Adams and Ross

The invitation for Adams and the respect for his early recommendations were natural. In the reaching out for expert assistance in planning, Adams' name stood alone. He had worked on the drafting of the Nova Scotia Town Planning Act of 1915 and, as previously noted, had actually prepared a zoning by-law and draft official plan for Halifax, but more than that he possessed an impressive international reputation.

By training as a surveyor, he had served as manager of the City of Letchworth' and had been 'engineer to the Marquis of Salisbury, Earl of Lytton and other owners of tens of thousands of acres of land.' When the English Town Planning Act was passed in 1909, he was selected as an Inspector in the Local Government Board which administered that Act. During the course of five years, he investigated over eighty development schemes.

Concurrently, he served as an Examiner in Civic Design at Liverpool University. At the time of his appointment to the Canadian Conservation Commission,(15) he was President of the British Town Planning Institute, and in 1918 he became a founding member of the Board of Governors of the American City Planning Institute. In Canada, he was an energetic lecturer, speaking at many assemblies of municipal organization (16).

On his April 10th tour of the destruction, Adams was joined by another capable professional, George Ross. The Montreal architectural firm of Ross and Macdonald had volunteered its services at a bargain rate in February, 1918. The Commission accepted after consulting Adams (17). Following their joint April visit to Halifax and walk through the devastated area, the two men prepared preliminary reports.

Ross completed his study of housing first. The problem, as he wisely deduced, did not consist simply of throwing up and retaining emergency replacement houses. This approach in other disaster-struck cities, he claimed, had ultimately resulted in slum conditions. 'It is to be hoped,' he wrote, 'that Halifax will profit by the mistakes of other cities and when the temporary buildings have fulfilled their purpose, see that they are not permitted to remain as permanent dwellings. After the disaster at Galveston, Texas, this was permitted with the result that in less than three years, the district developed into the worst type of slum' (18).

It is clear, too, from the report's first paragraph that Ross saw the problem in a social context.

Prior to the outbreak of war, public attention was almost entirely given to commercial enterprise, and the housing question left to individuals or to speculative builders. Excepting the actual progress and carrying on of the war, there is probably no question at the present time receiving so much attention as the problem of low cost housing (19).

There was nothing parochial about Ross in his study of this issue, for despite the anti-German sentiment of the day, he stood in awe of Germany's civic planning and 'her handling of the housing problem.' (20) The character of Richmond housing would not be determined, therefore, by sheer expediency. It would be rebuilt without outdoor privies and shoddy frame dwellings. Ross intended it to serve as a model of modern construction and sanitary facilities with attention also paid to the cost of materials and fireproofing.

But at the same time that Ross recognized utility and social issues, he gave aesthetics considerable attention. He wanted the housing project to avoid a sterile 'sameness' in exterior design. (21)

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This document was last modified on March 8, 2000.