Sweet Basil Building
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The Sweet Basil Building, also known as the P. Martin Liquors Building, was a heritage building on the waterfront of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada which was demolished by Halifax developer Armour Group in November 2008 as part of the company's controversial Waterside Centre Development proposal.
The building, known by the name of its last occupant, a Halifax restaurant, was built in the 1840s. It was a three-story wood-frame building, the last wooden building on Halifax's Water Street and was typical of the “Sailortown” buildings which served seafarer's in Nova Scotia's Age of Sail.[1] It stood beside the oldest storefront in Halifax, the 1820 Harrington MacDonald-Briggs Building [2] and faced the preserved warehouses and shipping offices of Privateer's Wharf, a National Historic Site. The building served as a sailor's boarding house, liquor store, confectionery, grocery store and restaurant.[3] The building was rented to a successful Halifax restaurant but Armour group argued that it was uneconomical because the upper floors were not suited for profitable modern office space.[4] The last tenant, the Sweet Basil Bistro, reluctantly left the building after 19 years on the site due to the redevelopment.[5]