Scotia Square
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Scotia Square is a large commercial development in Downtown Halifax, in the Halifax Regional Municipality Nova Scotia owned by Halifax Developments Limited . It was built in the late sixties to mid seventies. It is connected to the Downtown Halifax Link and serves as a major Metro Transit bus terminal in Halifax.[1]. The mall now mostly caters to an downtown office clientale.
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[edit] History
Scotia Square mall originally had a single-screen Famous Players theatre, located on the corner of Duke and Barrington streets. It has since closed. [2] Scotia Square also had a Woolco department store on the second level of the mall. The store was also accessible from the first level via dedicated escalators. Woolco closed in 1994, shortly before the chain's purchase by Wal-Mart. The Woolco space was vacant for many years unitl around 2000 when Aliant Telecom converted the space into a call centre. Scotia Square used to have many retail shops on its second level but over time these shops closed or relocated to other malls in the area. Today only one store occupies the second level; the rest has converted to office space.
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Many other businesses have come and gone from Scotia Square:
Dick Turpin, a tavern, was there in the 1980s. Dairy Queen Pet Store (across from Woolco) which sold monkeys in the 1980s. Key Chain Store
[edit] Location and Layout
Scotia Square is comprised of a mall, a hotel, and a number of office towers connected to each other and to other buildings by pedways and tunnels. The complex is adjacent to the Cogswell Interchange, and it fronts on Duke Street to the south, Barrington Street to the east, and Market Street to the west.
[edit] Buildings
- Barrington Tower (20 floors, 84 metres)
- Cogswell Tower (20 floors, 79 metres)
- Duke Tower (16 floors, 71 metres)
- Delta Hotel building (15 floors)
- Scotia Square Mall (2 floors)
[edit] Pedways and Tunnels
- Pedway connecting Brunswick Street to a stairwell near Barrington Tower. Passes over Market Street.
- Pedway connecting parkade under Cogswell Tower to the Trade Mart building across Cogswell Street.
- Tunnel connecting mall to World Trade and Convention Centre, as well as the Halifax Metro Centre. Passes under Duke Street.
- Three-level pedway going from Barrington Tower to a stairwell, which leads to parking and the mall.
- Pedway going from mall, over Granville Mall, and into Barrington Place mall. From there you can go on to Purdy's Wharf, Casino Nova Scotia, the CIBC Building, and the TD Tower.
[edit] Controversy
The Scotia Square development is regarded to many as a bad choice for Halifax, for a number of reasons. The land on which it was built on was very large (it completely covered Buckingham Street, which doesn't exist at all today), and it created a bit of a barrier between North End Halifax and the main downtown area.
The building's brutalist-style architecture is also considered by some to be very unattractive, the architects of the buildings used many sheer street-level concrete faces in their design.
