Row Houses
Great George Street, from Sydney to Dorchester
Perhaps the most photographed streetscape in Charlottetown is this row of houses, all joined together, from Sydney Street to Dorchester Street. They are located at the very heart of the city, opposite the Roman Catholic property that contains Saint Dunstan’s Basilica. You get an excellent vantage view from the steps of the church.
What is the reason for this phenomenon? It is a very ancient solution to making the most out of valuable and highly desirable urban frontage. In British Colonial parlance these are called ROW HOUSES. Posh versions of this for the upper classes in Britain were called TERRACES and designed by famous architects.
58-70 Great George Street
The five buildings in this photograph are all in the Georgian style, with ornamentation deriving from classical mouldings. They have all been documented by Irene Rogers in her 1983 book on Charlottetown buildings (pp. 117-20).
The Wellington Hotel, 1811, 70 Great George Street
Before and after incorporation into the block hotel project.
How did these particular five buildings come into being? The first, on the left, is the Wellington Hotel, at 70 Great George Street, and was built from logs laid horizontally in a braced frame around 1811. For a generation, from 1820-50 (Rogers pp. 119-20) it was the centre of social life in the city, serving visitors and politicians from the nearby Legislature. Once it even hosted a circus in its back yard!
The house next to it, the Coombs House at 66 Great George Street, was built around 1855 for the grand daughter of the owner of the Wellington Hotel on property attached to it. It is typical urban Georgian with the door and entrance hall placed to the side so, in that tight space, the parlour or front room, faced the street. The building has two stories and is graced, on the roof, with a five-sided Scottish dormer, a valuable architectural feature brought by the Colonists which gave much light to the dark attic space, making it useful for may things. Mr. Coombs ran an oyster parlour in this house, a far less intrusive establishment than the tavern he had originally hoped to set up there.
66 and 64 Great George Street
The Coombs (1855) and Carroll (1855-60) houses.
Next to this house is another very similar one at 64 Great George Street. It was built most probably in the 1855-1860 period and came in the possession of John Carroll, from which it gets its name. This design sets the tone for other row houses of this period found in the city. It too has a Scottish dormer.
60 Great George Street
Perkins House
To the right of this house is the second oldest house on the block, the Hugh Perkins house, was built in 1843. Unlike its later neighbours it is a central plan house, with principal rooms on either side of the door. This form is more commonly seen as a few-standing city house – the classic Georgian Palladian shape. The staircase was also central and led to a hall upstairs that provided light and access to four bedrooms. Over the years the house has had many owners, one of whom built the not-very-attractive full width attic dormer. In essence it gave the house a fully functional third floor.
At the very end of the row, with a corner stand on Dorchester Street, is the Regent Hotel, built around 1846 by James H. Downe as a house suitable for a store and called at that time the London House. It was described as a corner stand, meaning the entrance was placed diagonally on the corner. Such a feature was very common in English shop buildings because its position gave a wide radius of view that attracted potential customers.
This detail, from Ruger’s 1878 bird’s eye view of Charlottetown, shows how the building had joined up with the others in the row and turned a substantial corner onto Dorchester Street – all this in about 32 years!
Detail of Regent Hotel from Ruger, 1878
In the mid-1990s Cassidy Associates of Charlottetown began the work of renovating the Regent Hotel, which by that time had become a congested unhealthy tenement. Heritage regulations slowed the planning and work at every stage and a citizens group of several people, with no official backing of any kind, was often crawling over the site causing dangerous conditions for everyone involved.
The Regent Hotel completely gutted.
Reg Porter, as Heritage Consultant, was hired to trace the history of the building, from the time it was constructed until it had reached its present state of chaos. Of particularly vocal interest were the nature of the original cladding and the position and method of construction of the door for the corner stand. This absurd farce continued even after the entire building had been gutted, with not a floor or a stair or even a roof in sight. The developers acted quickly, and using heritage information found already on the building, produced the Great George Hotel. It has become a monument in the city, along with all the other buildings in that row, as well as incorporating 17 heritage local buildings that provide the city and guests with a richly comfortable downtown hotel at the core of the heritage district.
