Description du lieu patrimonial

Charles Smith House is a two-storey wooden Italianate residence situated on Lincoln Street in Lunenburg's Old Town, a Heritage Conservation District in Lunenburg, NS. Like its neighbours to either side, the 1877 house sits on a steep slope, facing south, with a large front lawn extending from the house down to the street. There is access to the street at the rear of the property, with a typical Lunenburg façade level with Cumberland Street.

Valeur patrimoniale

The Charles Smith House owes its heritage value to its prominent setting and well-preserved architectural features. Built for a prosperous local mariner, Charles Smith in 1877, the house is indicative of the departure from vernacular Lunenburg styles towards other Victorian trends. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, Lunenburg entered an era of prosperity, which was reflected in the construction of larger and more ostentatious family homes. This house is indicative of these societal changes, as are its neighbours.

Along with its location on the brow of the hill overlooking the commercial core of Lunenburg and the harbour, the most prominent feature of Charles Smith House is its Italianate frontispiece. It is a large, 3-storey feature incorporating a formal doorway with a transom window, and a 3-sided bay window on the second storey, and three small, gabled attic windows. However, when viewed from Cumberland Street, the house appears to be a smaller home in typical Lunenburg style, with a central 'Lunenburg bump' dormer and porch that is actually the rear entrance.

Source: Heritage Designation File 66400-40-57, Town of Lunenburg.

Éléments caractéristiques

Character-defining elements of this property relate to its architectural style and reflection of propserity in nineteenth century Lunenburg, and include:

- the location of the house on a steep hillside with a large front lawn, with a central path and steps leading to the front door giving the house added height on its Lincoln Street façade;
- a separate entrance on Cumberland Street in vernacular Lunenburg style, that also maintains semblance with older homes in the streetscape;
- the large central Italianate frontispiece, with the main doorway on the ground floor, a large upstairs extended dormer window, and second storey bay window that projects out from the dormer;
- small decorated gable, attic dormers project from the central frontispiece under a bell-cast, flat-headed dormer roof;
- the central doorway, with rectangular sidelights and transom windows, heavy hood mouldings and a protruding bracketted cornice;
- wide cornerboards on the main house and frontispiece, bracketted fascia on all façades, moulded baseboard and lintel decorations and bracketting on all windows.