156 St. Paul Street

St. Catharines, Ontario

The project started out as search for new

office space for two architectural design

firms already established in the downtown

area of the City of St. Catharines. The overriding

desire of the firms was to seize the opportunity to

hopefully encourage the improvement of the street

scape of St. Paul Street through the restoration of

156 St. Paul Street. It was hoped that the project

would illustrate to existing and prospective building

owners along the street that rather than being a

street without a future it is actually one of great

possibilities and that restoration of the existing

building stock is an economically viable solution

and that businesses could thrive there. All too

often these days owners and developers choose

to tear down and build new rather than restore

and in the case of St. Catharines, St. Paul Street

such an approach would be a shame. St. Paul

Street is an historically significant collection of

19^th century buildings along a uniquely curved

carriageway and we believe that it’s existing built

resources must be restored and preserved.

Subsequently our goal was to reconstruct the

building’s facade which had been “Modernized”

in the late 1960′s. 

Winner of the 2008 Niagara Community Urban Design Awards for “Facade Improvement”