It took someone like Victor Syperek to see the potential in the rundown, three-storey townhouse just up from the Halifax waterfront. Someone with the design sense and know-how to get the job done.
When he first walked into the place eight years ago, it was a rooming house, home-sweet-home for up to a dozen people at a time. It was so crowded that one of the residents had a bedroom in the pantry. The living room ceiling had collapsed, there were holes punched into the walls and junk was piled everywhere. Adding to the horror was the colour scheme of aquamarine and pink.
And yet there were hints of former glory in every room: the pull-bell system to summon maids, the 3.5-metre (11.5-foot) ceilings, the ornamental plaster ceiling medallions and wide crown mouldings. Syperek could “see through to its soul” and imagine the place as it once was, minus the grime, layers of wallpaper inside and aluminum siding outside.
It would simply take some time and imagination to bring back the grand old dandy of Morris Street. “What I tried to do is find the heart of the building and work on bringing back the pulse,” says Syperek, a Halifax businessman and bar baron. “My aim is to build on history while keeping it comfortably modern.”
He worked on the house for two years until, tired of paying both a mortgage and rent, he decided to move in. It’s been a work-in-progress ever since. With a background in theatre design and landscaping, Syperek is no stranger to revitalization projects. In 1995, he brought laidback cool to staid old Argyle Street, in the heart of downtown Halifax, when he opened the Economy Shoe Shop, a popular restaurant and bar. Also known as the Shoe Shop, the Shoe Box or just the Shoe, the hipster hangout takes its name from an old neon sign that Syperek rescued from the dump and hung up outside.
These days, Syperek and business partner David Henry operate the Shoe, the Seahorse, the Backstage, the Belgian Bar and the Diamond, all cheek-by-jowl on Argyle Street, and the Press Gang, an upscale restaurant housed in one of the city’s oldest buildings (circa 1759) around the corner on Prince Street.
You can spot Syperek’s creative touch elsewhere in Halifax. He made the newsboy sign outside The Daily Grind on Spring Garden Road and the boxer sculpture at Palooka’s Gym on the Bedford Highway. He loves the city’s artsy vibe: the narrow houses butted up against the sidewalk, the funky neighbourhoods, the historic streets that run between the Halifax Citadel and the waterfront.
It’s that sense of colour and vibrancy that attracted him to the Morris Street townhouse. Built in 1861 in the Halifax-House style, characterized by its gable roof, bracketted eaves and Scottish dormers, the house is officially called Almon Black House on its blue heritage-designation plaque.
On a visit to the Nova Scotia Archives to learn more about the house, Syperek discovered a reference to it in an early Halifax newspaper in 1859. “Luxury houses built to suit owner,” promised the ad. And while he didn’t find any shoes inside the walls during renovations (a superstitious practice thought to ward off evil spirits), he did find a box of love letters tucked under one of the floor boards. “I think love letters are a good omen,” Syperek says.
On the exterior, Syperek stripped off the aluminum siding and put on cedar shingles. In dressing its stately facade, he took his cues from other buildings in the downtown neighbourhood, adding decorative trim and corbels to the windows and a pretty portico over the front door. He painted the house in colours from a historical palette: pale yellow for the shingles, a mossy green for the trim and terracotta red for the front door.
Massive black urns—they’re actually light-weight fiberglass versions from Costco—sit on either side of the front door, providing an elegant welcome. A wrought-iron railing leads down to a second entrance below street level. Full of fanciful loops and curlicues, the railing was inspired by the exuberant fences Syperek notices while travelling in Europe. Scott Hamlin of Scotian Ironworks in New Ross, N.S. created the railing. “I came up with the design and he hammered it out,” says Sypererk. Sculptor and welder Cal Lane, a grad of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD) and former artist-in-residence at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, made the lacy metal filigrees in the posts.
Through the heavy metal gate and down the stone steps is the original servants’ entrance to the house. It now leads into an open-concept kitchen and eating area, a homey, relaxed space that shows off its age in the timber-beamed ceiling and wood-and-stone floor. Thick slabs of pine with the bark still attached and varnished to a high gloss are used for the wide window sills, countertops, benches and a large table. Syperek got the pine boards from Maine, “where trees actually grow to 30 to 40 inches [76 to 101 cm] in diameter,” he says. He made the entire kitchen to his specifications with help from Halifax carpenter Matt Klug.
Syperek designed the kitchen with the idea that cooking is a spectator sport. He encourages guests to sit on bar stools and chat with him while he works his magic at the big, black commercial stove. They can also relax in front of the fireplace in the adjoining room, which has the feeling of an old English pub. He even put a window between the two rooms to keep the conversation flowing. “This is such a great house for entertaining and that’s what I’m all about,” he says.
