Halifax Court House

The Italian Renaissance style building was designed by William Thomas, a Toronto architect who created prominent structures across Canada, and built by George Lang.

After fires razed many downtown buildings during that decade (three major fires destroyed many of the city’s wooden buildings between 1857 and 1861, officials abandoned plans for a wooden structure in favour of a more fireproof option made of stone, to protect the legal records it would house.

Halifax carpenter Henry Hill designed the building and Toronto-based architect William Thomas and Sons were retained and created a palatial structure in sandstone.

Made from brown stone from Mary's Point New Brunswick and Wallace sandstone from Cumberland County.

Interior architectural features to be noted are the pressed metal ceilings, the elaborate arched doorways, the wood paneling and plaster details in the courtrooms and the entry foyer and staircase.

[3] When originally constructed the Courthouse had two courtrooms, judicial robing and jury rooms, a law library and offices for the prothonotary and registrar of chancery.

[8] The inquiry's report of 4 February 1918 blamed Mont-Blanc's captain, Aimé Le Médec, the ship's pilot, Francis Mackey, and Commander F. Evan Wyatt, the Royal Canadian Navy's chief examining officer in charge of the harbour, gates and anti-submarine defences, for causing the collision.

[8] All three men were charged with manslaughter and criminal negligence at a preliminary hearing heard by Stipendiary Magistrate Richard A. McLeod, and bound over for trial.

However, a Nova Scotia Supreme Court justice, Benjamin Russell found there was no evidence to support these charges.

[8] Subsequent appeals to the Supreme Court of Canada (19 May 1919), and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London (22 March 1920), determined Mont-Blanc and Imo were equally to blame for navigational errors that led to the collision.

To this day ghosts of those executed haunt the attic of the courthouse where pieces of wood from the old public gallows are stored.

It is said that the wood is stored in a dark, eerie room in the upper story of the building are pieces of the old Halifax gallows, on which many of the city's more infamous criminals met their end long ago.