Is there such a thing as a Heritage Crime?
From this
To this.JPG)
Because if there is this is a classic example. The reason such societies and organisations like the ACO and the Historical Society and presumably LACAC, the Town's own creation, exist is to not only make people aware that Heritage is important but those who possess Heritage properties have a responsibility to maintain them in their Heritage states.
Cobourg lays claim to many different architectural styles of buildings but none sum up late Victorian - early Edwardian better than the houses built by Reuben Jackson. Solid brick houses, usually built in clumps of four or five, based on the traditional Canadian three up three down design.
The house featured above was a designated Jackson house because it was the first of many. and the outstanding feature that seperated it from its neighbours was the decorative, rather than utilitarian, front porch. Well folks that's gone now! Destroyed by its owner, not even disassembled for return in a better state. This has happened without the Town officials not knowing and seemingly not even caring. We spend untold hours at Council meetings debating the colour of paint and the building department cannot even enforce the lynchpin bylaw of heritage conservation. Such a disgraceful event. This wanton destruction took place without a permit or variance. Try building an addition to your house and the building nazis will be all over you for the money for a permit, but do a disgracefully small reno, no permit needed, and they look the other way.
This will not go away!
Cobourg lays claim to many different architectural styles of buildings but none sum up late Victorian - early Edwardian better than the houses built by Reuben Jackson. Solid brick houses, usually built in clumps of four or five, based on the traditional Canadian three up three down design.
The house featured above was a designated Jackson house because it was the first of many. and the outstanding feature that seperated it from its neighbours was the decorative, rather than utilitarian, front porch. Well folks that's gone now! Destroyed by its owner, not even disassembled for return in a better state. This has happened without the Town officials not knowing and seemingly not even caring. We spend untold hours at Council meetings debating the colour of paint and the building department cannot even enforce the lynchpin bylaw of heritage conservation. Such a disgraceful event. This wanton destruction took place without a permit or variance. Try building an addition to your house and the building nazis will be all over you for the money for a permit, but do a disgracefully small reno, no permit needed, and they look the other way.
This will not go away!
5 comments:
Will the residents of the home be required to wear period costumes to satisfy the aesthetic-police?
If I bought a house on Abbott Blvd, would I be able to plant corn in my front yard?
Or pave the front yard and on it paint herring-bone parking stripes?
How many permission-committees are there? Ain't civilians hounded enough by politically correct puritans a.k.a. text tyrants?
If you lived on Abbott Boulevard you would not want to plant corn in your front yard.
Your well paid lawn maintenance and gardener people, who descend on the street in hordes every spring in their trucks, would be instructed not to plant anything the neighbours weren't also growing.
The very idea! My mother is rolling in her grave at the thought of it.
DJO
Oh but I would want to grow corn on my front lawn on Abbott Blvd. It was a hope shared only by Peter & Anne Kolisnyk that I would do so -- conceptual art performance, or poetic licence to achieve poetic justice.
I have an attitude problem, ever since I was expelled from Cobourg District Collegiate Institute, West, thrice back in the 60's. My attitude is not MY problem, but a problem for others. As one of the complaining teachers whined to my mother, "Wally is a round peg in a square hole."
I never seem to be politically correct, but more often than not, poetically correct.
But then again, my formative upbringing in Cobourg, was without a father, a janitor who had sucked off the exhaust pipe of a 1949 Chevy on a hill overlooking town, (http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2113/2201630681_f3e1c83f7c_o.jpg) but was raised by a wonderful mother who was kitchen help at a local institute (http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2084/2203147367_c1f419b88a_o.jpg). I know full-well the "class" strata in Cobourg.
Unfortunately, I do not have sufficient economic clout to purchase a home on that perfect Leave-It-To-Beaver street and thereby enjoy being a disruptive influence. Sigh!
I think you have mis-described yourself and are a curmudgeon already! I feel so sorry for the owners of this property who are being vilified. It must get real cold there in winter [I am in sunny Australia] and if I did not want to freeze my bits off and needed a heat retaining zone around the entrance so my family could stay warm and our heating bills reasonable, I would also fill in the front porch area as this owner did. It is dreadful these taste police who place external appearance [which can be put back as it was any time] ahead of the physical needs of this family. Leave them alone - this is nothing more than small minded harassment.
greetings to you george (who hides his google profile) from Sydney NSW. I don't understand your comment. This home owner has not filled in the area of his front porch just tore it down. He knew when he bought the place that it was a heritage property and as such he has responsibilities to the house. If he didn't want to live up to those responsibilities he shouldn't have purchased the place!
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