic and beautiful streets in the city.  The current owners want to subdivide it creating three new lots squeezed in behind, beside, and partly in front of the grand porticoed front.  They say they can’t afford to maintain the house without infill development.

The 1866 property is neither designated under the OHA nor formally listed, although it does appear to be included on an old inventory.  And Heritage Stratford, the city’s appointed heritage committee, had prepared a draft designation by-law in 2005 (not coincidentally the last time the property was at risk).

It seems the 2005 designation never went forward because, like so many other Ontario municipalities, Stratford has a policy (unwritten) not to designate without the permission of the owner.  A policy that an Ontario court has ruled illegal. [Note 1]

When the applications for severance into four lots and accompanying minor variances went forward, the city’s committee of adjustment turned them down, partly on heritage grounds.  This despite the fact that city planning staff had recommended the scheme… making no mention of heritage (seriously!).

Understandably the owner appealed the decision to the Ontario Municipal Board.  And, wouldn’t you guess, subpoenaed the city’s planner as an expert witness to help make its case.  The city was faced with an awkward choice — whether to side with its own committee or with its staff.  At first it dithered.  But after a campaign by the neighbourhood Friends of the Stratford White House group urging the city to step up (which included an impassioned plea from renowned Stratford actor Seana McKenna), councillors decided the city would be represented at the OMB hearing and would retain independent legal and planning advice.

But… something happened on the way to the hearing, and in the end (after an in camera discussion) council backtracked, opting not to take part in the hearing one way or the other.  This left the neighbourhood group as the only party fighting the appeal.

Meantime, the owner, whose proposal for the property originally included retaining the house, applied for a demolition permit.  Yikes!  As they didn’t abandon the OMB appeal it seemed like a strategic move, part of a “plan B” in case the OMB decision did not go their way.

To its credit, Heritage Stratford responded very quickly, recommending that the city designate the property under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act.  (This uncharacteristic dexterity made possible by the groundwork done in 2005).  The recommendation went forward and a subcommittee of council narrowly passed a motion to designate.

Then — and this was the very week the Ontario Heritage Conference came to town! — council’s planning and heritage committee debated the designation recommendation.  It was painful to watch.

Perhaps because this council has so rarely considered heritage designations (yes, that’s a dig), there was confusion about how the designation process worked, what exactly was required and what the implications were for the property owner.  The staff tried to explain but just seemed to muddy things more.  One particular low point was when a motion was made to retain “independent” advice on the importance of the property, suggesting the opinion some councillors held of Heritage Stratford, their appointed heritage committee.  Ouch.  Fortunately that was defeated.

One councillor said, apparently proudly, that Stratford had never designated without the owner’s consent and “I don’t want to be part of the first council that does it.”  Another called it a “draconian measure.”  Oy vey.

No one bothered to explain that objections to designation, where they occur, are just part of the process; nor that the Conservation Review Board hears objections and prepares a report but that the municipal council makes the final decision on whether to designate or not.

No one apparently considered the court ruling that a practice of not designating without the owner’s consent is beyond a municipality’s powers under the OHA.  Nor the fact that other nearby places — like St. Marys — have designated property over an owner’s objections.

No one thought to raise the matter of incentives, such as grants or property tax relief, that might be made available to the property owner.  Nor that designation does not “freeze” a property and would allow for approval of a more sensitive redevelopment plan in future (and might actually hasten it).

The motion to designate was defeated 7-3.  Council later buried the matter without a word.

Again, one of Stratford’s most prominent and interesting old houses!  For a city that brands itself as a centre for culture and heritage it was an astonishing result.

Where does the story go from here?  I’m not sure, but one piece fell into place last week with the release of the OMB decision on the severance/minor variance issues.  Watch this space.

Note 1: Tremblay v. Lakeshore (Town), Ontario Divisional Court, November 2003. See OHA+M from Nov. 6, 2015: http://danschneiderheritage.blogspot.ca/2015/11/the-oha-what-courts-have-to-say-part.html

Ode to Stratford

What's past is prologue. [Note 1]

Stratford itself is the type of walkable wholesome town Rodgers and Hammerstein might write a musical about. [Note 2]

Let’s face it — there is no small city in the province, or the country, quite like Stratford.

As Stratford, with neighbouring St. Marys, has just played host to the 13th annual Ontario Heritage Conference this past weekend, indulge me while I pay a personal, unabashed tribute to the Festival City.

Full disclosure: I’m a bit biased, having got my start in Stratford — in more ways than one.  I was born in the brand new Stratford General Hospital (and grew up in the village of Milverton 25 kilometres to the north).  A couple decades later, as a Summer Experience student, I began what turned into a career in heritage conservation working for the Stratford LACAC (Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee).  [Note 3]

The Queen and Prince Philip visit Stratford in 1959

There were other firsts in Stratford in between: my first time in a movie house, now the Avon Theatre; my first time seeing Shakespeare on stage; my first (and only) time seeing Her Majesty drive by.

But back to Stratford and how it got its start. 

The Huron Road — the original road that opened up this part of the world, linking Guelph and the “frontier” at the western edge of Waterloo County to Goderich and Lake Huron — was hacked out in 1828.  Where it crossed the Avon River, first called the Little Thames (in fact a tributary of the North Branch of the Thames), a settlement grew up with a grist mill and saw mill.  And, of course, a tavern.

The beginnings of the name of Stratford lie buried in the silence of the past. The closest thing to documentation is an old tale about [Canada Company] Commissioner [Thomas Mercer] Jones who came one day from York bringing a painting of Shakespeare which he presented to Wm. Sargint, the appreciative Irish tavern keeper. Tradition says it was hung outside the inn which became the Shakespeare Inn and led to renaming Little Thames as Stratford. [Note 4]

But what really put the little burg on the map was the railways — one in 1856 (on its way to Sarnia) and a second soon after (completed to Goderich in 1858) crossing the first, making an “X.”

Out of the wilderness of the Huron Tract rose a remarkable city. Part of the reason for the rise of its fortunes was the 19th century arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway’s locomotive repair shops. [Note 5]

An early view of the Shops (in background)

Other railways followed and Stratford became a great hub, attracting the “shops”, a mammoth locomotive repair facility that thrived from the 1870s through the first half of the twentieth century.

The mammoth 1907 Shops structure

Interior of the 1907 structure today

The shops were the economic engine of Stratford, which by 1885 had become a city.  Industry rapidly expanded, especially the furniture-makers — by 1929 Stratford had no less than 13 furniture companies!

But even at the height of the railway era, the citizens of Stratford were not quite prepared to sacrifice a special place to the demands of industry.  In the early 1900s the Canadian Pacific Railway proposed a line into the downtown that would have ravaged the city’s fledgling park system along the river.  When the proposal was finally decided by referendum in 1913, parkland won over railway lines, by a margin of 127 votes.

The first of the iconic Stratford swans appeared on the river in 1918.

…[I]t was the decline of the [steam] locomotive industry in the early 1950s that motivated the city’s concerned residents to look for a new economic base. That they should think of a theatre was not so strange, for there had always been people here with the interest, the will and the commitment to see the arts flourish. [Note 6]

With one bold stroke that has left our big cities gasping, Stratford, Ont., will this summer claim its birthright with a Shakespearean festival. [Note 7]

And it started in a tent!  A tent raised in Queen’s Park, the anchor of the Stratford parks system.

Then a few years later came architect Robert Fairfield’s tent-echoing Festival Theatre, one of my three favourite buildings in the city.

The other two?  The majestic Perth County Courthouse by London, Ontario, architect George F. Durand, opened in 1887.

And of course the fanciful 1899 neo-Jacobean-slash-Picturesque city hall by Toronto architect George W. King.

Stratford City Hall fits into its market square like a hand in a glove.

