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History of the Greenway Neighbourhoods

Along much of the Greenway, the transition from rural to urban occurred well after the excavation of the railway cutting during the First World War. Two sources help to tell the story of the area during the period before subdivision took place, when large estates and the wealthy elite of Halifax occupied the areas along the Northwest Arm.

The Hopkins 1878 City of Halifax Atlas displays every property line and every building in the then City of Halifax. Until 1969, the City boundary was Dutch Village Road. The Atlas shows a built-up core hugging the Harbour south of Young Street, east of Robie Street and north of Inglis Street. A ring of new subdivisions, as yet with very few houses, surrounded the core. North of Chebucto Road and west of Oxford Street and Tower Road were rural estates and undeveloped land.

John Regan's 1908 book "Sketches and Traditions of the Northwest Arm" describes a Greenway little changed from the map of thirty years before. The Marlborough Woods subdivision was the only attempt at introducing urban development, and it had little success.

Elsewhere, estate properties traded hands among a small number of prominent families. The initial grantees of Crown land in the 1780's - military and government officials recently involved in the Revolutionary War - soon sold their holdings to the business grandees of Halifax. The Pryors, Cunards, Cogswells, Collinses, Stairs, and Morrows kept the area in their hands for all of the 19^th century and into the 20^th.

The tone of Regan's book is one of glorifying a local peerage, "Who's Who" and "Who sold what to whom". At the same time, he extols the virtues of increased public access to the Northwest Arm brought about by the new aquatic clubs along its shore, such as the Waegwoltic, of which he was the first President. He is obviously trying to calm any fears that the long-time owners and families might have about the new intruders in their midst.

The following articles (other than the Janet Chute one) extract maps and owner information from these two sources. They describe the situation at the time of the construction of the Halifax Ocean Terminals Railway.