Long & Bisby Building

828 Sanatorium Road Hamilton, Ontario

CURRENT OWNER: Valery Homes

BUILDING HISTORY:

Good News! The Long & Bisby Building is no longer a Building at Risk and was designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in November 2020: Designation By-law 20-036. The building was erected in 1920 as a nurses’ residence on the Brow Site of the Mountain Sanatorium, which opened in 1906 on a 96-acre parcel of donated farmland. It was built by the Hamilton Health Association in response to a global tuberculosis pandemic in the early 1900s and played an important role in treating WWI veterans who contracted TB while serving overseas. At its peak, the sanatorium had expanded from the 1916 Brow Building to a complex housing more than 700 patients and 450 staff in numerous buildings spread over 250 acres. By the early 1930s, it was the largest facility in Canada for the treatment of tuberculosis. 

One of several staff residences built in the wooded area on the east side of the Brow Site, the Long & Bisby Building was named after W.D. Long and Mrs. George H. Bisby, donors of the original parcel of land.  The only survivor, it is a notable example of an institutional adaptation of the Beaux-Art Classical style designed by Hamilton architect W.P. Witton. The earlier and brilliant partnership of Stewart & Witton (1904-17) has been documented by Sarah Shehan and Rob Hamilton and made available on this new website.    

With the decline of tuberculosis in the mid-20^th century, the “San” (as it was known to locals) found a new lease on life in 1961 as a general hospital, which merged in 1979 with McMaster Hospitals to eventually become the Chedoke Hospital of Hamilton Health Sciences.  In recent history, its functions were gradually transferred to other facilities and the Chedoke campus was closed in 2014.  The Brow Site was first sold to a developer in 2006 and then to Valery Homes in 2012.  In 2014-15, all buildings except for the Long & Bisby were progressively demolished.  

In 2018, to the dismay of heritage advocates, the City of Hamilton received from Valery Homes a demolition application.  However, Hamilton City Council at its September 26 meeting struck a deal with the developer to defer a designation recommendation by the Hamilton Municipal Heritage Committee (HMHC) in exchange for a delay of demolition and an agreement to submit an independent heritage impact assessment of the Brow Site, by then recognized as the Chedoke Browlands Cultural Landscape. 

Unfortunately, the Long & Bisby Building was not adequately secured and suffered considerable damage by vandals/arsonists over the course of 2020.  In mid-May 2020, Diane Dent, Board member of the Hamilton Mountain Heritage Society and Vice-Chair of the ACO Hamilton Region Branch, in a letter addressed to the Mayor, Ward and adjacent Ward Councillors, and heritage colleagues, called for immediate action to prevent a catastrophic outcome. Then in October 2020, Valery Homes unexpectedly announced a change of plan for the Long & Bisby Building, now to be repurposed as its corporate headquarters.  Vice-president Paul Valeri expressed a new appreciation of for the building’s heritage assets and adaptive reuse potential.  In November 2020, Valery Homes agreed to proceed with heritage designation for both the Long & Bisby Building and the nearby 1953 Cross of Lorraine, a prominent landmark and tangible reminder of the site’s original purpose.  With this protection in place, the HMHC will be able to oversee what is hoped to be a sensitive restoration and successful rehabilitation of the former nurses’ residence. Heritage permits have now been approved for new windows and security measures.   

DETAILS OF THREAT:
The owner, Valery Homes, had allowed the Long & Bisby Building to deteriorate and taken no measures to prevent access and vandalism – a clear case of “demolition by neglect”.  However, this scenario changed for the better with the October 2020 announcement that the building was to be adaptively re-used as its corporate headquarters and that the designation recommendation made by the HMHC in September 2018 would now be supported.