Carleton House: Living History in Halifax

Margaret Conrad is a professor of history at Acadia University. She is
the author of Intimate Relations: Family and Community in Planter Nova
Scotia, 1759–1800, and Making Adjustments: Change and Continuity in
Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1800 and the co

Saved from the wrecker’s ball in 1993, Carleton House is one of
Halifax’s oldest buildings. This well-illustrated and engagingly
written book traces its evolution from a townhouse built around 1759 by
Richard Bulkeley, a prominent figure in government circles for nearly
half a century, to a fashionable hotel in the late 1860s, to a dining
and drinking establishment a century later. Following heroic efforts by
Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia and concerned citizens to save the
building from corporate and municipal neglect, it has been converted
into apartments and commercial suites.

Paul Erickson and Graeme Duffus have produced a biography of Carleton
House to help educate an increasingly development-driven city and
province about the role that heritage buildings can play in showing us
“the shape of our history.” One would expect that a venerable old
city like Halifax would treasure its built heritage, but recent history
has offered evidence to the contrary. By adapting to change and
reinventing itself several times, Carleton House has managed to beat the
odds, and the authors, a professor of anthropology at St. Mary’s
University and a restoration architect, offer persuasive evidence for
thinking twice before tearing down “that old building.”