Year-long Summerside armoury restoration project nearing finish line
SUMMERSIDE — While working to restore Summerside’s 1911 Armoury building workers on site discovered the names of the labourers who preceded them more than 100 years ago etched into the walls.
“In the building business, everyone has to sign their name somewhere on the wall,” said lead carpenter Robert Campbell. “We found a lot of artifacts, stuff like that, that people had signed, what outfit they were with when they were doing the work. We’ve taken all of that out and preserved it and it will go back into the museum at some point.”
Campbell worked on much of the restoration of the armoury, a labour-intensive project that lasted more than a year. Now the project is nearly finished with plans to open the structure’s newly refurbished museum to the public sometime in July.
“It’s nice to see it coming together the way you envisioned it,” Campbell said about the project nearing the finish line.
“It should be quite the
building when it’s done.”
A MIX OF OLD AND NEW
The vision for the building was partially the help of Culture Summerside’s manager of heritage properties, Lori Ellis.
Ellis said that the project began after identifying a need to maximize the space available for the museum. The basement had water issues since it was first built and was unusable for public exhibits.
“In order to tell the many stories of our community we needed to make better use of the space,” said Ellis.
That involved work to restore all three floors of the building — all of which will be used after the museum reopens.
“All (three floors) will be housed with exhibit spaces telling various stories of the community; stories of the past and stories of today,” Ellis added.
But the restoration was also an effort to update the building with modern amenities while preserving its heritage. It included adding a new elevator as well as energy-efficient heating systems, Ellis said.
“You’re looking at the heritage aspect, but you’re also
creating a more efficient use of the space,” she noted.
Campbell added that it was a challenge to reconstruct the original building with the new features.
“At the end of the day, the building has to be new but still look old,” he said.
TAKING CARE
To merge the new amenities inside the heritage building, as much of the original building material was used as possible.
That meant disassembling much of the building, labelling the materials, removing the old paint to restore it to the original condition, restoring the material and replacing it.
“You have to take a lot of care when you’re taking it apart,” said Campbell. “You’re talking about wood that’s been on there for 100 years, so there are some techniques that we do use to get things apart.”
Some of those techniques involve using hand-cut spruce wedges to separate wood. Spruce is a softwood that does little damage when force is applied, Campbell explained.
In certain areas where wood was destroyed or damaged, it was re-manufactured to look as close as possible to the original material.
“Some of the younger guys were pretty surprised when I said we’re going to make that piece rather than trying to find one,” Campbell said, laughing.
Now, similar to the workers who scratched their names into the walls while building the armoury, Campbell and other workers are leaving behind their own memento — a time capsule that will be hidden in the building.
“Maybe in 100 years from now, the fellas that tear the building apart, they’ll find a little about the guys that did this renovation.”