Halifax Art Deco

I’m still continuing to go through this summer’s vacation pictures. Last time we’d made it to Halifax. I had planned to visit two buildings in downtown Halifax. They happen to be magnificent Art Deco buildings and they’re conveniently close to each other. I managed, one day, to slip away from the family and run around taking pictures for half an hour.

The first building I went to was the Dominion Public Building. For those keeping track, this is the 4th Art Deco DPB I’ve visited (as well as Hamilton, London and Guelph). One of the reasons that this prime real estate was available to build on at the time was because of the devastating Halifax Explosion of 1917.

It’s hard to get a full shot of the “front” of the building (away from the water):

But the back looks pretty from the water:

There are some metal panels that show the various methods used to deliver the mail. Don’t worry, I think the fish are purely decorative.

I took pictures of a few details inside, but I really liked this light fixture:

I saved the best for last. Having seen pictures ahead of time taken by my friend Yvonne, I knew that the Bank of Nova Scotia would blow me away. It’s hard to tell from a distance how special this building is.

It was designed to be the main branch of the bank in Canada. It’s another bank designed by John MacIntosh Lyle (like the smallish one with the owls in Toronto, or the rather imposing Bank of Nova Scotia Toronto HQ). There are plenty of examples of wildlife, including many marine examples:

In the lobby, there are some impressive elevator doors:

But then you walk into the main banking hall, and the space and the detail are just overwhelming.

All of those little white figures on the ceilings are animals. The floor is marble, with a fairly restrained pattern, probably because otherwise it would be all too much. The metalwork is amazing too. After securing permission to take pictures, I went around snapping happily. It seemed like doing that made some of the normal everyday customers take another look at the bank they walk into daily. Stunning.

Here’s a close up of just one of the flowers along the edge of the ceiling: