A space that’s inviting and clean – and 167 years old

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If one can avert their eyes from the tall, majestic, arched window about seven or eight feet away, the photograph applied to the office window is fascinating: on the far left is the former Union Cemetery (now Waterdown Cemetery) up on Vinegar Hill; then, the John and Ada Vance house on Board Street, which became the CPR’s Waterdown South station (destroyed by fire in 1966); moving to the right, it’s the old Dundas Street bridge over Grindstone Creek; and, finally, the 1870 Eager house, which the family owned for three generations.

Walk inside that glass-walled office to that tall window, look out, and the Eager house is about all that can be spotted almost 125 years later in Waterdown, a village about 10 kilometres north of Hamilton. But the building where the office is located, the former East Flamborough Township Hall (known to many locals as the local public library, which occupied the building from 1979-2015), well, it now looks as good as it did on the day it opened in 1857.

That’s how good the renovation and restoration by owners and brothers Andrew, Nathan and Nick Brown and their spouses is, says heritage architecture expert Shannon Kyles: “It’s as good as anything you’re going to find in Italy, frankly.

“They’ve maintained everything that was important,” she continues, “and they’ve made the space inviting, clean, modern, but old.”

On May 4 and 5, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., 25 Mill St. N., which now houses the two Brown businesses, Brown Lawyers and Brown Financial Security, will be open to the general public for the first time for Hamilton Region’s annual Doors Open event.

Not that that has stopped the curious from popping by, laughs lawyer Andrew Brown: “We had people walking in just to check it out, not even clients, not even prospective clients. … We welcome it to an extent; the response and the feedback has always been overwhelmingly positive because you go from a squirrel-infested, drywalled space with [library] stacks to, ‘Oh wow, this is in our town.’”

To be clear, the squirrels moved in when the library moved out and before the Browns purchased in 2017 for a little more than $1-million. Speaking of which, while the building wasn’t in terrible condition (18-inch-thick limestone walls have a way of keeping things protected) the Browns did put a great deal more money – about $750,000 – as well as love, sweat, and thought into the restoration, and it shows.

On the exterior, not only have decades of soot and grime been scrubbed away, mortar joints are crisp again, and the original windows have been restored and paired with new, old-looking, wooden storms. Even better, the “institutional” front door to the library has been replaced with Hamilton-made, quarter-sawn oak doors.

“We went and visited buildings in Guelph to look at the work that had been done on a similar-aged building,” says Marianne Brown, an engineer at Orr Brown Consulting Engineers (and wife of Nick Brown), who partnered with local design firm Charles Linsey & Associates and Ira McDonald Construction Ltd.

“What would the inside look like, what would the flooring look like? There were very few interior photos of the building that existed, mostly exterior, but, as a result we rebuilt the front to replicate the original.”

Step inside the small foyer, and a visitor is treated to newly exposed stone walls, handsome tile underfoot, a very mid-century modern staircase to the second floor (they tried to save money where possible), a big boardroom with a great deal of exposed stone – electric baseboard heating is required to boost the temperature in winter – and, down the hall, another gorgeous wooden door and the 1970s elevator, which may still be haunted.

According to the Flamborough Archives & Heritage Society website, the ghost arrived in 1979, when two tombstones belonging to the first European settlers on the escarpment, Alexander Brown (1776-1852), and his wife, “Marion” Grierson (1779-1863), were installed beside the elevator of the newly renovated library. The tombstones had been discovered the year before by a local couple strolling along Nelson Street, where ground was being prepared for new housing. That land had originally been owned by the Union Cemetery caretaker, who’d laid the stones face down to create a walkway to his outhouse. The reason? Ms. Grierson’s given name was misspelled – it was actually “Merren” – so the stones were never used. But Ms. Grierson’s ghost, angry at this memorialization, decided to periodically send the elevator on phantom journeys.

“It will still open sometimes,” Ms. Brown says with a smile.

“But I maintain, just for the comfort of our clients, that once those stones got put in the new library, Merren moved out,” says Mr. Brown.

Upstairs, where the library had placed washrooms and, incredulously, boarded up the top portion of the aforementioned arched window, there is now clean, functional office space. And although the team uncovered a steel beam fairly close to the big window (to support the cupola after twin columns to the first floor were removed in the seventies) during renovations, they were able to create a tiny barrel vault around it before dropping the ceiling to reconceal the beam. In the main foyer space opposite, a much larger barrel vault has been created where there may have been one originally.

Interestingly, because the Browns needed more offices than there were windows, they’ve pulled them away from the exterior walls in favour of twin corridors. Adding interior glass to each office democratically doles out the sunshine and dopamine.

And speaking of happiness, a visit to the former East Flamborough Township Hall and the six other Waterdown buildings featured during Doors Open will surely make even the most casual architecture aficionado’s heart beat just a little bit faster.

SIDEBAR:

“Doors Open started in 2002, and Waterdown has never been a part of it,” says local historian Andy McLaren, who spent nine months (along with Shannon Kyles) organizing the region’s participation. In addition to the Browns’ building, there are three churches, a limestone pub called Mill St. & 5, which will celebrate its 200th anniversary this summer, and an 1860 limestone building that houses a bookstore.

In addition to Waterdown, Ancaster will feature six buildings, Stoney Creek five buildings, Dundas four buildings and Mount Hope one building. Hamilton proper will feature 25 buildings.

Doors Open takes place on Saturday and Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. More information at doorsopenontario.on.ca/pages/events/hamilton