Description of Historic Place

Abram K. Feetham House is a one and one-half story wood frame residence built in 1875, located at the corner of Arthur and King Streets in Truro, NS, close to the railway right-of-way. The house features a gable front with a wrap-around porch, and a solarium supported by posts on the south side of the building. Both the house and surrounding grounds are included in the heritage designation.

Heritage Value

Historical Value

Abram K. Feetham House is valued as a largely intact example of the many fine middle-class homes that were constructed in this neighborhood in the final decades of the nineteenth century to house railway workers.

With the completion of the Intercolonial Railway (ICR) line from Halifax to Amherst in 1872 and other lines shortly thereafter, Truro truly became the “Hub of Nova Scotia” as the centre of the province’s transportation system. The town’s economy was rapidly transforming from one based upon agriculture to one based on transportation and manufacturing. The associated influx of workers into the town in this period resulted in a boom in housing construction, and a windfall for owners of farmland in the vicinity of the railway yards. Abram K. Feetham, an ICR employee, purchased this land and built the house on it for resale.

A solarium was later added at the rear of the building to function as a sun room for the treatment of a resident who contracted tuberculosis. Until drug treatments became available in the late 1940s, many families added such rooms to allow exposure to sunlight and fresh air, the most common therapy for family members stricken by the disease.

Architectural Value

Abram K. Feetham House is a valuable example of the combination of influences known as “Folk Victorian” architecture. It combines the simple proportions of the Greek Revival style with particularly fine examples of structural and decorative elements from later styles.

Source: Planning Department, Town of Truro, file 10MNS0001

Character-Defining Elements

Elements that define the building’s heritage character include:
- all orginal or historic building elements, including: basic form and massing; lower gabled extension at the rear, and a rear solarium on support posts; hip-roofed wrap-around front porch and rear entrance porch; Folk Victorian decoration on the porches and eave overflights, including turned wooden posts, brackets and spindles.
- all original or historic window and door elements, including: eyebrow and gabled dormers; transomed picture windows on the front and in the bays; sashed windows; wide moulded window and door surrounds, with simple drip mouldings on the upper front windows.
- all original or historic building materials, including: wood shingle cladding; asphalt-shingled roof.
- formal placement of the house on a corner facing two main streets;
- consistency of placement relative to its neighbours.