Samuel Cunard and His Upper Water Street Warehouse.
The leading entrepreneur to emerge in Halifax immediately after 1815 was Samuel Cunard. Born in Halifax in 1787 of Loyalist artisan stock, he worked first as a clerk and then at age twenty-one formed a partnership with his father in the wholesale trade. Ambition, complemented by good luck and access to government patronage, allowed Cunard to lay the basis of his fortune during Halifax's wartime boom. After 1815 he diversified from the import-export trade into lumbering, shipbuilding, coal mining, real estate speculation, whaling, banking, marine insurance and steam navigation. His career climaxed in 1840 when he secured an imperial subsidy which allowed him to begin operating steam packets across the Atlantic.
The structure shown here was erected by Cunard around 1823. Built of ironstone it had what one observer described as a "lugubrious and prisonlike appearance." Rain water, reacting with the ore in the walls, created long streaks of rust. Nevertheless, such buildings had durability. Cunard's warehouse was demolished in 1917. Other warehouses built in this era have survived and today anchor a restored waterfront business complex. Their presence testifies to Halifax's rise as a commercial metropolis early in the nineteenth century.
