'Basically a house of cards': Magee house faces further collapse

The historic Magee House was in desperate need ofrepair, before the west wall suddenly collapsed into a heap of rubble last week.

"No two stones were held together by mortar," said John Cooke, an engineer the city contractedto evaluate the historic home.

"There was no mortar left. It's basically a house of cards, this building right now."

The owner of the building, Ovidio Sbrissa, had recently refilled the stones on the western wall with mortar, but it was only holding together the exterior part of the house.

Deeper inside the wallthere was nothing left but sand, Cooke said.

Rainfall may have spelled end

Years of precipitation had pushed down all of that sand to the base of the building.

Shortly before the whole wall came crashing down, there was a record rainfall that may have spelled the end of Magee House.

On top of those issues, the roof of the building is completely rotted.

"If I had inspected this building before I would have said it needed major conservation," Cooke said. "If we had started the conservation, once we started removing the mortar, we would have been into a major take-down and rebuild."

He suggested the building be demolished "before the snow flies, because the snow will take it down."

The other option is to dismantle the building and reconstruct it stone by stone.

'That was my castle in the city'

Sbrissa said he had done almost all the repairs the city ordered him to do on the building, and had more scheduled for the summer. That was, before one of the walls came off.

"It was difficult to see the things that were happening with the walls," he said. "So even though I was monitoring it every day, living there 24 hours a day, those things happen."

It's too early to say if the building is an example of demolition by neglect, according to heritage manager Court Curry.

Sbrissa believes it was nearby construction and excavations in the neighbourhood that destabilized the wall, not the rain.

He can't afford to rebuild the structure the way Cooke suggests. Instead he's hired his own engineer to contest Cooke's findings so that he can fix it up.

"That was my castle in the city," Sbrissa said. "I hope to be able to restore it."

He has until Aug. 20 to either take the building down or do permanent restoration work. Whatever he decides to do, the planmust be approved by the city's built heritage subcommittee.

If he does nothing, the city can do the work and try to have Sbrissa cover the cost.

Other historic homes to be inspected

Coun. Catherine McKenney called the loss of the building a tragedy, and asked what could be done before other historic buildings crumble.

The city now plans to hire a third party engineering firm to do careful inspections of 23 vacant historic buildings and determine if detailed engineering reports are required to be sure of their structural integrity.

The reports would be done at the owners' expense.