Description of Historic Place

The Stanley Ford Home and Outbuildings site is located at property numbers 087 to 093 on the water side of Main Street in the town of Jackson’s Arm on the northwest side of White Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador. The house is a white painted, wooden, square, two storey with a low hip roof. The wooden outbuildings include a storage shed at the left side of the house; a sheep house, cellar and workhouse at the right side of the dwelling; as well as an outhouse and a two storey fishing shed on the wharf. The municipal heritage designation includes the site and all structures and buildings upon it.

Heritage Value

The Stanley Ford Home and Outbuildings property has historic and cultural values as one of the oldest surviving properties in Jackson’s Arm exhibiting the rural community’s connection to the land and the sea. The Ford property has considerable cultural landscape value in Jackson’s Arm as a cluster of domestic, fishery and farm buildings and structures located at a traditional centre of the community and visible from the main road or from across the harbour.

The Stanley Ford Home is a 20th century vernacular, white painted wooden dwelling with a low hip roof. It was constructed in 1947, upon Ford’s return to Jackson’s Arm after serving in the Newfoundland Overseas Forestry Unit during World War II. It has wood windows, doors and trims, and is sheathed in narrow clapboard siding of fir, no doubt locally cut and sawn, given the region’s history of forestry and sawmilling enterprises. There is a small, wooden, white storage shed located to the left of the house.

The economy of the Jackson’s Arm area has been strongly linked to the fishing and lumbering industries. On a household economy level, gardening and animal husbandry have been an historically important element in rural Newfoundland, and complementary to fishing. The collection of vernacular wooden outbuildings to the right of the Stanley Ford Home, all with narrow clapboard sheathing and unfinished interiors which make visible their construction methods, illustrates the Ford family’s fishing and subsistence farming practices.

The agriculture related buildings include a sheep house/shed of vertical log construction, with a mid-pitch roof, and a vegetable cellar with a shed roof. The fishery related buildings include a wood frame workhouse which was used for boat construction and related activities. On the wharf there is a white painted water closet with a shed roof and a two storey, wood frame fish store with a mid-pitch roof and double vertical board doors. The fish store has a traditional colour scheme, painted red with white trims, and has diamond shapes painted on the main door and loft door. There is also a large cast iron bark pot, used for boiling bark from coniferous trees in order to coat and preserve fishing lines and nets, on the property.

Source: Town Council Meeting Minutes, Town of Jackson's Arm, 2006/01/12.

Character-Defining Elements

All those exterior features of the house which are indicative of its age and domestic function:

-simple form and vernacular style;
-low hip roof;
-white painted narrow clapboard siding and wooden trims;
-wooden windows and doors;
-placement of windows and doors;
-number of storeys and dimensions of the building;
-and the massing of the house in relation to the other buildings on the property.

All those exterior and interior elements of the cluster of agricultural and fisheries buildings and related features on the property, which are indicative of their era and functions:

-forms (including roof types), dimensions, materials and finishes of the buildings;
-vertical log construction of the sheep shed;
-type, size and placement of windows and doors;
-red and white paint scheme of the fish store;
-unfinished interiors;
-the wharf;
-and the presence and location of the barking pot.

Those other characteristics of the overall site which are related to its cultural landscape value:

-the placement and orientation of the buildings in the landscape;
-the massing of outbuildings in relation to each other;
-and the location of the site in proximity to the ocean.