The story of a commercial street: growth, decline, and gentrification on Gottingen Street, Halifax.
Roth, Nathan ; Grant, Jill L.
Between the 1830s and 2010s Gottingen Street in Halifax, Canada,
Transitioned from a residential street, to a commercial corridor, to an
area of community services, to a revitalizing "hip" area. Its
story reflects the influence of changing regulatory regimes,
transportation modes, commercial practices, and cultural values. The
article follows uses in selected properties on the street to tell the
story of an area shifting in use and character as a result of major
infrastructure investments and changing economic conditions between 1910
and 2015.
Entre les annees 1830 et 2010, la rue Gottingen a Halifax, au
Canada, s'est transformee d'une rue residentielle en une
artere commerciale, puis en un espace de services communautaires et
enfin en une zone de revitalisation a la mode. Son histoire reflete
ainsi l'influence des changements des regimes de reglementation,
des modes de circulation, des pratiques commerciales et des valeurs
culturelles. Cet article examine une selection de caracteristiques de
cette rue afin de narrer l'histoire d'une zone en perpetuelle
transition, suite a d'importants investissements dans
l'infrastructure et aux changements des conditions economiques
ayant marque la periode 1910-2014.
History of a Commercial Street
To be sure, the older city has been replaced by the one that uses
many of the same bricks and much of the same asphalt, along with
nearly all of the old names for streets and neighborhoods. These
material and cultural fossils invite an illusion of continuity:
these same streets were here a century ago. But only in the most
superficial sense is that so, for the streets have changed
utterly--in their functions, their social meaning, even their moral
standing--for those who use them. (1)
Cities are sites of perpetual transition, changing with political
decisions, economic conditions, and residents' choices.
Neighbourhood change occurs in an economic context that influences which
parts of cities experience growth and prosperity and which find
themselves losing jobs and value. Urban regulatory and policy
environments affect the kinds of buildings, infrastructure, and services
that appear in cities; they enable or constrain the uses a street can
support. Within the cultural context of any city, people tell stories
about which areas are "nice" and which may be
"dangerous" as they make pragmatic choices about where to
live, where to shop, where to invest. The trajectory of any particular
street in any given city thus reflects decisions made by multiple levels
of governments, international corporations and local businesses, and
individual residents and consumers. Understanding the history of
significant streets provides insight into the local implications of
macro and micro processes that drive urban change.
This article examines the history of uses on Gottingen Street in
Halifax, Nova Scotia (figure 1). Settled in 1749 as a British military
foothold within traditional Mi'kmaq Indigenous territory on
Canada's east coast, Halifax expanded northward in the nineteenth
century with the migration of German Protestants, who inscribed Germanic
names on many streets, including Gottingen. Elegant large homes appeared
on Gottingen and nearby Brunswick Street, while small clapboard houses
flanked relatively narrow side streets. By the end of the nineteenth
century Gottingen Street--which ran northward from the Citadel fortress
overlooking Halifax harbour--had developed a cluster of commercial uses
serving local, predominantly working-class residents: many of its early
homes were adapted for reuse or demolished, as affluent residents
relocated to the south and west. During the early to mid-twentieth
century, Gottingen became the major commercial street of the North End
neighbourhood. While more affluent parts of the city were predominantly
white, the North End was integrated, with working-class blacks and
whites sharing the streets. Postwar suburban residential and economic
growth and mid-century large-scale urban renewal projects greatly
affected Gottingen Street, leading to lower property values, a smaller
customer base, and a weakened commercial base on the street. By the end
of the twentieth century, Gottingen Street was described as
Halifax's "most feared neighbourhood." (2) Yet in the
early twenty-first century, the street's relative affordability and
proximity to downtown supported gentrification, characterized by an
increase in bohemian uses. The complex trajectory of Gottingen
Street--from a site of commercial prowess until the 1960s, to a poor and
stigmatized neighbourhood through the 1990s, to a gentrifying district
in the 2000s--is hardly unique. Such transitions have been well
documented in larger cities such as New York, Toronto, and Vancouver.
(3) Less, however, has been written about processes in smaller Canadian
cities.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
What can a case study of a street offer? It presents a thick
description of transformation at work (4) and allows researchers to link
physical changes with policy interventions, technological shifts, and
cultural practices. Changes on commercial streets such as Gottingen
reflect some of the ways in which government policy and infrastructure
Investments, commercial practices and corporate decisions, and
consumers' and residents' choices shape urban change. This
research followed properties on Gottingen Street in Halifax from 1910 to
2015, drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources. Primary
sources scrutinized Include city directories, (5) insurance maps, (6)
telephone directories, (7) city council and committee minutes, newspaper
stories, city reports, historic photographs, assessment records, plans,
and field surveys. Interviews with eleven experts and business operators
in the fall of 2012 provided qualitative data about the recent history
of the street. Secondary sources included scholarly studies and
histories of the city. The changing uses of ten example
properties--selected for a cross-section of uses in 1910 and
representing different segments on the street--Illustrate the
transformation of commerce and help to reveal transition points in the
fate of the neighbourhood (see table 1, figure 2). In 1910 the
properties in table 1 included a hospital, residence, church, and
various shops. At the height of the street's economic prowess in
1950, some lots housed a theatre, a bank, or prestigious stores. By
2000, social services and vacant properties abounded, as the area
reached its nadir; however, by 2010 upscale uses had begun to appear.
[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]
Commercial streets in older Inner city neighbourhoods offer
important stories about the dynamic nature of urban form and function:
telling their stories helps explain how and why cities change. The
article begins by briefly discussing the context of change in commercial
districts before proceeding to review the chronology of transformation
on Gottingen Street. The final section considers key insights from the
case study. Changing retail on the street reflects the combined
influences of changing corporate practices, transportation modes,
political priorities, and consumer preferences.
Growth of the Retail Street
Cities are dynamic spaces. Retail districts prove especially fluid,
responding to changing population patterns, consumer tastes,
transportation patterns, and economic conditions. (8) In early
twentieth-century North America, small-scale retail uses--in the form of
grocers, butchers, and others providing daily necessities--were widely
distributed through residential districts. Concentrations of retailers
providing other goods developed in central districts along particular
streets. As omnibus and streetcar services improved, some streets became
important shopping streets, attracting higher-end and large retailers.
(9) Subsequently, widespread access to private automobiles began to
reconfigure the hierarchy of urban commercial streets in the
mid-twentieth century, as businesses increasingly moved to suburban
malls, and chain retailers replaced independents. Although governments
implemented urban renewal projects and often set policies to try to
protect or revitalize older retail districts, the fate of formerly
powerful commercial streets varied. (10) Older retail streets in central
cities often lost major retailers: some developed niche markets, but
others faced severe decline. Cities increasingly became places of uneven
geographic development. (11)
[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]
By the late twentieth century, some central areas previously
marginalized by suburban growth had become sites of reinvestment and
gentrification. (12) A second round of urban renewal began to draw
people to older districts and created new opportunities for retailers.
(13) Policy-maker interest in attracting talented and creative workers
to fuel investment and growth--based on the ideas of Jane Jacobs and
Richard Florida--encouraged redevelopment of older areas with
"edgy" new uses. (14) In the United States, programs such as
HOPE VI provided federal funding to demolish public housing and replace
it with mixed-income and mixed-use neighbourhoods: with over 130,000
units destroyed, the program fundamentally reorganized large areas and
displaced poor African-American tenants. (15) Recent urban redevelopment
in Canada is driving gentrification in major cities, but local
governments that are renewing public housing have committed to replacing
demolished units while adding market housing. (16) Shifting investment
strategies in the city affect not only who lives where but also the
trajectory of commercial districts. (17) If people abandon a
neighbourhood, stores close and investors shy away. As wealthier people
move into an area, investors see opportunities. The types of local
retail may change: upscale shops and services often displace those that
met the needs of previous residents through commercial gentrification.
(18) Examining uses on commercial streets thus offers insights into
urban processes at work.
Halifax is a port city on Canada's Atlantic coast. In 1911 it
housed around 46,600 people, with a blue-collar economy based on the
military, waterfront industries, and port activities. By 2011 it had a
population of almost 400,000, with a workforce typically engaged in
white-collar work for government, health care, education, and logistics.
