Description of Historic Place

The Girardin House National Historic Site of Canada is a steep-roofed, one-and-a-half-storey, stone house built in two phases, from 1786 to 1807 in the Québecois tradition. It includes an attached shed, added in the early 19th century. The house is located within the historic town of Beauport, just outside Québec City in the St. Lawrence River Valley. The house is set within expansive grassed grounds, adjacent to a convent, that give it a semi-rural flavour. The official recognition consists of the house on its legal property.

Heritage Value

Girardin House was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1982. It is recognized because:

• the architectural features of the house—built in two phases, from 1786 to 1807—are evidence that the style of rural dwellings found in New France had a lasting influence on how houses were built after the colony was ceded to Great Britain in the 1763 Treaty of Paris;

• a French influence can be seen in the house’s pointed gable roof, thick walls with irregular openings, chimneys set in gable walls, and low foundations.

The Girardin House is a fine example of a French-inspired stone house built at the turn of the 19th century. It is located in Beauport. Built in two stages by blacksmith Ignace Girard dit Girardin, between 1786 and 1807, the present house replaced a 1760s log house and a blacksmith store. From its construction until 1925, the house remained the property of the Girardin family. The Girardin house is typical of rural Quebec domestic architecture of the early 18th century in its form, materials, proportions, openings and interior plan. It represents the continuity of traditional domestic forms and construction methods from northern France to the St. Lawrence Valley.

Source: Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, November 18, 1982; Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, April 2018.

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements which relate to the heritage value of Girardin House include:

- features reminiscent of domestic construction during the French regime, including, its small dimensions, its thick stone walls partially covered with roughcast, the massive proportions and steep slope of its roof, and the number and arrangement of openings;
- its simple, rectangular, one-and-a-half-storey form, set close to the ground;
- its steep, gabled roof with a chimney at either end and no overhang at eave level;
- the small number of openings, their proximity to ground level, and their functional, non-symmetrical placement;
- its method of construction, in which walls are constructed of fieldstone and covered with lime roughcast to protect against cold and humidity;
- its surviving original interior plan, consisting of two interior rooms at ground level, separated by a stone, load-bearing, interior wall, and two attic rooms reached by an open staircase;
- its surviving original interior features, including hearths in the end-walls of each of the ground-floor rooms.