58 Great George Street
The Regent Hotel (London House 1846)
A Brick Row House Evolves
It makes sense that vital streets in the young city, like Great George Street and Water Street, should see concentrations of homes and shops in congested quarters. Row houses, to take advantage of every precious commercial inch, were bound to appear.
Detail from Skygate Videography & Aerial Drone Services – PEI. From the internet.
You can see the buildings I have been discussing across the street from the left spire of the Basilica. As you continue north along Great George Street you notice another group of row houses, this time all in brick and terminating in a tall brick office block on the corner of Richmond and Great George. Today they are occupied by posh art galleries and restaurants, but when the Heartz-O’Halloran Row was built in the 1859-1879, the houses were intended to serve both domestic and commercial premises.
The first house to be built on the corner of a block that once housed the estate of Governor Edmund Fanning, belonged to Richard Heartz, a merchant and private banker who lived in the house and conducted his business from those premises. In 1865 Dr. Martin O’Halloran bought the next lot, and in the same neoclassical brick style, built his house where he lived and ran his business as a liquor merchant. The last available space, owned by O’Halloran, was filled by another matching brick house in 1879, thus completing a noble, elegantly designed row of brick houses with room for commercial activities.
In 1976 there was a fire that caused immense damage and Heritage Canada, recognising the importance of these row houses, bought the property and restored it. Today it is an ornament to the street that leads to the Provincial legislative building.
The Heartz-O’Halloran Row. Photo courtesy of Google Maps.
The brick facades – Island brick! – are beautifully articulated with door and window frames made of contrasting Nova Scotia sandstone, such as had been used to build nearby province House.
The effect is harmonious, and a classical rhythm is established that leads the eye long the façade of the building in the most pleasant manner.
The Earliest Brick Row House in the City
In 1832 the extremely valuable land on which this double brick house was built was inherited by Elizabeth Gainsford. Because she was a woman, she could not own the land outright and so three trustees were named to keep it in trust for her.
102-104 Water Street – The Gainsford House, 1834.
Progress was swift and by 1834 John and Elizabeth Gainsford were living in the west half of the house, and the editor of the Islander newspaper, John Ings, occupied the east (Rogers 1983 pp. 308-09).
Unlike contemporary constructions in wood, the brick, probably among the earliest made with Island clay, did not encourage elegant trim and ornamentation. The house is extremely austere, given pronounced articulation by its Nova Scotia sandstone door and windowsills and headers. The design of the house, with the illusion of central plan grandeur, is achieved by the mirror image obtained by reversing the designs so that the doors and hallways would be in the centre. The east half had a Scottish dormer, like the houses we have looked at on Great George Street, and when the building was restored, it was decided to build a matching on the west side. The effect is magnificent.
Dr. Don Stewart bought the 1834 Gainsford house – one of the Ten Most Important Houses in the city – and against all bets, turned the neglected, painted and peeling mess into this vision of architectural splendour.
Don retained me in 1989-90 as a consultant to advise on specific issues connected with restoration, inside and out, with decoration issues and renovations involving a new kitchen wing and stone front steps.
The Gainsford house had been painted with red barn paint a number of times over the years and the general opinion was that it was because the brocks were inferior and were disintegrating. Dr. Stewart went ahead and decided to strip all the paint. It was a revelation! The original bricks were intact and had a beautiful patina!
The original brick in process of being revealed.
The Gainsford House 1834.
Getting on to 34 years the beautifully uncovered original brick is beautiful, and passers by are stopped in their tracks to contemplate its loveliness.
An Arresting Presence on Longworth Avenue
As you progress towards town on Longworth Avenue your attention is caught by a large confusing agglomeration of wooden structures that are obviously quite old. Its story is most easily told by the excellent succinct description given in Historic Places published by Parks Canada, written by Natalie Munn:
The land on which 24-36 Longworth Avenue stands was originally part of politician, businessman and farmer, Francis Longworth’s Esker estate. Local plasterer, John Egan had purchased plot #1 just west of the corner and built a home on the site in 1856. After Egan died, the home was rented to Alexander Inglis, the Head of the National School. By 1870, Henry Jones Cundall had purchased the property and rented it to prominent merchant, Henry Haszard. In 1885, Cundall sold the property, which was to be used as the new Prince Edward Island Hospital. Another plot of land to the east, on the corner of present-day Longworth Avenue and Cumberland Street, was purchased and it was likely at this point when the large addition was added to the building.
https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=6409
When you look closely at the house you notice immediately that the portion on the left is an identical arrangement of two houses joined in mirror fashion like the Gainsford house on Water Street.
