Description of Historic Place

The Kenny Cottage is a single-storey wood shingle cottage with two four-paned wood windows flanking each side of a centred door. A later single storey addition with connecting breezeway was added to enlarge the cottage which is shingled and painted to match. The cottage is located in the north shore summer cottage community of West St. Peters, Prince Edward Island.

Heritage Value

Mary Kenny (1884-1982) was the eldest in a large, Irish Roman Catholic family of 14 children from St. Teresa's, Prince Edward Island. Like so many of her generation Kenny went to the Boston States as a young woman -- before the age of 20 -- to find work. Kenny worked as a housekeeper and nanny for a wealthy family in Massachusetts, sending home money to help supplement the farm earnings. Kenny accompanied her employers during their summer stays in Cape Cod which provided inspiration to one day have a family vacation place of her own. In time she had earned and saved enough to purchase property in West St. Peters on the north shore of Prince Edward Island.

With lumber cut and milled from the home place in St. Teresa's, Kenny's brother Joseph and cousin, Jack Mooney and other relatives built the cottage based on Mary Kenny's sketch of a simple Cape Cod cottage. Originally the cottage had a wood shingle roof, but it was replaced with asphalt shingles following damage from Hurricane Dorian in 2019.

Mary Kenny returned to PEI every July and August and shared the cottage with her large extended family, taking carloads of children to the shore, and hosted relatives including seven of her priest nephews. Mary Kenny's sister Bernice built a cottage on one of the neighbouring lots and over time a group of relatives and friends established summer residences nearby.

Following her retirement, Mary Kenny wintered in Charlottetown and spent her summers at the cottage until her passing.

West St. Peters has grown into a large summer cottage community. In 1995-1997 the Kenny Cottage was enlarged with an addition of a small house relocated from Souris. The wood-shingled cottage has passed to Kenny's niece who continues to enjoy this charming piece of Prince Edward Island's built heritage.

The Kenny Cottage is notable for its historical associations, as one of the earliest summer cottages in the area, and as a tangible example of the strong ties to place that Islanders have, wherever they work and reside.

Source: Heritage Places files, Department of Fisheries, Tourism, Sport and Culture, Charlottetown, PE
File #: 4310-20/K15

Character-Defining Elements

The heritage value of the Kenny Cottage in West St. Peters is shown in the following character-defining elements:

- the scale and massing of the building
- the wood shingle cladding
- the pitch and slope of the roof
- the pleasing simple symmetrical design of the original cottage building
- the size and placement of multi-paned wood windows
- the corner boards

Further contributing heritage character-defining elements:

- the location of the cottage in the north shore community of West St. Peters near the Gulf of St. Lawrence