This 1899 photo of a Hallowee’en costume party comes from the Nova Scotia Public Archives. Any old photos of Hallowe’en parties or “trick and treat” activities from Antigonish. This photo looks like the train station in Halifax’s South End, but it did not exist until 1928, replacing the North Street Station, built in 1877. Could this be the North Street Station?
The NSR was taken over by the Government of Canada in 1867 as one of the terms of Confederation. In 1877, a new federal Crown corporation, the Intercolonial Railway(ICR), opened a magnificent new terminal railway station at the foot of North Street, south of Richmond and much closer to the city’s downtown. This impressive Second Empire structure was designed by David Stirling, who also designed the Provincial Building and St. David’s Presbyterian Church on Grafton Street. The station was faced by the King Edward Hotel, located immediately west of the station, which stood roughly beneath the present-day Angus L. Macdonald Bridge where it crosses Barrington Street opposite the main gate to HMC Dockyard. The North Street Station and the waterfront terminal trackage leading to it were badly damaged in the Halifax Explosion on 6 December 1917. Passenger trains were temporarily diverted to the unfinished south end terminal tracks for two days. However the North Street Station was quickly repaired to enable it to operate another 2 years before closing in 1920.
Gary Brooks, former StFX Pschology professor responded to this photo with this update:
The setting for this wonderful picture would have been the Royal Exhibition Building. It was built in 1880 and was on Tower Road (in the section now called Martello) on the current site of All Saint’s Cathedral; as the latter was built in 1907, the Exhibition Building had a short if gilded history. I have read that it was demolished so that College Street could be extended to Tower Road, but I am unsure whether that is accurate.
Garland Brooks’s photo.