[Note 8]

In a stirring key note address to the Ontario Heritage Conference last Friday, David Prosser, Literary and Editorial Director at the Stratford Festival, talked about the inspiration the city’s old buildings provide for the Festival’s artistic endeavours.  And the payback to the Festival for its adaptive reuse of many older structures.

In all these cases, an old building has been given a new lease on life. But I feel as if some kind of benefit has also flowed the other way. I feel that a building itself – its history, its character, the bones of the past that you can still discern under every present-day face-lift – in some ineffable way informs the work that’s done in it.

Prosser finishes by making an eloquent plea for Stratford’s heritage as a driver of culture and creativity.

I believe that Stratford the theatre town is a far richer, more interesting place to live – a place more likely to attract people of imagination and creative enterprise – for having once been the Stratford renowned for furniture factories and railways. Our parklands, our architecture, the spaces created by our predecessors: this is our heritage landscape.

That landscape played a significant part in enabling Stratford to become a centre for some of the finest theatre in the world, and a community that thrives culturally and economically. Let us always seek to make that landscape ever richer, ever more beautiful. [Note 9]

Hear, hear!

Note 1: The Tempest, Act 2, Scene I

Note 2:  Amy Alipio, Associate Editor, National Geographic Traveler

Note 3: I spent most of the summer walking up and down Stratford’s streets taking photos of houses, then writing about some of them in the local  paper.

Note 4: Thelma Coleman, in The Canada Company, 1978

Note 5: Adelaide Leitch, in Floodtides of Fortune, 1980

Note 6: Richard Monette, in his foreward to Stratford: Its History and its Festival, Carolynn Bart-Riedstra and Lutzen H. Riedstra, 1999

Note 7: Maclean’s magazine, 1953

Note 8: Architectural historian Douglas Richardson — at least I think so. If he didn’t say it, he should have.

Note 9: See the full text of David Prosser’s remarks on May 13, 2016 at http://www.arconserv.ca/resources/show.cfm?id=21

Automatic protection — are old buildings next?

Picking up from last time… if we can — and do — have automatic protection for archaeological sites in Ontario, why not for other kinds of cultural heritage?

As we’ve seen, the protection extended under Part VI of the Ontario Heritage Act is not the same as that afforded by heritage designation under Parts IV and V.  In the context of our land use planning regime, archaeological sites receive instant legal protection from the moment of discovery, with the law compelling a strict process be followed to assess the site and determine its future.  Long-term protection, where that is warranted and feasible, will normally rely on other mechanisms — easements, zoning changes, public acquisition (even designation, as with the First Parliament site in Toronto).

Outside the cultural heritage sphere, what might be gleaned from automatic protection in other areas?  We also use AP approaches for aspects of our natural environment.  Take trees for instance.  The Municipal Act gives municipalities broad powers to prohibit or restrict the removal and injuring of trees.  Not selected trees, but all trees meeting a basic definition. [Note 1]

The City of Toronto, for example, protects any privately owned tree more than 30 centimetres in diameter as measured at 1.4 metres above ground level.  You need a permit from the city to injure or destroy a tree and your permit application requires a certified arborist’s report.  There are a few exemptions, of course: no permit is needed if a tree is confirmed by city staff to be 100% dead, imminently hazardous or terminally diseased.  It’s also clear that a tree loses its protection if the city approves new development for the site. [Note 2]

So how about a similar kind of automatic protection for old buildings?  In a recent pitch to MPPs and government ministers at Queen’s Park, Architectural Conservancy Ontario seems to be calling for exactly that.  ACO observes that in Toronto “trees have more protection than buildings” and calls on the province to “create a regulatory bias for conservation” — ending “the right to destruction” by “reduc[ing] access to demolition permits under the Ontario Building Code.” [Note 3]

ACO doesn’t say exactly how this would be implemented.  But one approach could be to protect from demolition any building over a certain age, say 40 years, for a temporary period, say 60 days, to give the municipality a chance to assess the importance of the structure, consider the competing public/private interests at play, and put in place designation or other more permanent protection measures.

