Preservationists are drawing a line in the sand in defence of Stratford’s historic first hospital, demanding a reprieve for the yellow-brick Victorian building hospital administrators want to flatten to make way for new development. 

Built in 1891, the building was designed by George Durand, the London, Ont., architect credited as the mind behind some of southwestern Ontario’s most iconic Victorian buildings, including the Aolean Hall and Waverly Manor in London, as well as dozens of churches and town halls across the peninsula, from Petrolia, to Mitchell, to Lobo.

Preservationists argue the old Stratford hospital is architecturally significant, not just for the fact it was the community’s first, but because the old building includes the latest technological innovation of the time — ventilation spires to allow fresh air to flow directly to patients at a time when germ theory wasn’t the dominant medical dogma.

Retired architect Robert Lemon, who is also a board member of the Stratford chapter of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, said the vacant building with its peeling paint and an exposed roof has “tremendous potential” if rehabilitated as a clinic, hospice, or hotel — for families visiting sick relatives at their bedside. 

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