In the area of the Sobeys on Merrymeeting and Brother Rice Junior High School, framed by Newtown Road and Bonaventure Avenue, there is an area that was once known as McKie's Grove.

A 1751 map shows McKie's Grove divided into squares and lined by forests, then owned by garrison member John McKie. He would pass it on to his son Peter in 1773 and by 1811, Peter McKie was granted the right to construct a home in this grove. Peter did this at a site 600 feet west of the modern-day convent building, right in the middle of what would be Belvedere Cemetery today.

Hugh Alexander Emerson, a loyalist, lawyer and politician from Nova Scotia, purchased McKie's Grove from Peter McKie in 1821 and had his own house started by 1826. During the construction of the new Emerson home, Emerson and his family lived in the old McKie house, even after it suffered a partial fire.

(The McKie house would last until sometime between 1870 and 1893, in use as a home for the farmer who kept an eye on the entire property. It's most likely that the construction of the eventual 1885 Belvedere Orphanage coincided with the taking down of the old McKie home.)

Emerson's house was indicative of his wealth and prominence. It was large for the time, consisting of two kitchens, two living rooms, a dining room, study, and ten upstairs bedrooms. Emerson hailed from western Nova Scotia and it's believed his home was modelled after the opulent homes found there at the time.

(Having toured around western Nova Scotia and contemplated tick-infested grasses to check out rundown, giant homes there, I loved this connection.)

With Emerson building his house in 1826-27 and it still surviving today (it's the teal building on the left), his house is the third oldest building in historic St. John's. Only The Commissariat on Kings Bridge Road (1820) and the Anderson House (1804) just off of Signal Hill Road are older.

Bishop Michael Anthony Fleming would buy the house from Emerson in 1847. Fleming was the man responsible for two of Newfoundland's most recognized icons, the Newfoundland tricolour flag and the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. John's. Sadly, Fleming would only live in the Emerson house for 3 years, dying there on July 14, 1850. He left the house to the Sisters of Mercy, a religious group of Irish Catholic women.

Newfoundland was the first place the Sisters of Mercy expanded outside of the British Isles. Sending three sisters in 1842, two of them returned within six months, while Sister Francis Creedon was determined to succeed and eventually opened the Immaculate Conception Orphanage in 1854. This building soon proved inadequate and in 1859, one of the other sisters established another orphanage in the old Emerson house, after Bishop Fleming bequeathed it to them for that purpose. In honor of his goodwill, the house was then known as the St. Michael's Convent and Orphanage.

It didn't take long for the Sisters to outgrow this building as well, as there were far too many female orphans for the two-story home. In 1885, the Sisters would build a four-story, dedicated orphanage next door. This building would be known as the Belvedere Orphanage.

A place like St. John's should have an orphanage up on a conspicuous hill. How are you going to have a historic, hilly city like St. John's, without an old, daunting orphanage up on a hill?

Marquette Michigan gets this right and so should've St. John's. One thing that would hinder the orphanage's prospects was the Sisters leaving the building in 1967.

The Belvedere Orphanage building would then become a high school, the headquarters of the Roman Catholic School Board, rented space for a Catholic newspaper, and finally, home to MCP offices.

(MCP is Newfoundland and Labrador's provincial health care plan.)

The old orphanage only became provincial MCP offices because it survived early development plans.

In 1998, the $12-million Myles-Leger Subdivision was proposed for the property, which would flatten both buildings and build 114 townhouses at a cost of $105,000 each. The proposal went so far as being approved by city council, even as it included demolition of both the third oldest building in St. John's (St. Michael's Convent) and the architecturally important, recently in use Belvedere Orphanage. The developer was quoted at the time as saying that he "can’t see any other potential but in the land value."

Thank goodness the city realized their mistakes and this subdivision didn't totally go through. In 2002, Margaret Place was created and 32 townhouses and semi-detached homes were constructed, but this only led up to the door of St. Michael's Convent, it didn't actually take down any buildings.