While in 1911 the city was confined to a small peninsula, by 2011 the
amalgamated Halifax Regional Municipality covered 5500 square
kilometres. Although Halifax is not growing as quickly as larger
Canadian cities, its centre shows signs of gentrification as young
professionals and retired couples move in. Planning policy since the
1970s has encouraged revitalization and intensification of the centre.
On the northern edge of the downtown, running north from the Citadel
fortress overlooking the city, Gottingen Street is strategically placed
to feel the effects of downtown development. Gottingen Street and the
North End neighbourhood developed in the nineteenth century as one of
Halifax's first residential extensions of its original
seventeen-block settlement grid (figure 3). (19) The area grew as part
of an Industrial northern suburb, with a mix of working-class and
manager occupants of a labour-intensive manufacturing, military, and
resource economy along the harbour. (20) Shops and services for workers
and their families gradually opened along Gottingen Street, easily
accessed by horse-drawn streetcar lines. Neighbourhood-scale retailers
first emerged along the southern portions of the street, closer to the
city centre.
By 1896, electric streetcars replaced the horse-drawn carriage
lines. (21) A portion of a streetcar line travelled the southern end of
Gottingen Street before turning west. Small businesses dominated in the
residentially dense, pedestrian, and mixed-use neighbourhood. (22) A
vibrant commercial strip developed along Gottingen Street between Cunard
and Cornwallis Streets in the early decades of the 1900s. This retail
cluster became the main service point for the densely populated North
End. (23) Table 1 highlights the early mix of uses as identified in
McAlpine's city directory for 1910 for sample properties.
Residences, a military hospital, and a Baptist Church along the most
southern stretches of the street coexisted with small-scale retailers
providing daily necessities. Commercial uses in 1910 included a
department store, dry goods store, grocer, crockery shop, and butcher.
The number of retail uses north of Cunard grew after the streetcar line
extended in 1913. (24) Not surprisingly, the diversity of commercial
uses on Gottingen increased from 1913 to 1920 as the wartime economy
brought growth to the port, the east coast base of Canada's
military. (25)
The North End suffered great destruction in 1917, with the
explosion of a munitions ship in Halifax harbour: 2000 perished and
waterfront industry was hard hit, with the loss of many jobs. (26) Some
specialty goods and services stores began to appear by 1920 among the
profiled properties. (27) For instance, table 1 shows that Casino
Theatre, one of Halifax's first cinemas, replaced a former
residence; a small local grocery changed hands to become a specialized
confectionery. The new Royal Bank of Canada branch underlined the
commercial strength of the neighbourhood. While the growing retail strip
on the Gottingen streetcar line increased rents and provided comparison
shopping competition for some micro-retailers, many small grocers and
food providers (the dominant retailers in Halifax) survived on the strip
or just off the corridor. (28) Although Gottingen Street remained a
primarily working-class area, the growth in retailing along with the
expansion of the streetcar system responded to the needs of a generally
more prosperous populace. (29) The early twentieth century involved what
Douglas Rae called a self-regulating urbanism: various levels of
government interfered little in legal uses, allowing a complex web of
activities to thrive. (30)
Height of the Commercial Street
The Halifax streetcar system suffered from competition from the
private automobile and the vicissitudes of a depression that began in
the Maritimes with the end of the First World War and worsened through
the 1930s. (31) Businesses on Gottingen struggled. Table 1 indicates
that some buildings that housed commercial or office uses In 1920 became
residences again by 1930. Shifting transportation modes, corporate
consolidation, and government policies had significant impacts in the
decades following 1930. As an established commercial street, Gottingen
Street and its retail services adapted to the times. (32) Like other
commercial corridors radiating from the city centre, Gottingen Street
competed with the central business district. (33) Between 1930 and 1940,
many landmark retail businesses opened. Some, such as Worth Druggist,
provided necessities. Others, such as Kline's and Rubin's,
sold clothing. A few offered high-end consumer goods. Of greatest
importance, however, was F.W. Woolworth, Gottingen Street's first
modern department store. Investment by an international retailer marked
Gottingen Street as a successful commercial corridor and reflected the
growing influence of International corporations on local retail. (34)
Such inner city department stores provided "a destination for mass
transit, an anchor for other commerce, a provider of jobs, an icon for
the city." (35)
With Halifax a crucial launching point for Canadian soldiers and
goods heading to Europe, the Second World War stimulated economic and
population growth (figure 4). Many workers for the nearby naval
shipyards resided in the North End, increasing population densities
around Gottingen Street. (36) Halifax faced a critical housing shortage
In the postwar years as veterans returned home and started families.
Housing conditions deteriorated in the residential streets nearby. Large
homes were subdivided to accommodate demand, (37) leading city officials
to worry about growing slums. In order to deal with the perceived crises
of rapid economic growth and housing demand, the City of Halifax adopted
its first plan in 1945. (38) The Master Plan focused on improving
transportation connections (by car) and reducing congestion: it laid out
a blueprint for modernizing the city. One illustration showed the
proposed bridge to Dartmouth with high-density modern structures built
along Gottingen. (39) In 1950 the city implemented elements of the plan
by adopting an official development plan and zoning bylaw. (40)
Halifax's streetcars stopped running in 1949. With increasing
automobile use and lack of transit coverage to new suburban
neighbourhoods, municipal authorities decided that a bus system better
suited local needs. (41) The end of the streetcar system dealt a heavy
blow to local commercial streets such as Gottingen. The Impact was not
yet felt in the early 1950s, when only the higher-income Spring Garden
Road district in the South End outperformed Gottingen Street as a
commercial strip. (42) Some 130 retail and commercial uses lined the
main shopping corridor on Gottingen Street (between Gerrlsh and
Cogswell): only three buildings on the strip sat empty in 1950. (43) One
of the ten properties profiled in table 1 stood vacant where the
military hospital had been demolished: plans were announced to build a
tavern on the site. A barber, bank, and pharmacist operated alongside
F.W. Woolworth, clothing stores, and two large movie theatres. (44) One
community service worker and former area resident Interviewed in 2012
nostalgically recalled Gottingen Street In the 1950s: "At
Christmastime, the whole street was lit up. It looked like downtown New
York. It really did ... It was amazing. It was very, very busy. It was a
constantly crowded street." (45)
[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]
Despite the vibrancy of Gottingen In the 1950s, urban prospects
were changing. The School for the Deaf closed around 1953, leaving the
city with a large parcel of land for redevelopment. Suburban residential
and commercial growth Increased in Halifax by the mid-1950s. Suburban
expansion reflected several factors: the postwar economic boom, a
national and local housing crisis, increased prosperity and resulting
prevalence of the private car, and the lack of "green-field"
development sites on the peninsula. (46) Government officials and
planning experts focused their efforts on how to simultaneously connect
and protect inner-city neighbourhoods as the suburbs developed. In 1955,
the first car bridge across Halifax Harbour linked the urban cores of
Halifax and Dartmouth from North Street, near Its intersection with
Gottingen. Gottingen Street became an Important artery for
downtown-bound traffic, raising new concerns about the availability of
parking for shoppers.
The 1950s intensified discussions about deteriorating
neighbourhoods, Including parts of the North End. (47) During the war,
the federal Advisory Committee on Reconstruction (the Curtis Committee)
had "recommended broad-scale housing programs to accommodate the
backlog of housing demands caused by the Depression and the war."
(48) In Halifax the Slum Clearance and Public Housing Committee worked
at council's behest through the early 1950s to Identify problem
areas and consider options for action. (49) Residential areas abutting
Gottingen Street were identified as among the worst in the city, with
terrible overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. In 1954, residents
mobilized to fight rezoning that would have facilitated slum clearance
of the residential area just west of Gottingen, arguing that the
mixed-race area of affordable housing should be left alone. (50)
Although the Maynard and Creighton residents avoided clearance, the
city's combined desire to modernize, to address housing needs, and
to facilitate automobile travel would have devastating effects on the
Gottingen Street commercial corridor in the decades to come.
