Building in Wood St. John's Architecture
Murphy, E. (1982). Building in Wood: St. John's Architecture. The Livyere: Winter/Spring.
One distinguishing feature of the architecture of St. John's is the preponderance of wooden houses. Compared with European and even North American cities, St. John's has very few stone or brick dwellings.
The factors which have influenced the choice of wood as the prime building material in St. John's are the result of sociological, economic and political circumstances which span three centuries. Because of these circumstances, timber construction developed as a tradition that prevails throughout Newfoundland to this day. To understand how this tradition evolved, we must go as far back as the seventeenth century.
When the first settlers arrived from England in the seventeenth century, they built their houses of wood as had been the custom in their homeland. Houses in England were primarily built of wood up until the sixteenth century when the demand for lumber in ship building and other industries depleted forest stocks and raised the price of wood. As a result, homebuilders switched to other materials such as stone or brick.
In the new colony, shortages of timber never posed a problem. Though there are few, if any, mature evergreen trees remaining on the Avalon Peninsula today, geographical research indicates that spruce, fir and pine trees abounded there up until the nineteenth century. Charles Bennet, Prime Minister of Newfoundland in 1870, notes in reference to his first impressions of St. John's in 1807:
"...the South Side Hills were covered with timber down to the entrance of the Narrows as was Signal Hill and the ground lying between Quidi Vidi Lake and Signal Hill."
It is also interesting to note that Sir Cavendish Boyle, in his famous Ode to Newfoundland, makes poetic reference to "pine-clad hills" suggesting once again that there was a sufficient supply of lumber for construction.
Availability of wood was not the only reason the new colony chose it as its prime building material. Wood also suited the needs and means of settlers better than stone or brick. Building a house of stone or brick not only required a great deal of money but also special skills, tools, and at least four months of dry, warm weather. Since the clay needed for the making of bricks was not available in the immediate St. John's area, brick had to be imported from England or from the American colonies. In the case of stone, one had to locate an accessible quarry and if no suitable stone could be found then it too had to be imported. Once in possession of the stone, the prospective housebuilder had then to seek the services of a stonemason and a stonecutter with the necessary skills and tools. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Newfoundland, most men of trade were fishermen. Stone masons and stonecutters were rare.
Even if one succeeded in locating the proper labour and materials, one still had to contend with building conditions and climate. A stone house could be completed in three or four months providing the weather was warm and dry and that all other conditions were favourable. Due to its slow curing process, lime mortar is particularly vulnerable to destruction by rain and frost. While rain will wash away the fresh mortar, frost will cause water crystals in the mortar to expand thus breaking it up. The wet climate of Newfoundland is not suited to a type of construction requiring long stretches of dry weather and this factor combined with the fact that wood has greater insulating properties undoubtedly influenced many a settler's decision to build with wood.
Practical problems aside, most settlers did not have the choice between building with wood or stone. In a time and place when codfish and no the coin was the currency, the great expenditure involved in stone construction meant only the wealthy merchants and those having easy access to credit could afford to build with stone. Interesting enough, however, is the fact that those who could cope with the cost of a stone house still preferred to construct with timber. The reason here was of a political and sociological nature and had to do with the temporary character of settlement in Newfoundland up until the nineteenth century.
Discovered in 1497, it was not until eighty years later that Newfoundland officially became a British colony and not until 1811 was settlement (i.e., erection of permanent dwellings) tolerated in what is now the island's capital. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, fishermen did not so much inhabit as frequent St. John's. Business would be conducted around the seaport during the summer months so that most people returned to their homeland for the winter. The type of houses that these people built were very basic structures designed for shelter rather than permanent habituation. These first dwellings were called tilts - a Newfoundland version of the pioneer log cabin. Made of logs arranged side by side in a vertical position, the tilts were of a temporary character and often had to undergo major repairs every summer.
By the end of the eighteenth century, there were approximately 10,000 people living in the city on a year round basis so that the tilts gave way to more proper houses. Though built to last longer than the tilts, these houses were still of a temporary nature. They had been erected without official permission from England and risked being destroyed at any time. The West-Country (Devon) merchants had pressured the king to prohibit settlement in St. John's as they were anxious to have their commercial interests in St. John's protected. Law enforcers could be told to destroy a house at any time and as late as 1675, all settlers living within a six mile radius of the coast were ordered removed.
Besides threats posed by their own government, the permanent settlers or planters, as they were called, were often victims of attacks from the French. French forces overtook the city at least four times and the battles involved destroyed homes, possessions and lives. When the French attacks lulled, the city and outport dwellers still had to fear raids by pirates and pillagers.
For the first three centuries then, St. John's was nothing more than a precarious outpost and this nature was reflected in its architecture. In 1807, Charles Bennet wrote of St. John's houses:
"At that time the town...was little more than a fishing settlement. The houses if they could be called such were, with very few exceptions, of a temporary character."
Four years later, a letter describing the town was sent to the King by local merchants:
"We be leave to state to your Royal Highness that the town, with the exception of one house, is built of wood."
By 1762 the French invasions had teased and in 1811 under an Act of the British Parliament a type of legal settlement was tolerated. The town was no longer a temporary settlement and those people with the financial means could now build stone houses without fear of having the costly structure destroyed soon after. By this time, however, timber construction had become a tradition in the town. What stonemasons there had been had taken up new trades and even the most skilled craftsmen were unfamiliar with stone construction. Permanent residences were being built but they were of wood.
After the fire of 1817 which destroyed the greater part of the town, an act was introduced to regulate its reconstruction and though the act ruled that structures in the waterfront area to be built of stone, the city was rebuilt mostly of wood. Following the 1846 fire, the authorities proclaimed that the town be rebuilt with stone. The laws were once again ignored and the people rebuilt with wood. Though the number of stone and brick structures increased after the 1892 fire, tradition prevailed and the city rose to its feet a wooden city. St. John's remains essentially a wooden city to this day.
Notes
Charles Bennet, "Correspondence," The Evening Telegram. (March 18, 1881).
Charles Bennet, "Correspondence," The Evening Telegram. (March 18, 1881).
Paul O'Neill, The Oldest City: The Story of St. John's, Newfoundland. (Ontario Porcepic Press, 1976) p. 56.
Suggested Readings
Moogk, Peter N. Building a House in New France. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977.
Newfoundland Historic Trust. A Gift of Heritage: Historic Architecture of St. John's. Canada: Valhalla Press, 1975.
O'Dea, Shane. The Domestic Architecture of Old St. John's. St. John's: Newfoundland Historical Society, 1974.
O'Neill, Paul. A Seaport Legacy: The Story of St. John's, Newfoundland. Ontario: Porcepic Press, 1976.
O'Neill, Paul. The Oldest City: The Story of St. John's, Newfoundland. Ontario: Porcepic Press, 1976.