[PHOTO] Gainsford House, Charlottetown

[rfmcdonald]

At 102-104 Water Street, Charlottetown's Gainsford House is a building listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places for architectural and historical reasons.

The heritage value of the Gainsford House lies in its role as the oldest surviving brick home in Charlottetown, its association with the Gainsford family, and its association with publisher of the Islander newspaper, John Ings, and its importance to the Water Street streetscape.

In 1832, the land on which the Gainsford House stands was deeded not to Elizabeth Gainsford herself but to three prominent citizens, Hon. T. Haviland, Daniel Brenan Esq. and Rev. B. McDonald in trust for her. Although it is a foreign concept today, until 1896, married women could not purchase, hold, or sell property on Prince Edward Island; it was placed in trust for them.

The Gainsford House was constructed at some point between 1832 and 1834 of brick. Most homes at this point in Charlottetown’s history were being constructed of wood, however a house on Richmond Street which has not survived had been constructed of brick as early as 1823. The decision to build in brick may have been influenced by the fact that John Gainsford was a partner in a brickyard and made his own bricks. The Gainsfords decision to build in brick proved to be a wise one, as a devastating fire swept through the area in 1857. The building was the only one to survive in the area, partially because of its construction material, but also through the “extraordinary exertions, and the constant application of wet sheets and blankets to the roof”.

When the house was built, the Gainsfords' lived in the western section and rented the eastern section to the publisher of the Islander newspaper and Queens Printer, John Ings. After Elizabeth Gainsford died in 1852, John Gainsford sold the eastern section to John Ings and the western section to plasterer, James Connell. Connell sold his section to Archibald Kennedy in 1863, but Ings would stay on until 1908.

In 1847, Ings built an addition to the eastern side of the Gainsford House, where he would publish the Islander newspaper and operate a reading room. Later in the early twentieth century, the western side of the Gainsford House also received an extension. This small wooden addition, with a brick facade, housed veterinarian, James L MacMillan’s office.