In a recent post about my grandmother Velma Brown [Moore]’s living arrangements while pursuing her bachelor’s degree at Dalhousie University from 1915-1918, I noted that my husband and I had tried with no success to find the former Clarence Moore house on LeMarchant Street in Halifax where she stayed while a student.
Once we got back to the States from our trip, I thought that if I could get the house number, I would be able to find out whether the house is still standing and what it looks like today. I began by trying to to find a digitized copy of the McAlpine’s City Directory for that time period online. I was unsuccessful with Internet Archive, Google Books, and HathiTrust; however, the Nova Scotia Archives website indicated that their microfilm holdings include the city directories I was after.
An Archivist Steps in to Help
I sent an e-mail inquiry to the Nova Scotia Archives asking if there might be another online source where I could find Halifax street addresses for that time period. In only two days, I was very happy to receive the following response from the senior archivist:
The home of Clarence Leander Moore (1869-1953) was torn down several years ago. It is possible that the Dalhousie Gazette or the Dalhousie University Archives may have images of the house. If you Google 1234 LeMarchant Street you can see the new residence on the property and an image of the houses that were there previously.1
In addition to the street address for Clarence’s house, I now have his middle name, the year he was born, and the year he died. As I believe he is a relative, this information should prove useful when he rises to the top of my research list. In the course of Googling “1234 LeMarchant Street,” I also learned that it had formerly been numbered “14 LeMarchant Street.”2 Another nugget of information I expect could prove useful in the future!
1234 LeMarchant Street Today
Today 1234 LeMarchant Street is part of the Dalhousie University campus. LeMarchant Place includes residential housing for students, as well as student services.3
A Husband Is Intrigued
I was satisfied with learning that the house had been torn down. However, my husband was intrigued and wanted to find out more about the house’s history. He kept digging until he found additional information in a Dalhousie University case study of construction and demolition waste, of all places. The photograph of the house at the top of this post was included in that report.4
When I read through the report, I learned that Dalhousie University had tried to save the former Clarence Moore house by conducting a feasibility study to move it three blocks away to another campus location.5 Unfortunately, at over $300,000, the cost of saving the house was three times the cost of demolition, and the house was ultimately demolished.6
1Garry D. Shutlak, “91 then 8 , 12, 14 and finally 1234 LeMarchant Street,” e-mail message to author, January 2, 2018.
2Council of Nova Scotia Archives, “Creighton Family,” Memory NS, accessed January 7, 2018, https://memoryns.ca/creighton-family.
3“Dalhousie University Building Directory: LeMarchant Place,” Dalhousie University, accessed January 14, 2018, https://www.dal.ca/campus-maps/building-directory/studley-campus/lemarchant-place.html.
4Colin Jeffrey and Rochelle Owen, Increasing Construction and Demolition Waste Diversion in Halifax Regional Municipality: A Dalhousie University Case Study (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Dalhousie University, 2012), 21.
5Jeffrey and Owen, Increasing Construction, 18.
6Jeffrey and Owen, Increasing Construction, 19.
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