Take a tour of Calgary's sandstone legacy with Lougheed House
Stephen Hunt | CBC News | Posted: July 22, 2018 11:00 AM | Last Updated: July 22, 2018
Exhibition explores role sandstone played in forming Calgary's cultural identity
A city's history is often defined through people, events or conflicts.
But Calgary's Lougheed House has created a new exhibit, called Formed by Sand, that tells how Calgary's cultural identity was shaped through sandstone. It includes a map to help visitors take a self-directed walking tour.
"Lougheed House is not the only sandstone building in the city. There's dozens of them around," Lougheed House curator Caroline Loewen told The Homestretch Wednesday.
"We wanted people to expand what they're thinking about and actually get people out walking, get their feet on the ground to see some of these sites."
The tour includes a few of Calgary's classic sandstone schools, including Connaught School — which is still operating — as well as King Edward School, which has been repurposed into the cSPACE arts incubator.
Those are only a couple of what were approximately 70 buildings built of sandstone, following a traumatizing 1886 fire in downtown that resulted in a new city regulation requiring new buildings in the fire zone be made of brick or stone.
"There have been about 15 knocked down — so Calgary has done a pretty good job of maintaining its sandstone heritage. That leaves about 50-odd buildings throughout the city — and they really are scattered throughout the city," said Loewen.
Plentiful access to the sedimentary rock
Why sandstone? It turns out Calgary was awash in the stuff.
"Sandstone was incredibly plentiful — and still is in Alberta," Loewen said.
"We're underlain by the Paskapoo formation, which is a large sandstone formation laid down about 60 million years ago. There's outcroppings of it along river valleys and coulees — and so quarries started opening up, and the boom began," Loewen said.
"Some of earliest quarries were in Edworthy Park ... which opened in 1885."
Another was Butland Quarry on the Elbow River close to the Calgary Golf and Country Club, which is where the sandstone that built the Lougheed House came from.
From boom to bust
Sandstone didn't lose its lustre. The economy did.
The outbreak of the First World War caused a huge surge of enlisted men to ship off to Europe. Industry slowed down.
And according to Loewen, there were problems between two unions who were essential to the sandstone building business: stone cutters and stone masons.
"A lot of people probably think they do the same thing, but actually there was a real division of labour between the two unions, and there was disagreements and strikes and arguments between the unions that led to just unrest in the labour market and instability."
Quarries closed
Today there's a genuine reverence for Calgary's sandstone heritage. King Edward School's sandstone exterior was preserved when cSPACE was built, even as the interior was gutted. Old City Hall is undergoing a costly renovation to preserve its sandstone facade.
So why aren't people building with sandstone any more?
"Now, it's almost impossible to source," Loewen said.
"All of the quarries were closed. We're still underlain by that huge Paskapoo Formation — sandstone is still everywhere — but there are no active quarries open. So if you want to source sandstone in the city, you can't. We actually import sandstone from overseas and the U.S. for restoration of buildings, including City Hall."
The exhibition
Loewen says Formed by Sand is a combination of historical documents, historical photos, sandstone samples and images of quarries, as well as a collection of contemporary artworks. The exhibit runs at Lougheed House until Sept. 30.
"We invited 15 artists to give their interpretations of sandstone. And so their work, and the way they've interpreted Calgary's cultural identity as it relates to sand, is throughout the house."
So if Lougheed House needs a little sandstone patchwork, who do they call?
"Good question," Loewen said.
"We have a list of masons who know how to work with stone, and know how to remove pieces, or do patchwork on stone. But several times over the past decade we've had to [call them] — [in part] because sandstone is only meant to last about 100 years. It wears down quite quickly."
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With files from The Homestretch