24-36 Longworth Avenue, as it appeared in June 2010.
Recently the entire property has been given a thorough going over, with some minor alterations to the openings, and, except for the large empty windowless space on the left wall that was the old hospital wing – very disturbing from a design point of view – it fits into the streetscape in a gentler fashion. But it still dominates its space!
Dorchester Street Row Houses with a Rare and Amazing Feature!
For years these row houses looked congested and were in a state of general neglect. Architecture enthusiasts visited this part of the west end of town because there is still – all crammed together between Water Street and Pownal or Connaught Square, as it is also called, a number of quite early wooden houses from the early decades of the evolution of the city. There is a strong air of the past about these little street ends.
Close together and forming a row are two quite lovely houses, this one, at 59 Dorchester Street is the later of the two and is a double house. No information on the date and builders of this structure is available to me, but I would estimate that it was attached, with very similar proportions, to the one on the left, perhaps in the late 1860s. Of course, I could be wrong in this, and maybe both houses were built closer together in time, and the one on the right “Italianised” when that style became popular after Confederation.
As far as design goes, the house may have started off as a central plan house with a single central front door, and at a later date, to accommodate a second family or business, was divided and the second door added, thus destroying the Georgian symmetry. This is a problem for future researchers.
59 Dorchester Street, before 1870, but possibly considerably older.
AN ANCIENT HOUSE, THE MEWS ENTRANCE,
AND FAMOUS VISITORS.
55-57 Dorchester Street, circa 1786.
This double house, at 55-57 Dorchester Street is perhaps the most mysterious house in Charlottetown. There is enormous confusion about when it was built, and some public records seem to conflate it with another house at 45 Dorchester Street. The late historian Irene Rogers spent an enormous amount of time going through public records to try and find sure connections with what was on the ground and what was on paper. Her summary, supported by copious notes, is to be found on pages 48-50 in her 1983 book. This Historic Places web site is important, but largely a summary of what Rogers says in her book.
https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=6214
Houses, in the study of PEI architectural history are often give far more importance to the various people who built them and lived there than the details of the architectural style itself. In this case, there is tremendous interest expressed about two Catholic prelates who lived in the house for a time, one even saying Mass in a public room.
There is considerable evidence from an excellent and accurate source on the early history of the Catholic Church in PEI written by Fr John MacMillan in 1905. Rogers (p. 50) says that the Bishop of Quebec, Bishop Plessis, in charge of all the Missions in Eastern Canada, visited Charlottetown in 1812 and stayed in the McPhee house – the one under discussion? – and said Mass there. MacMillan also says that Fr Angus MacEachern, the truly great Scottish missionary to the Island, stayed at that house and from time to time said Mass there. So, there are powerful religious associations with that house.
The 55-57 Dorchester Street house was built as a double house, but not equal in the distribution of its bays. The house on the east end is own two bays wide and may have been intended originally as a place to house guests who required a private entrance. We do not know. To describe the main house on the east side is a complicated thing because the bulk of it is a three bay, side door city house, but it goes on in the most peculiar fashion.
At the west end is a mysterious cover over passageway with an additional upstairs room at the top. Of course, Rogers correctly identified this as a carriage entrance to the very congested property, which did not have suitable access at the back of the building.
TRAVEL IN THE CITY
Most of us forget that until the Twentieth Century travel in the city and on the Island was by horse or by boat. People of substance often owned one or the other, or both. This detail of a larger view of Queen Street in Charlottetown taken in 1880, and scanned here from a postcard, shows the streets filled with horses. Imagine for a moment living in this urban environment where the streets were filled with the odour of rarely gathered horse manure and urine. The smell pervaded even the most expensive carriages, and you carried manure into your house because it was impossible not to step in it. That’s why those heavy iron boot scrapers were bolted to the front step of houses. People lived with and in manure.
