Military Headquarters - Barrington Street
On Barrington Street at the foot of Spring Garden Road, sandwiched between St. Matthew’s Church and the former Academy of Music, stood the Victorian home of Robert Grieve Noble (1792-1872), founder of Robert Noble & Sons, hardware and general merchants. This 2½ story building in the Georgian Colonial style had a ground floor and first floor along with a basement and an attic, for a total of four useable levels. Topped by a gable roof with three Scottish dormers, the house measured 40 feet square and had a central entrance with a portico on the front; it was clad in clapboard. There was a semi-circular front drive way, accessed off Barrington Street through two pairs of stone gateposts, as well as external sheds and, at the back, a garden and a coach house with stables.
Between 1862 and 1868 the building served as the location of the headquarters for British Imperial Forces, with offices for the General Officer Commanding, the Assistant and Deputy Assistant Adjutants General, the Assistant Military Secretary, various Chief Staff Officers, along with clerks and messengers. After 1868 it became the headquarters of Military District 6 covering the three Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. It maintained that designation after the British Army departed Halifax in 1906, until 1914 when Canadian Military District 6 became 6th Division.
As a Canadian Army headquarters during the First World War (1914-18), the building housed the offices of the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 6th Division, along with the General Staff Officer (GSO) of the Halifax Fortress, the General Staff Officer (GSO) of 6th Division, the Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General (AA & QMG) and their supporting staff personnel. 6th Division reverted to being Military District 6 in April 1916, and in the following year, 1917 the headquarters moved to Royal Artillery Park, to the building currently occupied by 36 Canadian Brigade Group Headquarters. The Barrington Street building was used as a military pay office from 1920 to 1927.
The headquarters building was demolished around 1929 along with the adjacent Academy of Music (by then the Majestic Music Hall), and the Capitol Theatre was built on the site, completed in 1930.
The Capitol Theatre was replaced by the Maritime Centre in 1974. From that year until the Maritime Centre was renovated in 2021, a bronze plaque was mounted on a low cement wall facing Barrington Street, which marked the entrance to the circular driveway in front of the old headquarters building. Two granite War Department survey markers flanked the plaque, indicating the boundary of the property. The remaining single stone gatepost that still stands immediately to the right of the Maritime Centre was previously part of the entryway to the Noble house and the military headquarters; it can be seen on the earlier photographs of the headquarters building. This gatepost is all that remains today of the Noble property and the headquarters that occupied the Barrington Street site for nearly half a century.