(One building that was coincidentally lost was a handsome mansard-roofed cottage that used to house the Belvedere Orphanage groundskeeper. This place was set ablaze on Guy Fawkes night in 1999.)

The provincial government was still using the Orphanage for MCP offices in 2013.

It's then that a historical renovation was proposed for the property. The convent would become 7 residential units, the orphanage 8 units, and a new building would provide 35 units.

This renovation would never happen as the Belvedere Orphanage magically caught fire at four in the morning in the dead of winter on April 7th, 2017.

Nearby residents of Margaret Place, the King's Gate Condos and worried parents of students at Brother Rice, had all recently complained about the building being open to trespass and a hangout for local youths. On June 30, 2016, a caller to the city reported that kids had gained access and were smashing windows. Another call on July 14, 2016 reported that many windows had been broken in the last 48 hours.

I never walked through here when the orphanage was a glaringly abandoned building. There was one time I passed through and thought it might be abandoned, but there's plenty of buildings like that in St. John's and I never have enough time on the east coast of the island.

Therefore I was crestfallen when I heard of the fire and the planned quick demolition. Unbelievably though, the company that won the demolition contract failed to complete the job by September. The city had to go to the next highest bid, meanwhile, I advantageously found myself in St. John's in November.

Walking over from my friend's house, the tree-lined Belvedere Lane remains here, an arboreal laneway that's a historic relic from a different St. John's time (most tree-lined lanes have long been consumed by other development). I didn't even know this laneway existed, so I walked up the path that I always notice next to Brother Rice whenever I gawk at their handrails⁰.

The orphanage is only 100 feet behind Brother Rice Junior High, so I was there as soon as I left Bonaventure Avenue.

0 - I would like to ride my bike on these handrails.

While I was excited to see the orphanage, I should mention that not everyone would feel the same way. A 1997 segment on the CBC, reported by Dianne Fleet, focused on abuse at the orphanage. The group of producers contacted 43 women who stayed here during the 1950s, with 2 of them cherishing their time, 3 of them not commenting, and the remaining 38 saying they were abused by the nuns.

An investigation was subsequently opened, but police eventually decided to not lay criminal charges. There's a Belvedere facebook group with comments left in regards to this, where all of the investigators and police officers were male. The women now living in Ontario were visited by a team of men and the women in Newfoundland went to police headquarters and a room filled with all male police. Some of the women express frustration that they couldn't find just one female police officer to make it more comfortable to talk about the abuse.

At the same time, the facebook group seems to have more members who look back fondly on their time at Belvedere. Some of them admit there was punishment, some of them admit there even was abuse, but there's still others who don't seem to mention this and only talk about good times with the girls at the orphanage.

If we throw out the dark past, this building has plenty of reasons to be preserved architecturally. It stands as one of only two Second Empire, masonry institutional buildings left in St. John's (along with the Benevolent Irish Society building). It's also part of a religious historic district rivaled only by the seminary and cathedral in Quebec City. Here in St. John's you have all in close proximity, the Belvedere Orphanage, Presentation Convent and adjoining school, the Bishop's Palace and Library, Mount St. Francis Monastery, and of course, the Cathedral.

The building also incorporates elaborate Second Empire features like quoins, hooded dormers (now charred) and best of all, cast iron window hoods that vary by floor. Other buildings in St. John's have window hoods, but Belvedere's are the finest example in all of Newfoundland and Labrador. The first floor features ornamental flowers along the lintel with a Maltese cross design in the centre.

The second floor hoods are curved to match the second-story windows. They have a similar burst of flowers along the lintel, but with a keystone design at centre instead of the Maltese Cross.

You can see these cast iron window hoods being smashed with a building eater in the following demolition video: https://www.fb.com/watch/?v=10156047629927174

For how much I criticize the demolition by neglect of the orphanage, as well as the lack of any historic preservation of the charred ruins, on the other hand I have to admit the convent next door looked good and well-secured. Old photos show the convent covered in white vinyl siding and boarded up, but nowadays it looks great and I was half worried it was occupied as I crept around.