Queen Street between Richmond and Grafton Street c 1880 detail from postcard.
THE MEWS
A term that has been long forgotten on the Island is “the mews.” It is a very old English expression for accommodation for horses in a suitable space behind the house through a passageway in the façade of the house. There used to be many of these in Charlottetown and the remains of a few more, blocked up, can be seen here and there. To my knowledge no inventory has yet been made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mews
The Mews Entrance at 55-57 Dorchester Street
It is worth a pilgrimage to this spot to stand and stare and have a contemplation that might run along these lines. They apply to every house in the early city of Charlottetown up to the tine when sewers were laid, and fresh water pumped into the houses. But that was a long time in coming:
Storing the Necessities
Today we may forget that running a house in the Nineteenth Century involved a complex assemblage and arrangement of space that our generation has forgotten all about. Adequate – if not suitable – rooms for male and female servants had to be provided. There had to be storage for a variety of food bought in bulk. Fireplaces, and later furnaces, needed wood and coal. There was no plumbing so there had to be a well. There were no toilets and so bedpans of various kinds had to be daily emptied into an outdoor toilet building called an outhouse or thrown in the street. And if the family was sufficiently affluent to require transportation, then there had to be a stable for the horse, a place for its bulky feed, a place to dispose of its copious manure and, if prosperity carried you to that level, a carriage with its shed. When we look at the tight façade of row houses, we cannot but wonder where were all these things placed? Starting in the cellar and extending to the back rooms and up into the attics, places for male and female servants could be found. Something we do not know for Charlottetown is the articulation of stable and barn in relation to the house, not to mention the process of access in congested heavily built streets. Rights of way, where surveyed back lanes did not exist, had to be arranged in the back reaches of the yards, making boundary distinctions rather vague. We have very few hints of how space was made and regulated, especially for horses, but we can be enlightened by a visit to the mews entrance to 55-57 Dorchester Street.
WHERE ARE THE ROW HOUSES TO BE SEEN
IN CHARLOTTETOWN!
To my knowledge no one has yet produced a catalogue of all the row houses still standing in Charlottetown. In this post I have described the most visible and famous ones, but more, I am sure, are lurking around the corner in the old city below Euston Street, even beyond that border!
To guide you in your research I include the map of Charlottetown included in Lake’s great wall map of 1863. The cartographer carefully draws in all the buildings in the town and it is easy to see where the evolution of space required row houses for economy and convenience.
Detail from the Lake Map, 1863. UPEI Collection.
We will conclude this exploration of row houses by looking at old views of the city that show with the eye of the topographer, the relationship of one building to another.
- C. Harris, Grafton Street from the Roof of Province House, w.c. CCAGM.
Harris’ little watercolour of Grafton Street leading up to Queen Street shows that businesses at the heart of town were not so congested as to being a series of row houses. However, on the extreme right we see one, and we also see clearly its mews entrance.
For those of you who develop a deep interest in this topic I recommend the large lithographic panoramic view of Charlottetown made by Albert Ruger, a master of this craft, in 1878.
Detail from Ruger reproduction, [Aerial View of] Charlottetown 1878.
Reproduced by PEIMHF
We end where we began, at the row house block opposite the Roman Catholic basilica on Great George Street. Here you see how the present street façade was formed and the intricacies at the rear of the houses that would have been a jumble of accommodation of all the requisites of urban life. Our lives are filled with facades.
Courtesy of Gryphon Golf Tours.com b
PATRONS
Kind persons have provided support for the expenses incurred in producing this blog. I wish to express my deep gratitude to these individuals who have helped me cover the costs of archival scans, photographs, learned journals, books and professional services, and to those who have shared photographs and documents in their collections.
Marcel Carpenter
Scott Davidson
Trevor Gillingwater
Henry Kliner
Earle Lockerby
Dr. Edward and Sheila MacDonald
Robert L. Scobie
Dr. Douglas Sobey
References
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Mews:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mews
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The Row House:
https://urbanomnibus.net/2016/04/201604typecast-the-row-house/
Row or Terraced House:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraced_house
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