Mount St Angela

When walking around the Christ Church Cathedral, shown in the episode before this one, I came across an old building that clearly had seen better days. The Mount St Angela building was built in the second half of the nineteenth century and added on to in 1911. It was built as part of the Christ Church establishment, sold to the sister’s of St Ann for a sister retirement home in the fifties, and this century sees it in the eye of the developer. However, Mount St. Angela is a designated heritage building, an important one in the historic architectural fabric of Victoria and it has not been pushed over yet. Its architect designed many of the Victoria houses and buildings, the Richard (Emily) Carr house is one of them. It was designed by John Wright and George Sanders. Personally I believe that the right way of preservation is maintaining certain areas or neighbourhoods rather than individual buildings. It may be a little late for this approach in Victoria and the future may show us buildings such as this one surviving in the midst of 4, 6, or 20 story square boxes made out of concrete and glass. I’m by no means down on modern architecture (the most beautiful buildings worldwide definitely have a share of modern ones with them), but I don’t think that the designs that tend to show up in Victoria particularly beautify the city. At any rate let’s hope the building does not go derelict but gets restored. I think of seismic upgrading and realise there will be a struggle between history and money over the fate of this building.

The future may see this building erased, partly preserved, or restored in its entirety including two houses that are on this property. At least that is what I came up with in my research. However the most recent news items about this place that I could find go back to 2008.

Here is some info on the architects. John Wright did a lot of building in Victoria during the middle part of the 1800s, later on joined by his brother in law, George Sanders, who had met up with him a few years before the Mount St Angela project. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/john-wright/