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Originally Posted by Darkoshvilli
Im surprised the Atlantic cities don't have a building from the 17th century.
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For St. John's the reason is because the city burned down several times, including in 1846 and 1892. In 1846, virtually the entire city was destroyed. In 1892, most of the Downtown East End was destroyed. Most of our grand, stone public buildings were lost in these fires.
By the way, Someone123 is wrong in his response to your question, at least as it relates to St. John's. Already in 1696, Newfoundland's estimated population was 2,321 - a significant portion of which were based in St. John's. Any census that attributes to St. John's just a few hundred residents in the late 1700s is counting
only white, land-owning males - not their wives, children, servants, or tenants. Some even exclude the Irish Catholic majority altogether and count only English Anglicans. This is called a partly nominal census and was the norm in Newfoundland:
http://net.lib.byu.edu/fslab/researc...wfoundland.pdf
This continued until the early 1900s when they started counting everyone - and, as census records from that period show, St. John's was
still comfortably among the largest cities in what is now Canada, despite presumably losing ground to the mainland for more than a century previous.
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The oldest stone buildings in St. John's (wood construction has always been the norm here) are Fort Townshend (built in 1773) and Fort William (built in 1697), neither of which exists today. However, you can view the ruins of a portion of Fort Townshend in the basement of The Rooms, which was built on the site. And there is a plaque marking the former location of Fort William.
In the Downtown today, most of the oldest stone buildings date to 1892-1893, following the previous Great Fire.
Some examples of buildings that pre-date and survived the Great Fire of 1892. We have only a small handful, especially downtown:
Mallard Cottage is older than Anderson House, and was built sometime in the late 1700s. It's now a specialty Newfoundland restaurant:
There are a handful of other wooden buildings in St. John's that date to more or less the same time.
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The Mallard Cottage, an 18th Century Irish-Newfoundland vernacular style cottage, is recognized as a National Historic Site of Canada, as being one of the oldest wooden buildings in North America.
The Mallard Cottage, located in Quidi Vidi Village, a quaint fishing hamlet of St. John’s, was a private residence for the Mallard family, local fisherfolk who resided there from the late 18th Century until the the early 1980′s. In 1985, the location became a successful antique shop, under the ownership of Peg Magnone.
In 2011, the Mallard Cottage was purchased by the team of Chef Todd Perrin, his wife Kim Doyle and Sommelier Stephen Lee. The team were joined by the talented heritage restoration specialists of Sweet Lumber Enterprises who underwent the daunting task of restoring and rejuvenating the cottage, with the help of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland & Labrador. Their hard work was recognized in June 2013 when they were presented with the Southcott Award for excellence in the preservation of the built heritage of Newfoundland & Labrador.
As of November 2013, the Mallard Cottage has taken on its new life as a one of a kind venue where the team can celebrate Newfoundland & Labrador’s incredible purveyors, through showcasing the provinces’ vast array of wild game, seafood & produce, displayed alongside a vital piece of Newfoundlands built heritage.
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MallardCottage.ca
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