The next time you drive or walk by Steven Barlow’s brick building on Railway Avenue, stop, look up and learn to appreciate.
Barlow, who operates a registered massage therapy clinic inside, sees the building as a piece of art.
He’s been steadily restoring it for the last couple of years since he bought it from Dr. Al-Katib in 2011. He says most people fail to notice its architectural features because it is so close to the street.
There are three brick pilasters at the top and two arches that gracefully cover the second-storey windows.
To get a better look, try stepping back, going as far as the railway tracks. From this distance take a trip back in time and imagine you are a passenger on a Canadian Northern Railway train, pulling into Davidson for the first time. It is from this perspective the building is meant to be viewed. Back then the railway, not the highway, was the town’s main street.
Brick buildings like Barlow’s, although modest in size, were built not just for function, but also for beauty. They were to impress people and to demonstrate that this is a progressive, prosperous community where a businessman could afford to erect a building that would last a century.
Now that it’s in Barlow’s care, it should last another 100 years.
The building on Railway Avenue was built in 1906 by general merchant W. J. Robinson and was known as the “Robinson Block”. It became a medical centre in 1908 when Dr. H. G. Craig arrived in Davidson and opened an office in the brick building. Ever since, the main floor served as a medical clinic until Dr. Al-Katib moved his practice to Saskatoon in 2001.
Barlow has invested much time and money restoring the solid brick building and its stone foundation.
The most recent phase of the work was completed last week when masons, who have spent most of the summer re-pointing the brick on the front wall, packed up their scaffolding and headed for home.
Barlow is pleased with their work.
Master Stone Masonry did the restoration.
Last week, master stonemason Wayne Kent was on the job.
“My great-grandfather was a stonemason, my grandfather was a stonemason. My father was a mason, but he figured there was a warmer way to make a living,” says Kent, who followed his grandfather into the family profession, which, he jokes, is also one of the world’s oldest. Kent is proud that his son Adam now owns the company, carrying on the family tradition.
He said he and Adam were splitting stones in a field and nearby was a house that stood on a stone foundation built by his great-grandfather and grandfather.
That day, “my son was the fifth generation stone mason splitting stone in that yard,” Kent says.
To read more please see the Sept. 16 print edition of The Davidson Leader.