Built heritage struggles with accessibility

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The earliest portion of Osgoode Hall, opened in 1832 as the headquarters for the Law Society of Upper Canada, is an elegant, imposing, architectural delight. Designed by John Ewart (with Dr. William Warren Baldwin, renovations by Henry Bower Lane in 1844), the highly symmetrical palladian/neoclassical building at Queen Street West and University Avenue was declared a National Historic Site in 1979.

However, those with mobility challenges – whether a wheelchair or visual impairment – have found the building imposing in an altogether different way. In 2008, a renovation to provide barrier-free access was announced, despite the City of Toronto’s Heritage Preservation Services protesting that it would have a “negative impact” on the building’s heritage value.

It needn’t have worried: Taylor Hazell Architects crafted an elegant and symmetrical solution that adds a new layer to the building’s storied history. By raising the entrance landing to door height and adding twin, gently sloping paths on either side, the visual impact is almost non-existent. To demarcate what’s new and what’s old, the ramps are clad in a darker stone, and windows have been added on the landing to show what’s underneath.

Daniel Luong and Jesse Klimitz, from the architectural and design firm BDP Quadrangle’s accessibility practice, Human Space, recently included Osgoode Hall in Heritage for All, a 220-page research study for Accessibility Standards Canada that took three years to complete. The document, say the authors, is meant to identify “current barriers to accessing federal heritage buildings” in order to present “a set of recommendations and design solutions appropriate in heritage contexts.”

“This is one of those great balancing acts,” says Mr. Luong as we admire Osgoode Hall. “It’s a sloped walkway so that it’s accessible for persons using an accessibility device, but within a gentler slope you don’t need things like handrails that might take away or distract from the façade.”

As we climb the stairs to the landing, the little windows come into view: they show how the building met the ground before the renovation, and that the original stairs are still intact.

Not all heritage buildings enjoy that amount of space. Postal Station A in Saint John (1913) sits directly on the sidewalk and both entrance doors were five steps up. The solution? Drop one of the doors to street-level and add a heritage-style transom above it in order to preserve the look of the original façade as much as possible. The report, however, suggested that the interior has become a “somewhat complex configuration of ramps and stairs.”

In other cases, achieving accessibility while respecting architectural attributes results in the front door getting placed on the back burner … forever. At the National Assembly of Quebec (1877-1886), the solution was to dig in front of the building for a subterranean, modern, glassy entrance that, from a distance, disappears completely. At cSpace Marda Loop in Calgary (a former school from 1912), the solution was to heavily alter the small west wing in order to leave the main façade and larger east wing unaltered. Similarly, in St. John’s at the neoclassical Colonial Building (1847), the impressive façade and its many steps were left alone; all visitors must now enter via a side door beside the parking lot.

The report includes 15 other case studies – including seven in the U.K. and three in the U.S. – to show what is possible. The U.K., says Mr. Luong, is ahead of Canada in this field.

“What types of standards are out there that address heritage and accessibility in the same document? We typically found that they are quite segregated, so documents either focus on heritage, or on accessibility,” he says. “There’s not a lot of integration between the two standards in Canada.”

The team, which also included accessibility auditor Michael Philpott, the KITE Research Institute (a member of University Health Network), heritage specialist (and architect) Philip Goldsmith, Easter Seals and the Canadian Disability Foundation (and others) conducted online surveys, workshops, site visits and did a peer review to complete the study.

Their conclusions, broadly speaking, were as follows: A balance must be achieved between accessibility and a building’s heritage attributes. Sometimes, a great deal of creativity must be employed. Accessibility planning must “consider the entire journey sequence, from planning a trip to arriving, entering, using, and exiting a heritage building.” Those working on solutions should include “people with disabilities or their direct engagement.” And, where original features are altered, as at Osgoode Hall, they should be “documented … where they are concealed or removed” … or, even better, placed behind windows.

All very noble and completely necessary. But whether federal, provincial, city or privately owned, there is still a long way to go. Crossing the street to examine the city-owned Campbell House Museum (built 1822, 160 Queen St. W.), we note the uneven cobblestone right from the sidewalk, which would certainly trip up visually impaired people (and underlines that landscape architects should be involved as well). And while the front door is clearly not accessible, there is no signage to indicate what to do. The rear seems impenetrable as well, but a later visit to their website tells us a ramp to the backdoor is available.

We walk north to inspect the Canada Life building (built 1931, 330 University Ave.) and its three main entrances. We note a ramp built on what was a piece of lawn on the south side. However, when we look closer, we see a maintenance person on a ladder changing a light bulb. Since he is blocking the ramp, we note that here, the “redundancy” of placing a ramp on the north side would have solved the problem.

Crossing the street to take a look at the Bank of Canada building at 250 University Ave. (1957), we spot a wheeled garbage can blocking the ramp.

“If you can’t get into the building, you can’t use the building,” Mr. Klimitz says. “So that’s really where the buck stops.”