Urban Renewal: The Decline Begins
Canada experienced simultaneous crises in the postwar period: a
national housing shortage and deteriorating Inner cities. (51) The
federal government moved first to solve the former by updating the
National Housing Act (NHA) in 1944 and then forming the Central (now
Canada) Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) a year later to provide
"federal assistance for homeownership housing and rental
projects" via mortgage funds, direct loans, and eventually mortgage
insurance. (52) Canadian home ownership and suburban development
consequently boomed over the next decade. (53) CMHC not only stimulated
suburban residential and commercial growth, it established a
comprehensive urban renewal program through various amendments to the
NHA. (54) Prior to the NHA amendments, private developers had little
incentive to "divert energies and capital from the buoyant suburban
housing boom to the high risks of replacing pockets of substandard
housing set in a dubious environment," the inner city. (55) The
1954 NHA amendment provided federal and provincial cost-sharing for the
clearance of "slum" housing replaced by new affordable or
public housing. (56) The wide-ranging urban renewal policies enacted in
the 1956 and 1964 NHA amendments provided financial incentives for
municipalities to "preserve and protect" central business
districts through land assembly. (57) The 1956 NHA enabled
municipalities to clear land that was predominantly residential either
before or after redevelopment: municipalities could establish the
"highest and best use for the area." (58) Consequently,
"it became possible to clear slum housing and dispose of the land
for whatever use was indicated in the municipal plan for the area."
(59) The federal government also provided funding for municipalities to
conduct urban renewal studies and slum identification surveys. (60) With
the introduction of federal grants covering as much as 75 per cent of
program costs, almost all Canadian cities enacted some sort of urban
renewal over the next decade, Halifax included. (61)
[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]
Canadian cities rarely adopted planning regulations and land-use
policies prior to the 1950s. The federally driven urban renewal program,
with
its financial inducements, normalized planning functions as part of
municipal governance. (62) In Halifax, politicians remained skeptical of
planning but valued it as a tool to gain access to federal funds: they
were anxious not to see the city left behind in the dash for
modernization. (63) Following the 1956 revisions to federal legislation,
city officials recognized that in identifying the city's plans for
redevelopment the 1945 Master Plan and the zoning by-law of 1950
provided policies that qualified the city for urban renewal funding, but
required expert opinion to identify areas for clearance. (64) Utilizing
federal grants in 1956, City Council hired Gordon Stephenson, professor
of planning from the University of Toronto, to conduct a housing and
redevelopment study of Halifax's inner urban neighbourhoods. (65)
Stephenson described some of Halifax's older, tightknit, built
form--much in the inner North End--as a slum and a hazard: "The
time is ripe for urban redevelopment and improvement, in which many of
the bad results of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century vicissitudes
may be removed." (66) Some houses west of Gottingen, however,
Stephenson suggested could be rehabilitated with private investment.
(67)
[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]
Stephenson, like most modernist planning experts of the era,
employed demographic descriptors and social measures to evaluate the
physical environment. He gave easy solutions to restoring physical,
social, and moral order: clear blight and separate land uses. (68)
Stephenson recommended radical change for the northern downtown. (69)
Although he praised the commercial vitality of Gottingen Street (see
figure 5), he proposed replacing mixed-use areas with zones for defined
uses. Stephenson associated physical age and deterioration not only with
fire and safety concerns but with social and moral decay. (70) The areas
of greatest worry were near the urban centre: southern portions of the
North End (east of Gottingen) and the north part of the downtown.
Stephenson recommended clearing 8.8 acres. (71) Recommended
redevelopment projects for the cleared areas included large commercial
uses, high-density residential complexes, and parking lots. (72)
Stephenson made specific recommendations for Gottingen Street. He
described Gottingen's commercial corridor as an asset to strengthen
through zoning, suburban-style shopping centre building forms, and
better access and parking for cars (figure 6). (73)
Many of Halifax's political leaders and residents saw urban
renewal as a way to obliterate "an obnoxious and embarrassing
slum." (74) Widespread faith in the solutions Stephenson put
forward is evidenced by the speed with which council and staff moved on
urban renewal. Between 1958 and 1963 the city acquired and cleared
almost seventeen acres of land in the northern downtown, dubbed the
Central Redevelopment Area (CRA). The vast tract, just south of the
Gottingen Street commercial corridor, remained vacant until 1967, when
construction began on Scotia Square, a superblock shopping and office
complex development. (75) In downtown Halifax, large development
projects covered several city blocks, replacing street grid patterns
that had changed little since the eighteenth century. Large downtown
redevelopment projects, oriented towards the automobile and
suburban-style shopping, competed directly with Gottingen Street retail
uses in subsequent decades. Clearance and redevelopment of the CRA had
significant implications for the vitality of the Gottingen
neighbourhood. (76)
Residents displaced by downtown clearing generally moved far from
Gottingen Street, but Halifax used federal funds to build new public
housing complexes to house some of those displaced. Mulgrave Park opened
well north of Gottingen's commercial corridor in 1962. The city
cleared thirty-one acres of old housing and the School for the Deaf to
build Uniacke Square and associated facilities (library, post office,
community centre, and school). (77) With 250 social housing units
developed in 1966, Uniacke Square abutted Gottingen's commercial
strip at its northeast. (78) A significant portion of Uniacke
Square's original tenants came from Africville, an African Nova
Scotian community cleared by the City of Halifax in the late 1960s. (79)
Urban renewal funding provided the means for transforming the area: in
the political context of the times, the North End was identified as an
appropriate location for housing lower income (and often African Nova
Scotian) residents at higher densities.
As Stephenson tabled his report before council in 1957, Gottingen
Street's commercial corridor thrived. The 1960s started well for
some of Gottingen Street's premiere commercial uses: table 1 shows
that many businesses from 1950 were still strong, and a new tavern had
opened. In 1960, anchored by F.W. Woolworth, Kline's, and
Rubin's, 138 commercial uses operated on Gottingen, 8 more than in
1950. (80) "Necessity" uses still operated on the street,
including the Royal Bank and three other financial institutions that
opened by 1960. In 1965, a Sobey's supermarket opened directly
across from the North End Library, near the public housing complex.
After its "amputation from the CBD" through the urban
renewal program, however, Gottingen Street began a precipitous decline.
(81) Following clearance of dense residential neighbourhoods between the
downtown and Gottingen Street, population--and, therefore, customer
base--declined rapidly. In a single decade, the neighbourhood lost
approximately 5200 residents, or 42 per cent of its 1950 total
population. The downtown overall dropped almost half of its 1950
population. (82) The number of retail and commercial uses on
Gottingen's commercial corridor diminished to ninety-five in 1970,
with thirty-five fewer retailers than a decade earlier. (83) F.W.
Woolworth, the venerable department store, closed and was replaced by a
discount shoe store. Rubin's shut its doors, replaced by a
pharmacy. The 1970s marked a transition in Gottingen Street's
trajectory: this was the first in a series of decades in which the
number of community / social services increased, while commercial and
retail activity decreased.
The 1960s and 1970s represented a remarkable period of suburban and
residential and commercial growth in the Halifax region. Rapid suburban
expansion depended on several factors: the 1963 Regional Housing
Survey's recommendations for infrastructure expansion to
accommodate projected population growth; (84) inexpensive and accessible
land; the 1975 Regional Development Plan proposals for satellite
communities; few development controls or restrictions on suburban
development; construction of a second harbour bridge; and new provincial
highways and ring roads to facilitate vehicular traffic flow throughout
the region. (85) Eighty per cent of residential and commercial
development occurred in the periphery of the metropolitan region during
the 1970s. (86) Many shopping malls appeared in suburban areas between
1956 and 1980. (87) Council advocated commercial, office, and hotel
development downtown with the "naive assumption that it was
possible to simultaneously restore the downtown to its former dominant
position ... while unquestioningly promoting the construction of large
regional malls in the suburbs." (88) Areas such as Gottingen paid
the price of suburban commercial growth and modernization.
The final project executed during Halifax's urban renewal
era-major traffic improvements--completed Gottingen Street's
isolation. To increase traffic flow through the downtown, traffic
engineers proposed a multi-lane freeway, Harbour Drive, along
Halifax's waterfront to run the length of the peninsula. The
Cogswell Interchange, completed in 1973 to control traffic in and out of
downtown, was the first phase of freeway implementation. Located south
east of Gottingen Street, the interchange covered ten acres and
dramatically altered street patterns that previously connected the North
End with downtown. (89) Public concerns about heritage destruction and
the effects of urban renewal eventually halted progress on Harbour
Drive: council cancelled the freeway. (90) The interchange became an
obtrusive reminder of Halifax's urban renewal era. Meanwhile,
improvements to Barrington Street rerouted downtown traffic to and from
the bridges, bypassing Gottingen Street.
