National School Building - Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Posted by: 
neoc1
N 44° 38.875 W 063° 34.517
20T E 454382 N 4944000
The National School Building is now occupied by the Five Fishermen's Restaurant. It's location is listed as 1744 Argyle Street in the Halifax Regional Municipality Registered Heritage Property listing.
Waymark Code: WM16YWT
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada
Date Posted: 11/02/2022
Views: 2
The building was first built in 1817 as the National School by the parishioners of St Paul’s Church of England, which is located across the street from the former National School. The mission of the National School was to promote religious obligations and to educate the poor. It was the first school in Canada to offer a free education. Thus the building is listed as protected Heritage site.
Additional History:
Dalhousie College took over the responsibilities of the school and the National School changed hands to become the Halifax School of Art. When the school moved to a new location to become the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design the building was acquired by the Snow family. This is where the morbid history of the building begins.
"There is a seafood place near Halifax Harbour that was once home to the city’s oldest mortuary. It’s now the Five Fishermen Restaurant, but was once Snow & Company Undertakers, who tended to the bodies of not one, but two major tragedies of the early 20th century.
In the morning hours of April 15, 1912, 350 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, the R.M.S Titanic went down. Rescue operations took place out of Halifax, the largest nearby port, and many of the recovered bodies were brought to Snow’s funeral home, including John Jacob Astor IV, the richest of the ship’s passengers." (
visit link)
The aforementioned link provides visual proof of the operation of the building as a mortuary. It shows coffins in front of the building in the aftermath of the Halifax Explosion of 1917 which killed 1,782 people. This was the second time the building was used in the aftermath of a disaster.