Description of Historic Place

The Campbell & McKeen Law Office, built in 1870, is a renovated one-and-one-half storey gable roofed house, fronting Main Street in the village of Guysborough NS. It now serves as a law office. The municipal designation covers the building and surrounding land.

Heritage Value

The Campbell & McKeen Law Office is a typical residential dwelling for a working class family in late nineteenth-century Nova Scotia, and one of the few remaining in the village of Guysborough. The MacDonald family occupied it for over one hundred years. Augustus MacDonald, the village constable, operated a blacksmith shop in the rear yard.

Late Victorian Plain style homes in Nova Scotia were typically discreet in their ornamentation and utilitarian, suggesting practicality rather than the extravagance of other Victorian styles. There was a tendency to incorporate elements that suggest country homes such as deep verandahs and sometimes bay windows. Many of them were built quickly to house families with ties to the industrial boom in previously underdeveloped areas of the province. The Campbell & McKeen Law Office exemplifies this, with its symmetrical window placement, lack of extraneous ornamentation and verandah located at the streetline.

Source: Municipality of the District of Guysborough Heritage Registration document, Campbell & McKeen file, number 1159.

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of this building relate to its construction in the Late Victorian Plain style, including:
- the moderate roof pitch;
- the symmetrically-placed windows with original hood mouldings on the front of building;
- the verandah along the front elevation.