Gottingen's days as a fine-grained commercial corridor serving
a dense working-class urban neighbourhood came to an end after the
1960s. By the 1970s, the neighbourhood was a low-rent district with a
concentration of public housing, a growing number of affordable
cooperative and non-profit housing projects, and a smattering of rooming
houses. Storefronts increasingly housed pawn shops or low-end retailers,
or stood empty. (91) A local planning and design professional
interviewed recalled the significant transformation of the Gottingen
Street corridor and the impact it had on residents: "What was
evident was that the place had become insulated from the rest of the
city. Very one-dimensional in terms of who lived there. I mean there was
diversity within it, but economically speaking, it was one-dimensional.
And more or less it was cast adrift." (92)
Significant national and local criticism of slum clearance and
large-scale public housing projects from community groups, activists,
and scholars led the provincial government to provide a greater role for
public participation in planning through the 1969 Planning Act. (93)
Federal authorities also noted the backlash against urban renewal. The
amended National Housing Act of 1973 refocused legislation to support
affordable housing schemes while reducing commitments to urban renewal
and public housing. (94) With a new emphasis on rehabilitating
distressed areas, the Neighbourhood Improvement Program and the
Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program spent almost $3.5 million
in the Gottingen Street area. (95) Despite improvements to some of the
housing stock and street beautification measures, which contributed to a
wave of gentrification, the programs had little effect on the declining
commercial status of the street.
By 1980, the city directory showed that Gottingen had twenty fewer
retail uses than in 1970 and the next year's census indicated 1500
fewer residents in the neighbourhood: by contrast, Gottingen had more
than doubled the number of community services (including transient
shelters and legal aid services). (96) For the first time in the
twentieth century, the increase in the number of vacant buildings and
lots outperformed commercial growth on Gottingen's corridor. (97) A
long-time Gottingen Street resident interviewed in 2012 recalled the
decline: "Basically from about 1980 on was this absolute
deterioration ... [Before] I mean everything was there. It was a
completely organic intact economic unit: a poor one but completely
organic. So just slowly everything started disappearing. The banks left,
and this and that, and the Sobey's left. You know, there were empty
lots. And I mean it was just horrific." (98)
Another of Gottingen Street's primary clothing goods stores,
Kline's, closed by 1980. The Vogue Theatre shut in the 1970s,
became the Cove Cinema by 1980, and a nightclub by mid-decade. The North
End Community Health Centre opened on the site of Rubin's
Men's Wear, to become a landmark community service. Perhaps the
biggest loss to the community was the closure of the supermarket In
1985. (99)
The presence of the large low-income population housed in Uniacke
Square and nearby co-op and non-profit housing affected the perception
of Gottingen Street throughout the 1970s and 1980s. A growing drug
culture and associated criminality left impoverished neighbourhoods
increasingly stigmatized. The 1980s brought neoliberal policies to
federal and provincial governments, leading to straightened
circumstances for those living with poverty. Community and church groups
struggled to fill the gaps in social services, while politicians turned
to other issues. The concentration of affordable housing projects near
Gottingen's commercial corridor facilitated clustering of community
services that may have been unwelcome in other neighbourhoods in the
city but proved essential in the North End. (100) A predominantly
visible minority and low-income population increased fears amongst
would-be shoppers on Gottingen Street. The social stigma of public
housing, mixed with a documented history of prejudice against African
Nova Scotians and Aboriginals, marked Gottingen Street as a dangerous,
low-income service street. (101) Those interviewed for the research,
especially people involved in the social service sector, noted that
local business owners often blamed the community service clientele and
residents of Uniacke Square for driving customers away. (102) Local
media also highlighted the perception of a commercial street in decline:
"Some local businesses blame Uniacke Square for the area's
decline. Many white Haligonians see it as a ghetto ... 'the black
eye that's hurting the rest of the community.'" (103)
In an apparent about-face from the urban renewal era twenty years
prior--when it completed major surgery to transform Gottingen
Street--the municipality took a wait-and-see approach to North End
Halifax by the 1980s. Planners initiated a community plan for the
northern portion of the Halifax peninsula in 1979 but never completed
it. (104) Politicians often distanced themselves from neighbourhood
issues. Some gentrification occurred during the 1970s and 1980s, as
young professionals and cultural workers bought architecturally
Interesting older homes on nearby streets. (105) With large numbers of
low-income residents, sensational media coverage of local crime, and the
perception that community services undermined private business success,
Gottingen suffered from negative perceptions from the 1980s through the
2000s. Consequently, financial institutions seemed unwilling to provide
loans for Gottingen Street developments, and developers lacked
confidence to invest. (106)
The Gottingen Street of the 1990s continued on the trajectory of
the previous two decades. More uses on Gottingen's commercial
corridor reoriented from providing consumer goods to community services.
Describing commercial degradation on Gottingen Street, geographers Hugh
Millward and Lorna Winsor found "aging buildings and a lack of
major 'anchor' stores contributed to a downward spiral of
retail decay." (107) The remaining retailers generally offered
convenience goods. While the number of residents in and around Gottingen
Street increased modestly by the 1990s, retail and commercial uses on
the corridor dropped again by sixteen to a total of fifty-four. (108)
Retail uses decreased to thirty-six, while thirteen community services
operated on Gottingen Street. (109) The former site of Kline's
clothing store, which held a cabaret in the 1980s, became another
community service on the street as the Mi'kmaq Native Friendship
Centre moved in to serve the growing urban Aboriginal population. The
pharmacy owned by the Withrow family transferred through national
pharmacy chains, from Rexall to Guardian to Pharmasave. The 1990s was
the last decade for Gottingen Street's first landmark cinema, the
Casino Theatre. When the Royal Bank closed in the early 1990s, the final
"essential" commercial service left the corridor.
Urban Revitalization and the Resurgence in Urban Living
The Gottingen Street commercial corridor experienced the nadir of
its commercial strength at the turn of the twenty-first century. In
2000, the number of retail and commercial uses was the lowest in a
century, while vacant uses and lots proliferated. (110) Community
services peaked with over twenty. (111) Table 1 shows that the only
commercial uses in the profiled properties by the twenty-first century
were the longstanding Withrow Pharmacy and the Marquee Club. Both
theatres and the drycleaners became vacant. Community services had
displaced department stores, supermarkets, and theatres as landmark uses
on the street. In the era of neoliberal governance and the downshifting
of social welfare responsibility, health, legal, and community services
became "necessity" uses for an increasingly marginalized local
population.
By mid-decade, however, census data began to hint at a resurgence
in both population and income in the Gottingen Street area. Population
growth from 2001 to 2011 outpaced that of the urban Halifax peninsula,
bringing the total number of residents in the Gottingen area to its
highest levels since 1980. (112) The Gottingen Street area's median
household Income grew faster between 2001 and 2011 than elsewhere in
Halifax, while the prevalence of low-income residents, which remained
the highest of census tracts on the Halifax peninsula, has rapidly
decreased after 2000. Although public and non-profit housing anchored
the most disadvantaged in the neighbourhood, the working-class
population that once dominated the Gottingen Street area was
increasingly pushed to suburban and rural neighbourhoods. North End
housing became less affordable for those without high incomes or those
who did not qualify for subsidized housing. (113) Data from assessed
property valuations of Gottingen Street commercial uses indicated a
brisk rise in property values, especially since 2009. (114) These
socioeconomic indicators portray a community undergoing rapid change.
Although most commercial and residential development still occurs
in Halifax's suburban areas, the apparent beginnings of a
"return to the city" movement of people and capital had its
roots In regional planning policy (promoting intensification and
revitalization) and wider cultural and consumer preferences (defining
city amenities as attractive). Given the large stock of affordable space
available on Gottingen Street at the start of the twenty-first century,
the commercial corridor--and the North End in general--received an
influx of artists, university students, and young professionals looking
for cheap, diverse, and historically rich alternatives to suburban
living. (115) Early condominium developments produced affordable
ownership options within easy walking distance of the city centre. The
uses on the Gottingen commercial corridor began to reflect
"bohemian" or alternative cultural tastes starting in the
early 2000s, with the opening of art galleries, a hostel and cafe, and
several iterations of LGBT-inclusive bars and clubs. Gottingen Street
began attracting new capital investment.
Those following the "first wave" of new residents to
gentrifying areas are generally educated and affluent individuals with
similar lifestyles but greater economic capital than early pioneers.
(116) The increasing popularity of inner-city living in North End
Halifax follows a common redevelopment trend. The increasing prevalence
of theories promoting the strengths of central cities in the "new
knowledge economy"--postulated by Jane Jacobs and Richard
Florida--provided the foundation for Halifax to "boost an urban
agenda not previously feasible." (117) Halifax promotes inner-city
redevelopment through a "creative city" approach, highlighting
its highly skilled workers and "bohemian" index rating,
alongside a framework allowing increased density and mixed-use
development on the Halifax peninsula. (118) The new era of urban renewal
seeks revitalization not through clearing "blight," (119) but
by including Gottingen Street and other inner-city areas In economic
growth and development. Gottingen finds itself redefined from a problem
to an opportunity, from peripheral to central. Once again, the
trajectory of Gottingen's commercial corridor Is being altered,
this time through the confluence of economic and consumer trends, and
municipal policies encouraging redevelopment and greater densities.
A century after Gottingen's streetcar commercial corridor
began, the street is once again developing a prominent retail strip,
albeit of a different character. With almost sixty retail and commercial
uses in 2014, the Gottingen corridor showed its strongest commercial
performance since the 1970s. The retail areas with the most rapid growth
were food services, cafes, and fine dining. The number of specialized
uses on Gottingen's commercial corridor was at its highest since
the 1950s and 1960s. (120) Arts and entertainment uses were also
prominent. As suburban commercial development increasingly dominated the
consumer goods market, inner-city commercial districts had to specialize
to remain relevant. (121) On Gottingen Street in 2014, most specialized
retail uses and services--especially cafes and food services--catered to
those with alternative tastes. (122) Interviews with local business
owners showed that the current characterization of Gottingen Street as a
unique emerging area played a significant role in decisions to operate
on the corridor: "This was literally an ideal spot for us to open.
Our business is geared a little more to the sort of twenty-,
thirty-year-old set. We also appeal more to the arts crowd. And this is
sort of like ground zero for that. I call it the centre of
'hipdom' in Halifax. And we're right in the middle of it.
It's the gateway to the North End, this end of Gottingen
Street." (123)
Imagining Gottingen Street as a trendy commercial street (124)
highlights the transition the street experienced over recent years.
Several interview participants with long-standing connections to
Gottingen Street--especially those involved in the community service
sector--were cautious in categorizing the street as in transition. One
explained, "You know, even twenty years ago, nobody wanted to walk
up and down Gottingen Street. Nobody wanted to be here. And now it seems
to be the cool place to be--or the In place. I don't know, I'm
not quite sure what it is yet." (125)
The unique, locally owned businesses moving to populate the
corridor involve the type of commerce seen by officials as generating
active street life and neighbourhood vibrancy. Table 1 illustrates
dramatic changes among profiled sites on Gottingen Street since its
period of commercial decline; new commercial landmarks have replaced
those which once signalled the prosperity of the commercial corridor. A
television studio and chic, well-designed condominiums rise on sites
formerly occupied by Gottingen's movie theatres (figure 7). Among
the many food and fine-dining services, EDNA Restaurant opened to
replace a dry-cleaner. A non-profit theatre group took on a property
that housed a pharmacy since the 1930s. Some structures remain
unoccupied, while others are renovated for new uses. Despite the
addition of new high-end uses, however, community services remain firmly
embedded on Gottingen Street, anchored along with their clients in
nearby social housing. Agencies that own the structures they occupy have
no plans to relocate as the area gentrifies. Those that rent space,
however, may find themselves priced off the street. Although Gottingen
is once again vibrant, it has few vendors of daily necessities. In 2015
Gottingen Street has a polarized character: a cluster of low-income and
largely African-Canadian residents between Cunard Street and North
Street but more affluent (and predominantly white) residents in other
areas; high-end food services interspersed with social services for the
area's disadvantaged residents. Several interview participants
described extreme contrasts along Gottingen Street. For instance, a
resident noted, "My sense is that Gottingen Street from Cornwallis
to North is different than Gottingen Street from North to Young
[Street], And Gottingen Street from Cornwallis [south] is different. So
there are three Gottingen Streets. Right? And that's really
important. It is not a single community and it's not a single
identifiable demographic." (126)
[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]
The resurgence of commercial and residential development on
Gottingen Street has occurred primarily on the corridor's southern
portion towards downtown, away from the large public housing
development. Because community services had decades to become embedded
on the street, gentrification began later, moved more slowly, and is
producing greater mixing than in some cities. As one interview
participant observed, "All of the poverty and homelessness-related
stuff is still there. It hasn't dispersed. All of the [public]
housing is still there. Many of the slum rooming houses are still there.
At the same time, there is this sort of gradual introduction into the
neighbourhood of more upscale housing and small businesses." (127)
Interview participants who worked with community services suggested
that low-income and public housing residents spent little time along the
Gottingen Street Commercial Corridor south of Cornwallis Street, where
higher-end businesses and condominiums are sited. Conversely, several
local business owners and community service operators said higher income
residents and visitors hesitate to travel north of Cornwallis Street. As
bohemian uses move northward, however, conditions are changing. A local
owner/operator of a bohemian use spoke of the diversity of communities
accommodated through the mix. "In the last five years, a lot of
businesses have opened up. The Company House [bar] was another step
forward, I think, in there being a cemented sense in which there's
a gay community and there's a black community and there's also
now this arts community." (128)
Some long-time residents spoke warily of the changing clientele and
demographic makeup of Gottingen Street. One interview participant
worried the shifting retail and service landscape of the Gottingen
commercial corridor displaced historically rooted--and generally
economically disadvantaged--residents in favour of new ones with more
income to spend and new cultural tastes to satisfy. "There's
nothing the matter with those places and institutions, it's just
that they bear absolutely no relationship to the community. There's
no organic relationship to the community. The community there ... now is
not the community that was thrown out." (129)
Perpetual Transitions
To what extent can the history of particular properties on specific
streets help tell the story of neighbourhood transition and urban
change? Gottingen's perpetual transitions reflect broader urban
trends. Profiling the changing use of properties gives a sense of how,
through the last century and a half, one street in a small city
transitioned from a quiet residential lane, to the commercial corridor
for a working-class district, to a vibrant shopping area for the
northern part of downtown, to a place linked with poverty and crime, to
an "edgy" arts district, and now to a gentrifying
neighbourhood. Land-use history provides an intimate account of shifts
in economic conditions, government interests, and residents' needs
and values. Gottingen's fate reflected changing commercial
activities and strategies, government interests and political
priorities, transportation modes, and consumer preferences and
practices.
The factors that produced vibrant commercial streets in the 1910s
differed from those at play in the 1950s and from those important in the
2010s. The uses on Gottingen thus reflect wider changes in the scale,
organization, and commitment of commerce. Small local vendors of 1910
eventually disappeared as national and international companies prevailed
in the market. Rapid suburban growth in the late twentieth century
reorganized commercial activities, leaving poorer neighbourhoods like
Gottingen with diminishing opportunities. By the early twenty-first
century, however, property investors identified "risky" areas
such as the North End as potentially profitable, thereby facilitating
retail gentrification. By 2015, Gottingen developed a commercial niche
in trendy food and entertainment establishments to serve hip young
residents moving into the North End. Aside from the period from the late
1920s to the mid-1980s, large enterprises rarely expressed interest in
Gottingen: the street principally hosted locally based entrepreneurs.
The history of Gottingen also reveals changing political priorities
and government approaches. In the early years, government's
laissez-faire attitude allowed high density and permitted a wide mix of
uses on the street. Investments in facilities such as the dockyards
provided jobs for the working class. Later decisions to clear
"slums" and to build large-scale social housing projects
cemented the reputation of the area as disadvantaged. Government
attended to the Gottingen area when funds were available for slum
clearance or building public housing, but otherwise often left its needs
unmet. The failure of various levels of government to provide adequate
supports for disadvantaged populations brought many social services
providers to a street where rents were among the lowest in the city.
Today, public policies promoting revitalization and intensification
provide incentives to developers to re-colonize Gottingen.