Could this work?

We already have a comparable interim protection for heritage property formally listed under the OHA.  In that case the owner of the property can’t demolish unless they give 60 days notice.  Of course, this protection is not conferred automatically — the property must be individually listed by the municipal council, requiring some evaluation of the property and a “belief” that it has cultural heritage value.  The procedural requirements for listing may be fairly minimal compared to those for designation but this is still a selection-based as opposed to an automatic model. [Note 4]

Perhaps the closest thing we have in Ontario to what ACO proposes is in the protection of provincially owned property subject to the mandatory Standards & Guidelines for Conservation of Provincial Heritage Properties.  Paragraph B.4. says:

If a ministry or prescribed public body has not evaluated a property in its care or control, and if that property contains a building or structure that is 40 or more years old, then the ministry or prescribed public body shall:

a. prevent the building or structure from undergoing demolition by neglect; and

b. obtain the consent of the Minister of Tourism and Culture before removing or demolishing the building or structure, or before transferring the property from provincial control. (emphasis added)

What this means is that every 40-year-old-or-more structure in Crown ownership or control is protected from demolition and sale — until such time as it has been evaluated, using other standards in the S&Gs, and determined either to be a “provincial heritage property” or not.  (If it is a heritage property it becomes subject to the rest of the S&Gs, and if it’s not, it doesn’t).  The intention here is clearly to provide a big incentive for provincial owners to evaluate their holdings so as to avoid the onerous consent and other requirements of B.4.

This is nevertheless an example of an approach that provides automatic protection for buildings on an interim basis, where the protection is not time-limited (as in 60 days) but pending the carrying out of a formal evaluation.

Another interesting thing about the B.4. example is who carries out the heritage evaluation.  It is not, as in municipal listing and designation, the municipality, but the owner of the property.  Looked at another way, the onus is on the owner to show why the protection of the property should not continue to apply.  In this respect it is similar to how archaeological sites and Toronto trees are protected.

This suggests a variant on the ACO-inspired approach we looked at above.  How about a model that protects from demolition any 40-year-old building unless and until the owner demonstrates the building has no cultural heritage value?  Or, going still further into what is less a heritage than an environmental strategy — until the owner demonstrates the building has no ongoing utility or that it can’t be adaptively reused, incorporated into or added to in any redevelopment of the site?

I know, heady stuff!

The point is that — from archaeology to Crown property to trees in Toronto — there are precedents and models to draw on should we want to pursue the idea of automatic protection of buildings.  I leave it to you, dear reader, to judge whether this would be good policy.

I am struck though by the parallels between the purpose of Toronto’s tree by-law and ACO’s rationale for “a regulatory bias for conservation”:

The Private Tree By-law was adopted to preserve significant trees on private property in the City of Toronto, to assist in sustaining the urban forest in the City and to educate individuals with respect to tree protection measures and alternatives to tree injury and destruction.
- - - - -

The greenest building is the one that already exists:

• Recognize Ontario’s older buildings as important community assets
• Encourage retention and adaptive reuse
• Discourage demolition and removal to landfill

Note 1: See section 135 of the Municipal Act. The City of Toronto has similar powers under section 104 of the City of Toronto Act, 2006.

Note 2: The city’s by-law is formally known as City of Toronto Municipal Code, Chapter 813, Article III, "Private Tree Protection."

Note 3: "Ontario's Culture Strategy: What's Next?", Architectural Conservancy Ontario, February 18, 2016.

Note 4: See OHA+M: “Listing — Designation Lite?” from March 3, 2016.

Digging down on automatic protection

Let’s get back to the concept of automatic protection for cultural heritage resources — the idea that they get “instant” protection without going through some form of decision process.

