A walk down Gottingen ca. 1875 – Part 2

The installation of the tram tracks on Gottingen Street at Cogswell ca. 1891 – Nova Scotia Archives: Nova Scotia Light and Power Fonds, MG9, vol. 226, pg. 80.

This post continues the previous discussion of the recollections of Laleah M. Hendry (1867-1950) who in 1940 wrote about her memories of Gottingen Street when she was a child in the mid 1870s.

The above picture, showing the laying of the tram tracks by the Nova Scotia Light & Power Company ca. 1891, is important as it is the ONLY picture that I have been able to find that adequately shows the way this important corner looked. In a previous post (Building Blocks: 2-24 Gottingen Street and a follow-up post) I explored the buildings on the West side of Gottingen Street from the intersection of Cogswell and Falkland Streets. One of my biggest problems was that I couldn’t find a photo of this section of the street. As it happened tucked away in the scrap books of the Nova Scotia Light & Power Company (a rich resource btw for photos of Halifax in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries) I was able to locate two such photos that clearly and vibrantly showed this section of the street.

In her recollection Laleah mentions these buildings as standing out for her because they had staircases going from the street level to the front doors which in some cases were located above street level.

Some other grand houses that Laleah talks about, and which would have been literally across the street from her childhood home, were the homes of the Black brothers. Specifically, we have a photo of the house of Martin P. Black which was located on the corner lot at Gottingen and North Streets.

Martin P. Black house at the Corner of Gottingen and North streets (posted originally to Vintage Halifax Facebook page).

This house was torn down sometime in the 1950s and the land sold to make way for the construction of Northwood Manor. The property, at the back, was subdivided and made way for Northwood Terrace.

Finally, one of the other “big” homes of Gottingen Streets “residential” days was Hawthorn Place which was located directly across the street from the Hendry family home. Shown below on the Hopkins Atlas of 1878:

1878 Hopkins Atlas of Halifax showing portion of Plate E and the Harrington Estate Property known as “Hawthorne Place” on Gottingen Street.

Leleah refers to this property as “the old Harrington place” so even in 1875 the property was considered to have been there a long time and by the look of the footprint of the building on the Hopkins Atlas was substantial building. Interestingly she states that the house was replaced by three dwelling houses. It appears that this building existed on the street at least til 1951 as it is represented on the Fire Insurance Map for that year. Today this building has been replaced in the early 1990s by the Westgate Apartments Building.

Adjacent to the Hawthorne Place property were a series of single family houses which had been turned into flats. By the late 1980s with Gottingen Street becoming run down and depressed developers were looking at the cheap land as a potential place to build. In 989 the buildings that face Gottingen Street at the corner of Charles and North along the Western side of the street were torn down to make way for the current Charles Place. Below is a picture of 2518 Gottingen Street which was torn down shortly after this photo was taken in March 1989 to make way for the apartment building that stands today.  This building and its adjacent buildings were only torn down after a neighbour, Miss Ethel Brown, dropped her appeal of the building permits for Charles Place. She was appealing the building of the new 59 unit apartment building due to the increase in cars it would bring to her neighbourhood.

2518 Gottingen Street. Photo taken from The North End News, 9 March 1989

Laleah M. Hendry (1867-1950)

Laleah M. Hendry was the daughter of William A. Hendry and Harriett Sophia Smith. She was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada 25 November 1866, she died at Hantsport, Nova Scotia, Canada 11 December 1950 at the age of 84.

Laleah’s father William A. Hendry was a land surveyor and worked throughout Halifax County in the 1870s and 1880s. By the mid 1870s he held the title of Deputy Commissioner of Lands and the family lived at 271 Gottingen Street. The House doesn’t appear on the 1878 Hopkin’s Atlas but does on subsequent Fire Insurance Maps, specifically the 1895 Fire Insurance Map shown below:

Portion of the 1895 Fire Insurance Map of Halifax showing 271 Gottingen Street

Much of this section of Gottingen street has changed as the intersection with North Street has been shaved back to make for easy flow of traffic coming off of Gottingen onto the approach for the bridge. The large building at 277 and 277 1/2 Gottingen still stands today. The property where the Hendry house stood is now a series of row houses.

William A. Hendry purchased the property from the Robinson family in 1852 at which time the property was described as a building lot being formerly land granted to the Deal family. This means that the Henry house was likely the first structure on that property.

William Hendry died in 1908 at the age of 84. Laleah Hendry never married and eventually went to live in Hantsport, Nova Scotia with her sister Harriett Creighton.

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Sources: All images used above have been purchased from and are the copyright of the Nova Scotia Archives, unless otherwise noted, for use in the Map App project of the Gottingen 250 Festival and are being used here on The Old North End blog to help promote the Map App Project. Primary source research has been conducted entirely by myself, Nathaniel Smith, for use in the Map App project as well as for this blog.