Gottingen's role in the local transportation network has
consistently affected its trajectory. In Its early years It was a quiet
residential road with large lots occupied by affluent residents. The
arrival of streetcars changed its function and character: homes were
subdivided or converted. In the 1920s Gottingen benefited from the
centralizing effects of the streetcar system and bustled with a robust
mix of retailers serving working-class families. In the 1950s the street
was the commercial heart of the North End, although it struggled to
accommodate the growing number of cars bringing shoppers to its
retailers. The city adopted Gordon Stephenson's plans to provide
more parking for the area, but consumers drifted away nonetheless. Urban
renewal and highway development sapped Gottingen's retail pull. By
the late twentieth century it was a busy bus and car route, but few
passengers stopped to shop on the street.
Consumer preferences and practices invariably shape neighbourhoods
and retail environments. In Its early days, Gottingen relied on local
residents shopping on foot for their daily needs. Growing affluence and
streetcar access allowed residents to patronize department stores and
specialty shops on Gottingen in the early to mid-twentieth century. As
consumers increasingly chose to drive to suburban shopping centres,
Gottingen's storefronts shut or accommodated lower-rent occupants:
Gottingen was the place to buy used furniture or pawn goods. In the
1990s and 2000s artists moved in to set up studios, galleries, and small
theatre spaces. In 2015 new wave entrepreneurs were serving lattes and
haute cuisine to a new clientele looking for exotic retail locations.
Gottingen's new retailers turn stigma into a proud badge of
diversity and edginess.
Contemporary city planning philosophy idealizes the vibrant,
mixed-use, mixed-income districts of the early twentieth century: the
kind Jane Jacobs described in The Death and Life of Great American
Cities. (130) Examining the trajectory of Gottingen Street reveals the
commercial street as a product of Its time, responding to wider trends.
Revitalizing in the twenty-first century, Gottingen Street is very
different from what it was a century earlier. Unlike the streets of Soho
in New York or Liberty Village in Toronto, however, its gentrification
is likely to remain partial: impeded by the lingering stock of public
and non-profit housing that anchors a substantial low-income population
in the area. (131)
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to reviewers and to the editor for helpful
comments on an earlier draft. Funding to assist this research was
provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada.
Notes
(1) Douglas W. Rae, City: Urbanism and Its End (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2003), 2.
(2) Chris Benjamin, "Rebuilding Halifax's Most Feared
Neighbourhood, One Project at a Time," Globe and Mail, 24
September, 2010, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/rebuildinghalifaxs-most-feared-neighbourhood-one-project-at-a-time/
article4327055/.
(3) Sharon Zukin, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change
(Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989); R. Alan Walks and Richard
Maaranen, "Gentrification, Social Mix, and Social Polarization:
Testing the Linkages in Large Canadian Cities," Urban Geography 29
(2008): 293-326.
(4) Robert Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 5th ed.,
New York: Sage, 2014).
(5) McAlpine's, Halifax City Directory (Halifax:
McAlpine's Publishing, 1910, 1920). Might, Halifax and Dartmouth
City Directories (Halifax: Might Directories Atlantic, 1930, 1940, 1950,
1960); Might, Greater Halifax and Dartmouth City Directory (Might
Directories: Toronto, 1970, 1980); Might, Halifax City Directory
(Toronto: R.L. Polk, 1990); Equifax Polk, Halifax City Directory
(Toronto: R.L. Polk, 2000).
(6) Underwriter Survey Bureau, Insurance Plan of the City of
Halifax (Toronto: Canadian Underwriters' Association, 1911, 1951,
1971).
(7) Bell Aliant, Halifax Regional Municipality Telephone Directory
(Halifax: Bell Aliant, 2006, 2010, 2014).
(8) Sharon Zukin, Valerie Trujillo, Peter Frase, Danielle Jackson,
Tim Recuber, and Abraham Walker, "New Retail Capital and
Neighborhood Change: Boutiques and Gentrification in New York
City," City and Community 8, no. 1 (2009): 47-64.
(9) Rae, City.
(10) Jose Rio Fernandes and Pedro Chamusca, "Urban Policies,
Planning and Retail Resilience," Cities 36 (2014), 170-7; Derek S.
Hyra, "Conceptualizing the New Urban Renewal: Comparing the Past to
the Present," Urban Affairs Review 48, no. 4 (2012): 498-527.
(11) David Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of
Uneven Geographical Development (London: Verso, 2006).
(12) Nicholas Blomley, Unsettling the City: Urban Land and the
Politics of Property (New York: Routledge, 2004).
(13) Hyra, "New Urban Renewal," 504, 507; see also Gary
Bridge and Robyn Dowling, "Microgeographies of Retail and
Gentrification," Australian Geographer 32, no. 1 (2001): 93-107.
(14) Stefan Kratke, "The New Urban Growth Ideology of
'Creative Cities,"' in Cities for People, Not for Profit,
ed. Neil Brenner, Peter Marcus, and Margit Mayer, 138-49 (New York:
Routledge, 2012); Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American
Cities (New York: Random House, 1961); Richard L. Florida, The Rise of
the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure,
Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 2004).
(15) Hyra, "New Urban Renewal," 509.
(16) R. Alan Walks and Martine August, "The Factors Inhibiting
Gentrification in Areas with Little Non-Market Housing: Policy Lessons
from the Toronto Experience," Urban Studies 45, no. 12 (2008):
2594-2625.
(17) Loretta Lees, Tom Slater, and Elvin Wyly, Gentrification (New
York: Routledge, 2008); Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier:
Gentrification and the Revanchist City (New York: Routledge, 1996).
(18) Zukin et al., "New Retail Capital," 47-64; Andrew
Deener, Venice: A Contested Bohemia in Los Angeles (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 2012).
(19) An 1835 map of Halifax shows a mix of small and estate lots
along the east side of Gottingen Street. Matt Neville,
"[Representing Halifax #2: Against the Grain, Spacing Atlantic, 4
February 2010, http://spacing.ca/
atlantic/2010/02/04/representing-halifax-2-agalnst-the-grain/.
(20) By the turn of the century, the North End held more than half
of the total values of all assessed properties In the city and was home
to major employers, Including the Halifax railyard, shipyards, resource
Industries, and numerous small and medium-sized manufacturing plants.
Paul A. Erickson, Historic North End Halifax (Halifax: Nimbus
Publishing, 2004), xiii.
(21) Hugh Millward, The Geography of Housing in Metropolitan
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Atlantic Region Geographical Studies 3 (Halifax:
Saint Mary's University Press, 1981).
(22) Sean Gillis, "Halifax's Streetcars: Connections
between Transportation and Urban Form" (Master of Planning Project,
Dalhousie University, 2007), 11,
http://theoryandpractlce.planning.dal.ca/history/history_student.html.
(23) Ibid., 17; Hugh Millward and Lorna Winsor,
"Twentieth-Century Retail Change In the Halifax Central Business
District," Canadian Geographer 41, no. 2(1997): 194-201.
(24) Gillis, "Halifax's Streetcars," 17.
(25) Millward and Winsor, "Twentieth-Century Retail
Change"; Trudl E. Bunting and Hugh Millward, "A Tale of Two
CBDs II: The Internal Retail Dynamics of Downtown Halifax and Downtown
Kitchener," Canadian Journal of Urban Research 8, no.1 (1999):
1-27.
(26) Judith Fingard, Janet Guildford, and David Sutherland.
Halifax: The First 250 Years (Halifax: Formac, 1999).
(27) McAlpine's, Halifax, 1920; Might, Halifax, 1930.
(28) Millward and Winsor, "Twentieth-Century Retail
Change," 194-201.
(29) Gillis, "Halifax's Streetcars," 46.
(30) Rae, City, 203.
(31) Gillis, "Halifax's Streetcars," 29. Fingard,
Guildford, and Sutherland, Halifax, 138-50.
(32) Might, Halifax, 1930, 1940, 1950.
(33) Millward and Winsor, "Twentieth-Century Retail
Change," 196.
(34) Neil Wrigley and Michelle Lowe, Reading Retail: A Geographical
Perspective on Retailing and Consumption Spaces (London: Arnold, 2002).
(35) Elizabeth Cohen, "Buying Into Downtown Revival: The
Centrality of Retail to Postwar Urban Renewal In American Cities,"
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 611
(2007): 84; see also Rae, City, 96-7.
(36) Erickson, Historic North End Halifax; Beverley A, Sandalack
and Andrei Nicolai, Urban Structure Halifax: An Urban Design Approach
(Halifax: Tuns, 1998).
(37) Paul Erickson, Halifax's North End (Hantsport: Lancelot,
1986), 76.
(38) Jill L. Grant, The Drama of Democracy: Contention and Dispute
in Community Planning (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 52.
