What is the Oldest Building in Your City?
 

This is the oldest building in Moncton.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8434/7...ebc2309d_o.jpg

The first European settlers in Moncton were Acadian marshland farmers who arrived in 1733. They established a village called Le Coude on the riverfront, but this was abandoned in 1755 because of the great deportation at the onset of the Seven Years War. The first permanent settlers in the area were seven Pennsylvania Dutch families who arrived in 1766 to take up residence in a land grant issued to Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia Land Company.

The Treitz Haus (pictured above) has long been suspected as being one of the oldest buildings in Moncton. It was in great disrepair, and in danger of demolition. As part of the exercise to determine whether the property should be saved, architectural historians were brought in who found interior mouldings crafted in the Pennsylvania Dutch style. This was quite exciting, as previously it had been thought the building dated to the 1820's. Wood samples were acquired from the structure and were analyzed at the dendrochronology lab at Mount Allison University in Sackville NB (actually one of the foremost labs of its kind in the world), and this confirmed that the wood used in the construction of the building dates to the late 1760's.

Treitz Haus is estimated to have been built in 1769, making it pre-Revolutionary and 245 years old.

Montreal

Maison LeBer-LeMoyne, 1671
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...LeMoyne_01.jpg

Vieux Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice, 1687
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...real_13_db.jpg

Fort de la Montagne towers, 1694
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._Montagne1.JPG

Maison Saint-Gabriel, 1698
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Gabriel_02.jpg

Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...es_in_Montreal

^ love that french architecture so much !!

The Scadding Cabin on the grounds of the CNE - 1794

http://i.imgur.com/MRanZYB.jpg

http://calgaryisawesome.com/wp-conte.../HuntHouse.jpg

This derelict shack is the oldest building in Calgary. Known as Hunt House, after the man who inhabited it from the 1940s to 1975, it was built in 1876 as a residence at the local HBC trading post near Fort Calgary (Fort Calgary was an NWMP outpost).

For Sault Ste. Marie it's the Old Stone House built in 1808 and the bottom portion of the pump house built in 1798. The top portion of the pump house was built in 1894.
This is in the Ermatinger Clergue National Historic Site in downtown.
http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/...0Marie/067.jpg

St. Paul's in Halifax was built in 1750:

http://www.stpaulshalifax.org/wp-con...9-59-29-pm.png
Source

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...wfoundland.JPG

Anderson House in St. John's was built around 1804

Source (plus more information)

Windsor's oldest was built in 1798, the Duff-Baby House in Old Sandwich.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff_Baby_House

There is one more building in Old Montreal from the 17e century:

Aile de la communauté de l'ancien hôpital général de Montréal (1694):
http://www.patrimoine-culturel.gouv.....JPG?id=202187
Source

Not as old, but this is Montreal's oldest remaining church: Église de la Visitation (build in 1749/51) (also known as Église du Sault-au-Récollet)

http://coupsdecoeurpourlequebec.com/...hel-Julien.jpg
Picture: Michel Julien. Source




http://www.patrimoine-culturel.gouv....1.JPG?id=10191
Source

Im surprised the Atlantic cities don't have a building from the 17th century.

Halifax was only founded in 1749, but it is kind of interesting in that it was a major planned settlement for the time, so it immediately had thousands of residents. There is a nice collection of buildings from the 1700's, but nothing from before 1749. Saint John is similar but it popped up around the time of the American Revolution. St. John's only numbered in the hundreds of permanent residents prior to 1750, and it seems like stone construction was less popular there. Add in the periodic wars that were happening around the entire region and it is easy to see why few buildings from that period have survived.

The primary town in NS before 1749 was Annapolis Royal. It was one of the first areas in Canada to be permanently settled (1605), but it changed hands repeatedly. They have houses from the early 1700's. Avondale, NS has one from 1699, which was before Britain gained control of mainland NS. Port Royal has buildings from the 1600's (similar to the "habitation" at Quebec City) but they are reconstructions, not originals. The reconstruction was built in 1939 so it is almost a heritage building itself.

The main barracks in Louisbourg were supposedly the largest building in North America when they were built in the 1720's, but the current building is a reconstruction:

http://www.krausehouse.ca/philiphoad...Louisbourg.jpg
Source

This one was supposedly built in 1699 in what is now Avondale, NS (about a 50 minute drive north of Halifax). If the story is correct then this is likely the oldest house outside of Quebec:

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/to...479_1-6col.jpg
Source

Another interesting one, White-Irwin House in Shelburne, NS built in 1784. Back then, this town's population was 10,000. It's another example of a town that popped up out of nowhere when Loyalists decided to settle there after the American Revolution. Today, less than 2,000 people live there.

http://www.historicplaces.ca/hpimage...4079_Large.jpg
Source

I wasn't aware that Quebec had a total (except for maybe one house by one year...) monopoly on buildings from the 1600s in the country. (I had assumed there'd be some in the Maritimes.)

It's very cool that St. Paul's is as old as Halifax itself and has reached us intact!

The area where Sherbrooke is was unbroken wilderness as recently as 1800. The oldest house is from the mid-1830s. There are other buildings from the late 1830s and 1840s. The city was only a few decades old at the time. (The Townships were developed WAY later than the St. Lawrence valley...)

Battlefield House in Hamilton apparently dates from 1796.
http://historicalhamilton.com/media/images/1580.jpg
http://www.directoryofhamilton.com/b...use-museum.jpg
Dundurn Castle dates to 1835.
http://robindegroot.ca/newsite/wp-co...ura-Waldie.jpg

For Ottawa it's apparently the Bytown Museum dating to 1827
http://www.chimohotel.com/photos/15/...townMuseum.jpg

Thunder Bay's is the Canadian Northern Railway Station dating to 1906.
http://www.thunderbay.ca/Assets/City...NR+Station.jpg


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ings_in_Canada

One interesting fact that is sometimes quoted is that there isn't a single Acadian house surviving from before the deportation, although there are some more recent houses built with similar construction techniques. Presumably this is because most of the houses were built out of wood or were destroyed on purpose so that their inhabitants wouldn't come back. Louisbourg was deliberately dismantled stone by stone after the siege. Quebec doesn't really have that sort of history.

De Gannes-Cosby House is another house in Annapolis Royal that would have been a contender since it was built in 1697 but it was partially or completely rebuilt in 1708.

Fort Anne dates to 1629 but I think the oldest surviving stone structures there were rebuilt in 1702. In most cases I'd guess that the structures from the 1600's and 1700's have been significantly modified over the years.

Canada (except for the St. Lawrence River valley) is a very young country. I would say that our inventory of buildings dating from the 1700's (let alone the 1600's) would be very small in this country.

This is kind of debatable since Atlantic Canada was settled before Quebec. There just aren't any buildings surviving from those early years.

Atlantic Canada was settled at about the same time as Quebec. Granted, Port Royale dates back to 1605, but that was essentially just the Habitation. The Acadian communities in the Maritimes were mostly just marshland villages along the shores of the Bay of Fundy and didn't really start taking off in terms of population until the 1680's or so. By this time Quebec had already superceded Acadia in importance and population.

I will grant you though that wood construction practices in Acadia were not as durable as the stone in Quebec, which is why we don't have the same number of historic buildings as they do.

One could say the same thing about Aboriginal peoples who've been building things here for thousands of years. I'm almost certain that no pre-European buildings remain standing in the country, but there are several other structures that remain intact. The Mnjikaning Fish Weirs, for example, are ~5000 years old.

I wonder what the oldest building in Canada is? somewhere in Quebec I'm sure.