It was Sheila’s birthday last week (thanks for the kind wishes) and she was given a copy of Emma Fitzgerald’s new book Hand Drawn Halifax. Have you seen it ? It’s a beautiful production with charming illustrations and a wonderful collection of words that surprise and amuse. For the full story read the review in the Chronicle Herald.
Sheila was given the book by our good friends Andy and Karen Lynch and they had marked a page because it had a drawing of a house we all shared for about 15 years (beginning in 1979). The house is on Inglis St next to the Resolutes Club. We enjoyed the house but moved to our cove over 20 years ago.
What might interest you are some other drawings of 5455 Inglis St that we have. The oldest is by Roger Hupman who drew many Halifax buildings and was generally a creative force around town. He shows the house about the time we bought it when there was a separate door (which we removed) to a basement apartment.
The next drawing was done by our co-owner Andy Lynch. His style of drawing is more documentary but still has lots of character. Andy is a founder of the architecture firm Lydon Lynch.
He produced a simplified illustration for our Christmas card. (See some of Andy’s recent house illustrations here – mostly Lunenburg).
If photos are more your thing here is a selection. On the left is what 5455 Inglis looked like when we purchased it (about $50,000 I think). Sheila is at the door in the centre in the fall of 1979 (a couple of months after we got married). Interior renovation was still in progress. Photo on the right is probably about 1990.
We stopped at the book launch in the Central Library to have Emma sign Sheila’s copy. There were tons of folk lined up and it was all feeling very positive and successful. People have been drawing Halifax since it was founded and her book is a happy next chapter.
Post Script
- There have been many little books about Halifax buildings. A favourite of mine is 36 Halifax Corner Grocery Stores. Lionel Simmons photographed most of the corner stores on the peninsula in 1972.
- When we renovated our Inglis St house in 1979 the idea of fixing up old houses was still relatively new in Halifax. Someday I’ll see if I can put together some photos of the interior to show you what our life looked like 35 years ago. As a sample here is a professional photo of our bathroom .
The artwork above the tub was done by Roger Hupman (who did the drawing of the house). It is a rubbing of the base of a cast iron lamp post at the entrance to Point Pleasant Park. The lamp post originally came from Glasgow, Scotland and we saw one there when we visited two weeks ago. To see some more of Roger’s work look at this old blog.