(39) Ibid.; Sandalack and Nicolai, Urban Structure Halifax, 19;
Civic Planning Commission, Master Plan for the City of Halifax (Halifax,
1945), 24, http://www.hallfax.ca/archlves/documents/711.45.
H17CltyOfHalifaxMasterPlan1945o.pdf.
(40) Town Planning Board minutes, 28 February 1950, Halifax
Municipal Archives.
(41) Don Artz and Don Cunningham, The Halifax Street Railway
1866-1949 (Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2009).
(42) Sandalack and Nicolai, Urban Structure Halifax, 18.
(43) Bruktawit B. Melles, "The Relationship between Policy,
Planning and Neighbourhood Change: The Case of the Gottingen Street
Neighbourhood, 1950-2000" (Master of Urban and Rural Planning
thesis, Dalhousie University, 2003), 93.
(44) Might, Halifax, 1950.
(45) Interview participant G10C.
(46) Sandalack and Nicolai, Urban Structure Halifax, 18-19.
(47) Marcus Paterson, "Slum Clearance in Halifax: The Role of
Gordon Stephenson" (Master of Planning Project, Dalhousie
University, 2009), http://theoryandpractice.planning.dal.ca/history/history_student.html.
(48) Hodge, Planning Canadian Communities, 84.
(49) Minutes of the Slum Clearance and Public Housing Committee of
Halifax, 12 March 1952, Public Archives of Nova Scotia (SCPHCPANS);
Minutes of the Town Planning Board, 5 November 1953 (PANS); Minutes of
Halifax City Council Public Hearing, 21 January 1954 (SCPHC-PANS).
(50) Mathew M. Lopes, 193 Creighton Street, to the Slum Clearance
Committee, 17 March 1954, SCPHC-PANS.
(51) Melles, "Policy, Planning, and Neighbourhood
Change," 19.
(52) Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, CMHC and the
National Housing Act (Ottawa: Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation,
1974), 7; Stanley H. Pickett, "An Appraisal of the Urban Renewal
Program in Canada," University of Toronto Law Journal 18, no. 3
(1968): 233.
(53) Pickett, "Urban Renewal Program in Canada," 233;
Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, CMHC and the National Housing
Act, 12.
(54) Pickett, "Urban Renewal Program In Canada," 233-5.
(55) Ibid., 234.
(56) Gordon Stephenson, A Redevelopment Study of Halifax, Nova
Scotia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), vii.
(57) Hyra, "Conceptualizing the New Urban Renewal," 513;
Melles, "Policy, Planning, and Neighbourhood Change," 52.
(58) Stephenson, Redevelopment Study of Halifax, vii.
(59) Pickett, "Urban Renewal Program In Canada," 234.
(60) Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, CMHC and the
National Housing Act, 5.
(61) Pickett, "Urban Renewal Program In Canada," 235.
(62) Ibid., 241.
(63) Grant, Drama of Democracy, 61.
(64) Jill L. Grant and Marcus Paterson, "Scientific Cloak /
Romantic Heart: Gordon Stephenson and the Redevelopment Study of
Halifax, 1957," Town Planning Review 83, no. 3 (2012): 321;
Stephenson, Redevelopment Study of Halifax, 6.
(65) Sandalack and Nicolai, Urban Structure Halifax, 19; Erickson,
Historic North End Halifax, 165; Grant and Paterson, "Scientific
Cloak / Romantic Heart," 321.
(66) Stephenson, Redevelopment Study of Halifax, 6.
(67) Ibid., 18.
(68) Dana Cuff, The Provisional City: Los Angeles Stones of
Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 104; Grant
and Paterson, "Scientific Cloak / Romantic Heart," 325.
(69) Stephenson, Redevelopment Study of Halifax, 18.
(70) Ibid., 21; Grant and Paterson, "Scientific Cloak /
Romantic Heart," 325.
(71) Sandalack and Nicolai, Urban Structure Halifax, 19.
(72) Stephenson, Redevelopment Study of Halifax, 23, 26.
(73) Ibid., 26-27.
(74) Grant, Drama of Democracy, 59.
(75) Ibid., 57, 60; Sandalack and Nicolai, Urban Structure Halifax,
20; Bunting and Millward, "A Tale of Two CBDs," 12.
(76) Grant, Drama of Democracy, 60.
(77) Clifton F. Carbin, Deaf Heritage in Canada: A Distinctive,
Diverse, and Enduring Culture [Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1996), 117,
123, 128. Erickson, Halifax's North End, 81.
(78) Jim Silver, Public Housing Risks and Alternatives: Uniacke
Square in North End Halifax (Winnipeg: Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives, 2008), 10-11; Pickett, "Urban Renewal Program in
Canada," 237.
(79) See Donald H.J. Clairmont and Dennis W. McGill, Africville:
The Life and Death of a Canadian Black Community (Toronto: McClelland
and Stewart, 1974); and Jennifer J. Nelson, Razing Africville: A
Geography of Racism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).
(80) Might, Halifax, 1950, 1960. Melles, "Policy, Planning,
and Neighbourhood Change," 93.
(81) Sandalack and Nicolai, Urban Structure Halifax, 24.
(82) Melles, "Policy, Planning, and Neighbourhood
Change," 48-9; William Gregory, "Who Lives Downtown?
Population and Demographic Change in Downtown Halifax, 1951-2011"
(Master of Planning Project, Dalhousie University, 2014),
http://theoryandpractice.planning.dal.ca/
neighbourhood/student-research.html.
(83) Might, Halifax, 1970. See also Melles, "Policy, Planning,
and Neighbourhood Change," 93.
(84) Harry S. Coblentz, Halifax Region Housing Survey (Halifax;
Halifax Housing Survey Publications, 1963).
(85) Hugh Millward, "Peri-Urban Residential Development in the
Halifax Region 1960-2000: Magnets, Constraints, and Planning
Policies," Canadian Geographer 46, no. 1 (2002): 36-40. See also
Hugh Millward, "The Spread of Commuter Development in the Eastern
Shore Zone of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1920-1988," Urban History
Review 29, no. 1 (2000): 21-32.
(86) Angela L. Cuthbert and William P. Anderson, "An
Examination of Urban Form in Halifax-Dartmouth: Alternative Approaches
in Data," Canadian Journal of Urban Research 11, no. 2 (2002): 222.
(87) Might, Halifax, 1970, 1980. Sandalack and Nicolai, Urban
Structure Halifax, 24.
(88) Bunting and Millward, "Tale of Two CBDs," 16.
(89) Grant, Drama of Democracy, 63.
(90) Sandalack and Nicolai, Urban Structure Halifax, 22; Erickson,
Historic North End Halifax, 167-8.
(91) Might, Halifax, 1970, 1980.
(92) Interview participant G02E.
(93) Grant, Drama of Democracy, 52.
(94) Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, CMHC and the
National Housing Act, 6.
(95) Melles, "Policy, Planning, and Neighbourhood
Change," 54.
(96) Ibid., 93, 95.
(97) Ibid., 95. Believing that one large project could act as a
catalyst for redevelopment on the street, the federal government
provided funds to the City of Halifax to find land to construct a new
government office building on Gottingen. The city assembled several
suitable tracts on Gottingen Street and cleared the lots for potential
construction. The lots sat vacant for nine years until one site was
finally selected. The building failed to increase business activity
substantially on Gottingen Street. Ibid., 81-4.
(98) Interview participant G08E.
(99) Might, Halifax, 1980, 1990.
(100) Stephen Kimber, "Inside the Square," Coast, 1 March
2007, http://www. thecoast.ca/halifax/inside-the-square/Content?oid=960417.
(101) See Silver, Uniacke Square, 8. See also Adrienne Lucas
Sehatzadeh, "A Retrospective on the Strengths of African Nova
Scotian Communities: Closing Ranks to Survive," Journal of Black
Studies 38, no. 3 (2008): 407-12.
(102) Interview participants G06C and G10C.
(103) Atlantic Insight, January 1988, cited in Kimber, "Inside
the Square," para. 31.
(104) Melles, "Policy, Planning, and Neighbourhood
Change," 59.
(105) David Ley, The New Middle Class and the Remaking of the
Central City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Hugh Millward and
Donna Davis, "Housing Renovation in Halifax:
'Gentrification' or 'Incumbent Upgrading'?"
Plan Canada 26 (1986): 148-55.
