Historic Bethany House set for demolition
Posted Sep 9, 2013 08:17:50 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A building with one hundred years of history is set to be torn down.
Work to tear down the Bethany House on Tower Road in Halifax will start in a few weeks.
The three storey, red brick building has a long history. From 1900 to 1950, it was the Halifax Infants Home first, a place for unwed mothers and their children. Then it became the Salvation Army Bethany Home, before Saint Mary’s University bought the property fifteen years ago.
Now it’s serves as a place to teach english as a second language, but Steve Proctor, communications manager for SMU, told news 95.7 the university is expanding and the building can’t keep up.
“Our program has grown and the competition for teaching english as a second language has grown significantly,” he said.
Proctor added the new building to replace the Bethany House has already been built and has the modern technology and space students need.
He said the university looked into keeping the building, but it was determined repairs would cost millions of dollars and it still wouldn’t be a useful building for the growing campus.
“Its heritage is protected and we have hired standing archaeologists,” he explained “They have been in documenting the building from the inside and the outside.”
In place of the building, there will be a new gateway to the SMU campus.