This isn’t the first time he’s designed such a room. Back when he was a teenager, he remembers how his dad let him loose on the basement of the family home is Oshawa, Ont. “I made hand-hewn beams with an axe,” he recalls. “The place looked like the inside of a Tudor castle. It’s where I used to hang out with my friends, you know, to drink and play music.”
Through the 1980s, he put his handyman skills to use as set designer at Festival Antigonish. “I actually started out as an actor and quickly realized I’d be better behind the scenes,” he says. Before getting into the bar business, he worked as the art director/prop wrangler for TV shows like Codco and Fraggle Rock, touring productions like the Cape Breton Summertime Revue and movies including Cadillac Girls, The Donald Marshall Story and The Magic of Marciano. He still enjoys swinging a hammer and just returned from a 12-day trip to Guatemala where he built concrete block houses with Habitat for Humanity.
His set-design training came in handy when renovating the first floor dining room, parlour and elegant staircase to the upper floors. He pulled up the pink linoleum, patched the ceiling patched and installed new double-hung windows from Marvin Windows and Doors. He brought in a crew of students one summer to strip the paint and refinish the balusters, risers and staircase treads. “It took them a couple of months to get to the top,” he says with a chuckle. He found he didn’t have a lot of energy left to refinish the wide, wooden baseboards and ceiling mouldings that were caked with layers of paint. So instead, he applied a honey-brown faux finish, making them look like the wood that was no doubt underneath all those layers.
Like the kitchen, he designed the first floor for entertaining. Syperek loves throwing dinner parties and having friends drop over to play music. He’s famous for his Christmas bashes and also has been known to host charity fundraisers.
As a sponsor for the Atlantic Film Festival, he has the fashionable black-clad crowd over for a gathering every September. “It’s a great event that allows us to bring together a diverse group of people attending the festival, the film and music people,” says Gregor Ash, executive director of the Atlantic Film Festival. “Victor’s place is a great venue for this—casual, full of character and equipped with a professional kitchen.”
The enormous oak billiard table in the dining room converts into a table that seats 24 people comfortably. In the corner of the room, there’s a bar, outfitted from an antique pump organ that Syperek “took the guts out of” and repurposed. And, in the adjoining room, a piano player makes himself at home at the Heintzman & Co. grand piano.
Even when there’s no party planned, you get the feeling one could break out at any moment. There are instruments scattered here and there—an electric guitar on a sage-green armchair, a stack of fiddles on a china cabinet and, of course, the grand piano by the window overlooking the street.
There’s no set colour scheme to the space; the dark red linen drapes, the pale-yellow upholstered dining room chairs and brown leather sofa sit together like old friends. Similarly, it’s hard to pin down the Syperek style to any one era. It’s Old World, lived-in and masculine. It’s whatever works, like the chic 1920s Parisian chandeliers he found in a Toronto curiosity shop and the pair of ornate-framed mirrors from Winners. “I never sat down and thought about buying furniture for this place,” he says. “Pieces just kind of find me. But it might be nice one day to get new stuff.”
He collects musical instruments, beer steins and original art, including paintings of forlorn toys by his daughter Ginevra Syperek, a recent graduate of NSCAD in Halifax; finely detailed etchings of the Antigonish area by his sister Anna Syperek; and large-scale oils of street scenes by Halifax artist Michael Lewis. A magnificent nude portrait by artist Jade Hirtle, originally from Bridgewater, fits snugly between two windows, and a full-length portrait of his son Jack (bassist with the rock band The Trews) by Ginevra hangs in the front foyer. “I have art that I like,” Syperek says, walking up the staircase which doubles as a gallery. “I don’t collect anything because it’s going to be valuable.”
He also loves flowers and greenery. There’s a veritable jungle of tropical and local plants in the front vestibule that will migrate outdoors in warmer weather. A keen horticulturalist, Syperek extends the living areas of his townhouse with two outdoor rooms. Beyond the downstairs kitchen, he’s dug out an eight-by-eight-metre space in the backyard and built a slate-lined patio. And, at the very top of the house, he’s fashioned a roof-top garden, with an entryway from the master bedroom on the third floor. It offers breathtaking views of Halifax. In one direction, you can see a container ship and tugboats in the harbour and McNabs Island. In another direction, there are the spires of St. Matthew’s Church and St. Mary’s Basilica.
In the summer, Syperek grows vegetables and fresh herbs for the kitchen, along with fragrant plants like nasturtiums, oleander, hibiscus and sunflowers that give the bees a workout to fly so high. In warm weather, it’s his favourite place to sit and read before heading to work in the morning. And it’s where all the parties end up too. “With its view of the city’s rooftop profile, it just feels like something out of Mary Poppins,” says Ash. “It really is a little oasis.”