(106) Melles, "Policy, Planning, and Neighbourhood
Change," 118.
(107) Millward and Winsor, "Twentieth-Century Retail
Change," 200.
(108) Melles, "Policy, Planning, and Neighbourhood
Change," 93, 95.
(109) Might, Halifax, 1980, 1990.
(110) Equifax Polk, Halifax, 2000.
(111) Site survey by author; Equifax Polk, Halifax, 2000;
Infogroup/Info Canada, Select Phone Canada [CD-ROM] (2011); Bell Aliant,
directories 2006, 2012; Melles, "Policy, Planning, and
Neighbourhood Change," 93.
(112) Statistics Canada, 1996, 2006, 2011 Canadian Census, Halifax.
(113) Victoria Prouse, Jill L. Grant, Martha Radice, Howard Ramos,
and Paul Shakotko, "Neighbourhood Change in Halifax Regional
Municipality, 1970 to 2010: Applying the 'Three Cities'
Model" (Working Paper, 2014),
http://theoryandpractice.planning.dal.ca/neighbourhood/workingpapers.html; Mackenzie Childs, "Residential Change in Halifax's North
End: Inventory and Pattern Analysis" (Bachelor of Community Design
thesis, Dalhousie University, 2014), http://theoryandpractice.planning.
dal.ca/neighbourhood/student-research.html.
(114) ViewPoint Realty, http://www.viewpoint.ca. Since 2009
Gottingen Street commercial and retail properties have had property
value increases that outpace the rest of the Halifax peninsula.
(115) David Ley, "Artists, Aestheticisation, and the Field of
Gentrification," Urban Studies 40, no. 12 (2003): 2527-54; see also
Zukin, Loft Living.
(116) Bridge and Dowling, "Microgeographies of
Retailing," 205.
(117) Jill L. Grant, Robyn Holme, and Aaron Pettman, "Global
Theory and Local Planning Practice in Halifax: The Seaport
Redevelopment," Planning Practice and Research 23, no. 4 (2008):
517. See also Jacobs, Death and Life; Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth
of Nations (New York: Random House); Florida, Rise of the Creative
Class.
(118) Halifax Regional Municipality, HRM Cultural Plan (2006);
Halifax Regional Municipality, Regional Municipal Planning Strategy
(2006); Halifax Regional Municipality, "Proposed Built Form &
Land Use: Gottingen Street," HRM by Design: The Centre Plan (2012),
http://www. halifax.ca/planhrm/documents/Gottingenboards.pdf.
(119) Hyra, "Conceptualizing the New Urban Renewal," 500.
(120) Popular media coverage of the current commercial resurgence
on Gottingen Street often nostalgically recalls the heyday of the
commercial strip of the 1930s-1960s. For instance, see Tim Bousquet,
"Gottingen Street Changing in Big Ways," Coast, 17 May 2011;
Colleen Cosgrove, "Shelf Life: Attention Thrifty, Altruistic
Shoppers," Chronicle Herald, 18 March, 2014; Jessica Howard,
"It's Not Business as Usual on Gottingen," Gottingen: Two
Sides of the Street (2013),
http://gottingenstreet.kingsjournalism.com/new-businesses-on-
gottingen/.
(121) Millward and Winsor, "Twentieth-Century Retail
Change," 195.
(122) See Deener, Venice: Ley, "Artists, Aestheticisation and
the Field of Gentrification"; and Jason Patch, "The Embedded
Landscape of Gentrification," Visual Studies 19, no. 2 (2004):
169-86.
(123) Interview participant G04B (emphasis added).
(124) Air Canada's En Route Magazine featured
"Halifax's North End Renewal" in May 2014.
(125) Interview participant G06C.
(126) Interview participant G08E.
(127) Interview participant G02E.
(128) Interview participant G07B.
(129) Interview participant G08E.
(130) Jacobs, Death and Life.
(131) See David Ley and Cory Dobson, "Are There Limits to
Gentrification? The Contexts of Impeded Gentrification in
Vancouver," Urban Studies 45 (2008), 2471-98.
Table 1: History of selected properties on Gottingen Street.
Locator
Number
Current 1910 1920 1930 1940
address
1
2037 Halifax Halifax Halifax Halifax
Gottingen Military Military Military Military
Hospital Hospital Hospital Hospital
2
2053 Residence Dry goods Residence Barber
Gottingen store shop and
residence
(vacant)
3
2110/2112 North North Communi- Communi-
Gottingen Baptist Baptist ty Theatre ty Theatre
Church Church
4
2116 Grove Casino Casino Casino
Gottingen House Theatre Theatre Theatre
5
2158 Freeman Max's De- Kay's Ltd. Kline's
Gottingen Depart- partment Ladies' Ladies'
ment Store Store & Men's & Men's
Wear Wear
6
2161 Vineberg Tapp's Tots F.W. Wool- F.W. Wool-
Gottingen Goodman Toggerie worth Co. worth Co.
Co. Dry (depart-
Goods ment store)
7
2165 Shane & Borne E.K. Rubin's Rubin's
Gottingen Campbell Confec- Men's Men's
Grocery tionery Wear Wear
8
2203 Bigney Bigney Vernon Vernon
Gottingen Crockery Crockery J. Worth Worth
Druggist Druggist
9
2209 Linton Royal Bank Royal Bank Royal Bank
Gottingen Meat of Canada of Canada of Canada
Dealer
10
2286/2288 Shoe Shoe Shoe Residence
Gottingen repair, repair, repair,
doctor's doctor's residence
office office
Current 1950 1960 1970 1980
address
1
2037 Vacant lot Derby Derby Derby
Gottingen Tavern & Tavern & Tavern &
Grill Grill Grill
2
2053 Reliable Vacant and Saveway Saveway
Gottingen Cleaners & residence Cleaners Cleaners
Tailors
3
2110/2112 Vogue Vogue Vogue Cove
Gottingen Theatre Theatre Theatre Cinema
(Flamingo
Club mid-
decade)
4
2116 Casino Casino Casino Casino
Gottingen Theatre Theatre Theatre Theatre
5
2158 Kline's Ltd. Kline's Ltd. Kline's Ltd. Open
Gottingen Apparel Apparel Clothing Circle
Cabaret
6
2161 F.W. Wool- F.W. Wool- Discount Buckley's
Gottingen worth Co. worth Co. Shoeland Music
Centre
7
2165 Rubin's Rubin's Lord's Su- North End
Gottingen Men's Men's per Value Commu-
& Boys' & Boys' Pharmacy nity Health
8 Wear Wear Centre
2203 J.A. With- J.A. With- J.A. With- Withrow
Gottingen row Drug- row Drug- row Drug- Rexall
gist gist gist Drug Store
9
2209 Royal Bank Royal Bank Royal Bank Royal Bank
Gottingen of Canada of Canada of Canada of Canada
10
2286/2288 Residence Sobey's Sobey's Foodland
Gottingen Supermar- Supermar- (vacant
ket ket mid-
decade)
Current 1990 2000 2015
address
1
2037 Derby The Mar- The
Gottingen Tavern & quee Club Marquee
Grill (Paragon Ballroom
mid-
decade)
2
2053 Wendy's Vacant EDNA
Gottingen Reliable Restaurant
Dry Clean-
ers
3
2110/2112 Rumours Vacant Global
Gottingen Club (Palooka's News
Boxing Television
Club mid- Studios
decade)
4
2116 Empire Vacant Theatre
Gottingen Casino Lofts
Theatre (condo-
miniums)
5
2158 Mi'kmaq Mi'kmaq Mi'kmaq
Gottingen Native Native Native
Friendship Friendship Friendship
Centre Centre Centre
6
2161 Buckley's Mi'kmaq Mi'kmaq
Gottingen Music Child De- Child De-
Centre velopment velopment
Centre Centre
7
2165 North End North End North End
Gottingen Commu- Commu- Commu-
nity Health nity Health nity Health
8 Centre Centre Centre
2203 Guardian Withrow Bus Stop
Gottingen Drug Store Pharma- Theatre
save
9
2209 Royal Bank Dalhousie Dalhousie
Gottingen of Canada University University
Legal Aid Legal Aid
10
2286/2288 Vacant lot Vacant lot [Mixed-
Gottingen income
housing
develop-
ment
proposed]
Sources: Data drawn from city directories for the years 1910-2000, and
updated from telephone directories and field surveys for recent years.
