Anderson House (St. John's)


Anderson House is a wooden, two and one half storey hip roofed heritage-designated building located at 42 Powers Court, St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. It is a Vernacular Georgian style building and is reported to be one of the oldest structures in the city of St. John's.

History

The house is of modest construction and an excellent example of 19th-century homes. It was built on land that was purchased from Dr. Jonathan Ogden, a Newfoundland chief justice, in 1802. It was constructed circa 1803-1804, possibly for Sergeant James Anderson.
James Anderson held land that area at least by 1808, as in September of 1819, the Newfoundland Mercantile Journal gave notice of the public auction of a property lot in the vicinity of the upper part of Maggoty Cove, Signal Hill: "The freehold of a field adjoining Lot No, 14, now in the occupancy of Mr. James Anderson, and by him held under a lease, of which 11 years will be unexpired on the 1st November next, at the yearly rent of £7 10."
The house was used as both a military and private residence. It was used as a military barracks with a section of the house used to stable horses.
Henry C. Tillmann, a professor of music and a composer who arrived in St. John's in 1844 from Halifax, Nova Scotia, purchased the home in 1860. Since then, it has been home to a number of families and at one time was owned by the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of St. John's.

Restoration and Heritage Designation

After 1972, the building began to decay rapidly. In 1973, it was noted that in spite of a fire a number of years previously, the interior of the building was fairly intact, including a simple spiral staircase and two open fireplaces. In 1976, following a four-year campaign to save the building, the Newfoundland Historic Trust purchased the building and entered into an agreement with The Architect's Guild to restore the building. On 7 October of that year, shortly after the Trust signed the papers to take over the empty building, another fire caused serious damage to the structure.
Between 1977-78, much of the building was restored, and an eastern addition was removed. The work was primarily directed by Sylvia Cullum and her architect husband Charles Cullum. In 1979, Sylvia wrote,
The east end of the building, which was of a later date, was tom down as it was felt to be too damaged by fire to be rebuilt, and the house re-emerged in its original shape.It was made watertight and a roof of wooden shingles was put on....Wooden siding had to be re- placed and the windows re-glazed and part of the chimney rebuilt using old bricks from a demolished bank on Duckworth Street to replace those that were too rotten to re-use.
Interior work included plastering, exposing wall boards of rough cut hemlock, sourcing and replacing mouldings, scraping and repainting mantels, researching and painting in historic colours, and completely refurbishing the staircase. Charles Cullum received an inaugural Southcott Award from the Newfoundland Historic Trust for his dedication to the preservation of St. John's over the course of many years, including restoration work on Anderson House. In 1984, it was noted that the building had been preserved "as a distinctive set of offices with much of the atmosphere and charm of... earlier times."
On March 23, 1996, the Anderson House was designated as a Registered Heritage Structure by the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador. A plaque was affixed in 1998. The building was listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places February 2, 2005.
From circa 2009-2011, the building was occupied by The Bookery, a short-lived independent bookstore. In 2014, the property was home to Innovative Development & Design Engineers, Ltd., an engineering consulting company, and then owner Hubert Alacoque was presented the Southcott Award for architectural preservation. On 27 January 2017, the building was designated as a Heritage Building by the St. John's Municipal Council.