Call it sleuthing for sandstone, or researching the rock.
The hunt for sandstone to rehabilitate the North Park Armoury — a landmark above the Halifax Common — started with 100-year-old letters and led to a random Kijiji canoe ad as the architectural team sought to replace crumbling blocks in the historic fort.
“When we were starting to look for replacement sandstone — because we knew we had to repair the west wall — we found old letters from the chief architect Thomas Fuller, who was corresponding with the (original) contractor,” Rosanne Howes, who is leading the repairs and modernization of the 120-year-old fort, said Wednesday.
“The letters said that the ‘Pugwash stone’ had been ordered. Fuller sent a sample to Dr. George Dawson, who was head of the geological survey of Canada — Dawson City was named after him — and Dawson said, ‘Oh yes, this stone is of a fine composition.’
“So, we thought, ‘Gee, Pugwash stone,’” Howes said. “‘Let’s go up to Pugwash to have a look.’
“Well, there wasn’t any stone in Pugwash.
“We researched old department documents, and we found geological maps that showed different veins of stone, and lots of sandstone up on the North Shore. We went to the quarries and got some help,” Howes continued. “We brought our stone conservator with us, who knew the area well.”
One of those helping Howes knew of a place that had a vein of sandstone because, she was told, he’d seen it in the background of a photo of a canoe his mother noticed on Kijiji.
“I don’t know how true that was,” Howes said, laughing. “Quarry people and stone people are kind of like miners in the gold rush: Everybody keeps their little stash of secrets to themselves.”
The canoe, Howes was told, had been photographed in front of an outcrop of sandstone near River Philip.
“We found the area and what we thought might be the original (vein) in a farmer’s field near the river, near Beckwith, and took samples,” Howes said.
“We compared those with a piece of sandstone from the armoury, and determined that they were from the same vein.”
When the stone was quarried 120 years ago, the masons would “put the sandstone on a barge and go up River Philip to Pugwash,” Howes explained. “That’s why they called it the ‘Pugwash sandstone’ (though) it wasn’t really from Pugwash.
“So then, we were able to buy the sandstone,” she said. “The current contractor has really gone the extra mile to work with us.”
The new stone was tested when Howes’ team tried their repair techniques on the Maynard Street side of the fort in 2014.
“You can see how some of the sandstone has been fixed or replaced, and the new gutter and downspout,” Howes said. “The windows have been restored. The original paint was a dark cranberry and that is the colour that we painted them.”
“This has taught us how to do the rest of the building. A lot of experts have been working on it for seven years.”
Joe Ballard is president of the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia. His group isn’t involved with the armoury rehabilitation, but he said he’s thrilled it’s being done.
“This is a beautiful building,” Ballard said. “It’s a signature building with high visibility, almost like Halifax’s Eiffel Tower. It has a wonderful presence and a wonderful history.”
When the rebuilding gets underway this summer, 80 per cent of the stone will come from the original west wall. The remainder will be cut from the vein Howes’ team sleuthed out, except for a small portion in the windowsills that has a different density and is being brought from Callow Hill in England.