An affectionate preservation of the old Waterloo Post Office

“There’s all the salvaged stone,” says architect Jason Martin. “Anything that was taken down, like the front entrance, when you come into the elevator [lobby], we had to drop it down, probably six feet.”

It’s not a very big pile. A standard wooden skid containing a tidy stack of red brick at waist-height, and, beside it, about six or seven small cuts of chiselled sandstone. All stored in the basement of the old Waterloo Post Office (1910-11 by architect David Ewart, who designed dozens of post offices for the government between 1898 and 1914) at 35 King St. N., they’re a testament to the kid gloves Mr. Martin and engineer Nick Lawler donned when conducting a restoration and addition a few years ago.