What if Waterford Manor, Richmond Cottage, and Belvedere orphanages could have been digitally preserved before they were destroyed?
What if their exact dimensions and details were recorded as historical record, with possibilities for virtual tours, or even replicas, long after the buildings are gone?
When Waterford Manor was demolished in October, College of the North Atlantic (CNA) students Chad Corbett and Aimee Snelgrove were crushed.
The third-year geomatics students were hoping to get in there before it was torn down because they wanted to create a 3-D scan of the heritage home.
The students planned to use laser scanners to create exact measurements of the home. The data could then be used to create 3-D images or even virtual tours.
“It got knocked down before we could,” said Corbett, disappointedly.
“You can either have somebody do some measured drawings, in which you go measure everything — and that would be really time-consuming for a building like that — or, you can digitally scan it, which gives you highly accurate photographs and documentation.”
Jerry Dick, executive director at Heritage NL
Instead, the pair are scanning the Commercial Chambers Building on Water Street. It’s owned by Peg Norman and houses her stores, The Travel Bug and The Bee’s Knees.
The laser scans are essentially a modern, high-tech way to preserve the exact details of the masonry heritage building.
For Jerry Dick, executive director at Heritage NL, such scans are important historical records.
“It’s a very detailed documentation of a building if it ever burns or something happens to it,” he said.
“You can either have somebody do some measured drawings, in which you go measure everything — and that would be really time-consuming for a building like that — or, you can digitally scan it, which gives you highly accurate photographs and documentation.”
Similar work was done on the Basilica last year when the Basilica Heritage Foundation had a company come in from Nova Scotia to do the work.
Student projects designed to give back to community
Now, CNA has a laser scanner and a drone, as well as students who have a final project they must complete in order to graduate.
Blair Bridger, a geomatics instructor at CNA, got an idea.
He said the students are traditionally encouraged to use their skills to do something good for the community with their final project.
“Over the last few years we’ve lost so many of these buildings, and there’s always this kick-up over it and trying to preserve it, and when we got the laser scanner ... I t’s one of the first things I thought to be able to use it for.”
Bridger gave the class a list of ideas for their projects, including scanning heritage buildings, and Corbett and Snelgrove were hooked on that idea.
“There’s a lot of heritage buildings here in Newfoundland that just get torn down without anyone being able to preserve it,” said Snelgrove. “I thought it was a good opportunity to be able to try to help out.”
The two students approached Dick, and he paired them up with Norman because he knew the building needed restoration work.
Norman said the scan will give her information she can use to complete the “significant” restoration work that needs to be done.
“We’ll be able to hopefully come up with a very concrete plan as to how we go about doing that work to sustain the building, and bring back some of the original elements,” she said.
Dick said there’s an old stone facade in the line of the building which looks as if it was meant to be walked through at one time.
He said he’s been trying to figure it out, and that perhaps seeing the digital scan will help to understand it better.
Bell Island mine also scanned
Meanwhile, Bridger hopes to have geomatics students scan heritage buildings as a part of their final project every year.
He currently has another student who is scanning the inside of the Number 2 Mine on Bell Island. Once completed, the scan can be used to advertise the tourist attraction.
Both Bridger and Dick hope to further the collaboration between Heritage NL and CNA to continue documenting other buildings.
Dick said students could scan buildings to aid in planning restoration work, or if a building is past the point of being restored, students can digitally document it before it’s demolished.
“We could probably keep their students pretty busy,” he said.
Twitter: @juanitamercer_