It's also spectacular that the orphanage fire was fortuitously blowing from the south that night, helping the firefighters keep the flames away from the 1826 convent.

One heartwarming story I came across about this place involved the "American Santa".

Earl and Emily Chilton now live in Bowling Green Virginia, but in the 1950s they were stationed at Fort Pepperrell, the U.S. Army Base that used to be in St. John's. Losing their baby boy in 1953, they started to periodically visit five local orphanages and decided that these kids needed their Christmas brightened by a visit from Santa.

Chilton then had some of the local orphans come to Fort Pepperrill and perform a concert. During this concert, Chilton took up a collection to support their Christmas plans, receiving a whooping $5400, or about $51000 in today's money.

The U.S. Government then sent Chilton to New York City on a shopping spree with orders to buy 650 presents. Come Christmas Eve, Chilton and five different Santas then went to all of the orphanages, woke up the children and called them one-by-one up to the stage to come get their present.

In a 2012 CBC article about former Mount Cashel Orphanage survivors meeting and thanking Earl Chilton, one of the Mount Cashel boys says he still didn't think his name was ever going to be called, even as everyone else was receiving a gift from Santa.

Over at the Belvedere Orphanage, the American Santa brought bicycles that the girls learned to ride up and down Bonaventure Avenue. A great picture of the girls and Earl Chilton is found in the Belvedere Orphanage facebook group.

A lot of the posts in that facebook group reminisce about trying to slide down this bannister when the nuns weren't looking, where sometimes the girls were caught and left wondering how the nuns had eyes in the back of their heads.

The Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador report from the year 2000 states that "also of note are the arched coloured glass windows, particularly the Palladio-inspired windows of the central tower on the north face of the building."

As I stood on the second floor and looked up at the former staircase, I would say those windows are long gone.

In fact, there wasn't much left at all inside. A lot of the rooms looked like the dark, drywall interior from a few pictures up. And when you also add in the fact that I was totally unprepared without a flashlight, I could only really explore the second floor areas where the windows weren't covered with plywood. This left little to see.

The ruins of the Belvedere Orphanage were taken down by a second company on the early Monday morning of December 4th, about a month after I visited.

Following the demolition by neglect, I wonder if we'll get more condos that look like Margaret Place or maybe something a little closer to the convent. Then again, maybe the developer won't think it's worth the historic preservation effort anymore for just one building and will flatten the convent as well. Time will tell!

We went downtown for a drink after and ended up at Fiddlers Pub, which was a funny place to land after an evening of documenting a disappearing building.

I always wanted to come to Fiddlers because of how it looks on the outside as an authentic dive, plus St. John's feels like the type of place where strange hole-in-the-walls are worth seeking out. This isn't to mention the Google reviews, which all herald Fiddlers as somewhere you can get a real Newfoundland pub experience with friendly and amicable locals, even if you won't understand the conversation very long after beers are consumed. The overhang outside advertises, "A Friendly Bunch...We're Here For the Beer!" along with a chalk signboard advertising the cheapest and coldest beer downtown.

Rosie couldn't believe I'd never been, so after my mentioning it, we were off to the end of George Street and through the door into 1 Queen Street.

Fiddlers would disappear in the same timeframe, only outlasting the Belvedere Orphanage by a handful of months. This is why I say it was a funny, or moreso appropriate, place to visit on a day of disappearing institutions.

While historic buildings are being removed for condos in Georgestown, off of Kings Bridge Road and Waterford Bridge Road; downtown is being infested with Boston Pizzas and Jack Astor's, while rising rents squeeze out unique, homegrown places. You can't stop change though as people love chains and quick bucks.

I'm so happy that I thought about stepping into Fiddlers for a couple Indias.