By Matthew Van Dongen
The historic Willowbank estate is about to undergo emergency surgery, one block of Queenston sandstone at a time.
A new $100,000 federal grant announced Tuesday will kickstart "urgent" structural repairs at the 176-year-old Queenston mansion, including the painstaking dismantling and rebuilding of two buckling stone walls.
Willowbank will match the funding from the National Historic Sites cost-sharing program to also replace a rotting, falling-apart main stairway into the 19th century estate home and install a sprinkler system for safety reasons.
"This is a turning point for Willowbank today," said Julian Smith, the site's executive director. "This funding allows our key structural problems to be addressed.… This is a vote of confidence in Willowbank."
The crumbling hilltop mansion is a national historic site, but also home to the Willowbank School of Restoration Arts, whose students and graduates will help in the restoration work.
Smith said the new school is flourishing, but major renovations to the property are "frozen" due to the collapsing stonework and need for expensive safety upgrades.
Smith called the federal grant a needed kickstart to an envisioned $1.8-million facelift for the entire estate property.
Some of the problems are more recent, like the rotting, hole-filled staircase leading up and under the grand pillars of the original main entrance.
The lack of a sprinkler system, however, has caused the school difficulties from the get-go, program director Shelley Huson said.
Fire-safety requirements mean the top floor of the mansion is off-limits to the public, she said, and the school is limited to 12 students in the building, even though more have applied to join the program.
Perhaps the most critical problem is the buckling wall of stone, which bows out alarmingly from the side of the building like a pot belly.
Large wood beams have been nailed across the stones to temporarily shore up the wall, but Huson said masons will have to carefully remove, and label, each and every sandstone block prior to a rebuild.
A former school graduate and mason will help co-ordinate the work, she said.
"It's quite the puzzle, and you don't want to end up with an extra piece at the end as if you were building (a piece of furniture) from IKEA," Huson said with a laugh.
The old estate was almost sold for use as a conference centre a decade ago, then later survived a demolition plan with the help of a group of Queenston conservationists led by the late Laura Dodson.
"It was in private hands for many years and there were people who wondered whether the building was even going to survive," said Niagara Falls Conservative MP Rob Nicholson, who announced the funding on behalf of Jim Prentice, the minister responsible for Parks Canada.
"The fact that it has is something for everyone to celebrate."
Nicholson said he has a personal attachment to the historic site and promised his "continuing support" for the rehabilitation effort.
"I think it's very important to the heritage of this country," he said Tuesday.
Huson said preliminary work on the buckling stone wall could begin within the next few weeks, but may be slowed by an archeological assessment at the old mansion's foundations.
Source: The St. Catharines Standard