I say “back” because perceptive readers may have noticed that the three shipwrecks we looked at last time are not automatically protected.  Or rather, they get the same automatic protection in Ontario as archaeological sites on land, but the added protection they enjoy — the no-access zone surrounding them — is not automatic.  Far from it!  As we saw it takes a regulation passed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council (aka Cabinet) to confer this special status.

So… automatic protection and why an AP approach is used for archaeological resources.  Here again is the rationale:

Clearly archaeological sites are in the ground, or under water, and are usually obscured or hidden in a way that built heritage resources and cultural heritage landscapes are not. Most people don’t know they’re there until they stumble upon them (and maybe not even then). The importance of the site requires an expert assessment. And it is possible sites may contain human remains. [Note 1]

We’ll return to this.  For now let’s look more closely at the implications of AP for archaeology.

In the (usual) context of land use planning and development, archaeological activity — “archaeological fieldwork” [Note 2] — follows a process, with up to four stages.

The purpose of the first three stages of the process is:

• to identify archaeological sites that may be present
• if they are, to assess the degree of cultural heritage value or interest of the sites
• informed by that assessment, to determine whether mitigation of the development project’s impacts on a site will be necessary; and if so, to recommend the most appropriate mitigation strategies (this requires review of potential strategies with the project proponent and may also require engaging indigenous and local communities)

In the fourth stage, the recommended mitigation strategies are carried out.  Mitigation could take the form of avoidance of the site and implementing long-term strategies for its protection, such as an easement or restrictive covenant, zoning by-law amendment or transfer of ownership to the municipality or other public body. [Note 3]  But if long-term protection is not a viable option — and it usually isn’t in these situations — then archaeological excavation is conducted to document the site and remove its artifacts before construction on the development project begins. [Note 4]

The point here is that automatic protection of archaeological sites in Ontario, in the context of our land-use planning regime, ensures a graduated or sequential process.  One that looks for, assesses, examines options for and extracts information from sites, but is not normally relied on to protect them in the long-term — because the site turns out to be not that significant or because leaving it alone is not a practical option or because through excavation the site is essentially destroyed.  In that event “clearance” will be given and the legal protection of the site lifted.

Okay, now let’s review what we know about how this approach compares with the other main protection mechanism we use — heritage designation under the OHA.

The big difference between AP and designation approaches has to do with how the heritage resource is typically selected:

Automatic protection (section 48 of OHA)	Conferred if resource meets definition/has certain characteristics, i.e. contains artifacts or other evidence of past human activity
Designation (section 29 of OHA)	Conferred if resource meets definition/has certain characteristics, i.e. real property + resource meets criteria for value/significance + resource is earmarked by a public authority (municipal council or provincial minister) following statutory procedure

The other difference has to do with the kind of protection conferred:

Automatic protection (section 48 of OHA)	Protection effectively provisional and dependent on process outcomes
Designation (section 29 of OHA)	Protection permanent/indefinite

Where am I going with this?  It may take another post or two to get there.  But it has something to do with trees in Toronto.

Note 1: See OHA+M “Automatic protection — the holy grail?” from March 17, 2016.

Note 2: As defined in O.Reg. 170/04 “archaeological fieldwork” means any activity carried out on, above or under land or water for the purpose of obtaining and documenting data, recovering artifacts and remains or altering an archaeological site and includes monitoring, assessing, exploring, surveying, recovering and excavating.

Note 3: In theory designation of the site under Part VI of the Act (or even under Parts IV or V) is also a protection option. The drafters of the 1975 OHA seemed to think provincial designation was the way to protect archaeological sites, devoting no less than 10 sections of the Act to this approach, including one requiring compensation for owners affected. For this and other reasons the designation power in Part VI has never been used. The only archaeological sites designated under the Act are five sites originally designated under the Archaeological and Historic Sites Protection Act, a predecessor of the OHA.

Note 4: For a fuller description of the four-stage process see the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport’s Standards and Guidelines for Consultant Archaeologists, pages 4-5, and the diagram on page 9 (also reproduced below):

http://www.mtc.gov.on.ca/en/publications/SG_2010.pdf