Memorial School, Niagara Falls
What makes a place worthy of positive note? Psychologists have been working on this question for some decades and over the past fifteen years, the neuroscientists have joined in. There have been fascinating insights. This is not a frivolous matter – architects, planners and developers all have some responsibility to ensure that the wider population responds positively to the buildings and cities that they create.
What reasons might there be for regarding a building in a positive manner? For one thing, an individual might see a building as “beautiful,” but there are many other possibilities. One reason, much favoured by builders of tract house and designers of themed environments, is the concept of the “romantic,” a topic that was seriously explored in buildings, music, painting and literature by the Victorians. The Oxford English Dictionary offers this definition of romantic: “of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized, sentimental, or fantastic view of reality; remote from experience […] concerned more with feeling and emotion than with form and aesthetic qualities.” This underlines the importance of the relationship between the individual and any building, with the concept of the romantic taking the relationship one step further.
One way of thinking about romanticism is to consider how it differs from what we might consider realism (a shaky concept at best in this post-truth era). As the OED suggests, romanticism departs from realism by distorting it to suit the observer’s emotional requirements. This brings us to the phenomenon we know as nostalgia – a particularly powerful facet of romanticism and a pleasantly flawed method for retrieving a memory. There are buildings that, when I encounter them, I feel a cosy warm feeling, and memories flood back. To anyone else, they could be the ugliest buildings you might ever encounter.
As a recreational pursuit I play the clarinet and bass clarinet in a couple of community bands. It is something I learned in high school, played a bit in university, and picked it up again a few years ago. Not only does it bring one into contact with people that an architect may not engage with in the course of his/her travels, but there is nothing like listening to great music from inside, whether it is Haydn, Glenn Miller, or Queen. There may be nothing nostalgic about this to any one individual, although much of this music is distinctly romantic.
A couple of years ago, another clarinettist suggested I change groups. He gave me the directions to the Legion Hall where they practised. That evening I was running late, so followed the directions, parked the car, rushed up the stairs and arrived just as things were starting. I sat down and focused on the music.
After a few minutes, I started to consider where I was. The Legion Hall had obviously had a previous career as a school, and there couldn’t be that many early 20th-century schools in that part of town. Then it struck me: I had attended this very school in grade six, and I was sitting in my old classroom.
The building had been unsympathetically renovated, the windows crudely covered over, and any surrounding vegetation disposed of, leaving it sitting stiffly on its site. Many of the interior walls had been removed, so there was no semblance of my old classroom, save the door leading into the old-fashioned cloakroom. But, the staircase (marked “girls,” but that era was already over when I was there), upon a bit of consideration, created immediate resonance. Wonderful memories flowed from the back recesses of my brain: the projects I had worked on, my friends, even the artwork posted on the walls. It was obviously not the specifics of the building that stirred these memories – most of the building features were long gone — but somehow the building itself created an association with a landmark year, characterized by a memorable teacher who worked hard to inspire young minds.
And a few months ago, during a practice, one of the other band members informed me that my Grade Six teacher had just passed away in her nineties. Can you imagine – finding out about the demise of one of your most memorable teachers while actually sitting in her classroom, so many decades later?
All of this, from what otherwise was an ordinary school of its time, thankfully converted into a Legion Hall, when so many of its contemporaries have been lost. Every time I walk through the doors and up that staircase, that same happy, warm feeling re-emerges. Some things however remain an enigma. Perhaps I had not fully explored the building when I was in grade six, but I don’t recall there being a bar on the ground floor.