Old Town Lunenburg

Official Name: Old Town Lunenburg

Location: Nova Scotia, Canada

Type: Cultural

Year of Inscription: 1995

Old Town Lunenburg is an historical town in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Dating back to 1753, it is North America’s oldest surviving example of a planned British colonial settlement. Using a grid pattern common in England, early settlers laid out a town that has remained nearly unchanged in design and appearance for nearly three centuries.

While structural repairs and rebuilding has occurred, some of the structures in the town date to the eighteenth century. Throughout the town’s existence, the people who live there have taken care to build and rebuild in ways that honor Lunenburg’s original design. This was often difficult, since many of the town’s original structures were wood-frame buildings. Town residents have also maintained the geometric layout of the city’s streets, the central public spaces, and period-authentic colors and architecture—including a five-sided dormer window feature known locally as “the Lunenburg Bump.” They have also maintained a focus around the waterfront area that has long been central to the town’s survival. The town also embraced its historical importance with museums and period-authentic features such as a blacksmith shop and tall ships anchored off shore. Walking through the town is very much like walking back into eighteenth century colonial Canada or a British town of the same period.

The challenge faced by Old Town Lunenburg is continuing to maintain its authentic appearance. Unlike many historical sites that are owned by governments or preservation societies, the structures in Lunenburg are almost all privately owned. The property owners face increasing pressure from economic factors such as high repair costs and rising property values. These factors could endanger the future of the town. Several municipal and local laws have added guidelines to what changes can be made and how they can be made to protect the town. In addition, the town was inscribed as a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site in 1995.

History

Like most of North America, Lunenburg was originally inhabited by members of the First Nations. However, not much is known about the specific group or groups that lived on the peninsula that became known as Lunenburg. The first Europeans to settle in the area arrived between 1630 and 1680. They were French Acadians who moved from farther west in Canada to settle in the coastal area, where they farmed and logged in a town they called Merliguesche.

In 1753, the British chose the area to establish a new settlement of mostly German-speaking Protestants from various areas of Europe, including parts of France, Switzerland, and Germany. Boston-born British surveyor Charles Morris laid out the town when he arrived in Nova Scotia on June 8, 1753. His grid-format layout with geometrically aligned streets and tightly packed lots was characteristic of British cities at the time. Morris used this layout even though the harbor’s steep hillside made it less practical. Lunenburg’s first residents chose the lots for their new homes by drawing playing cards and set about building homes and businesses. They also constructed defensive structures, including forts, a tall palisade fence, and barracks known as blockhouses.

Life in North America meant many changes for the new residents of Lunenburg. While most of them had been farmers in Europe, the town’s close proximity to the sea made that a more natural way of making a living. The residents of Lunenburg became strong fishermen, even sailing the nearly 525 nautical miles to Labrador to find the best fish. By the early nineteenth century, the Lunenburg fishermen were thriving, providing enough fish for the town to run its own cod fish processing area and maintain a steady export business to the West Indies. Anything associated with the docks flourished, and the town’s architecture began to reflect this. Their more ornately designed homes began to feature the “Lunenburg Bump” dormer, a sign of the wealth generated from the sea.

By the early twentieth century, prosperity meant that the town had grown beyond its original boundaries. Along with the construction of the “New Town” section of streets and homes, the seafaring business of the town adapted as ships went from wood to metal. An ironworking facility called Lunenburg Foundry opened to provide materials for new ships, and large fishing vessels and other ships regularly launched from the town’s shipyards. One of these ships, a schooner called Bluenose, was launched from the Smith & Rhuland Shipyard in 1921. It was undefeated in seventeen years of contests in the International Fishing Series Races.

In the 1940s as part of the war effort spawned by World War II, the shipyards and other facilities at Lunenburg manufactured ships, cloth headgear known as balaclavas, and other goods to support the military overseas. They also ran a facility known as Camp Norway. The camp provided a respite for Canadian sailors whose ships were undergoing repairs and trained exiled whalers from Norway to join the Royal Norwegian Navy and the war effort.

Despite changing the way in which they lived to meet the challenges of the times, the people of Lunenburg maintained the historic architectural flavor of the old town. As interest increased in preserving this living history site, various government and private organizations stepped in to recognize the town’s historic value and help preserve it. In 1983, Lunenburg Academy, a school built in the Second Empire style in 1895, was named a National Historic Site of Canada. The streets and buildings of Old Town Lunenburg were named a National Historic District in 1993. Two years later, Old Town Lunenburg was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Although the town is now a historic preserve and a tourist attraction, the town’s fishing and shipbuilding industries that helped it thrive for centuries continue to be a key part of life in Lunenburg.

Significance

The layout of Old Town Lunenburg remains nearly identical to that which was laid out by Morris in 1753. Then and now, the town had seven streets that ran north to south, six of which were 14.6 meters (48 feet) wide. The remaining north-south street, King Street, was 24 meters (80 feet) wide. The north-south streets were intersected at right angles by nine more streets running east to west. Each of these was about 12 meters (40 feet) in width. Each of the resulting blocks were divided into fourteen lots, each twelve meters (40 feet) by eighteen meters (60 feet) in size. This was in keeping with the style used in England at the time, making a walk down the contemporary streets like walking back into eighteenth-century England.

The layout Morris created separated homes from businesses, included a central public space that could be used as a parade and military training field, as well as churches and buildings for public use, such as a school. While many of the original wood frame houses from the eighteenth century did not withstand the test of time, some did. New and reconstructed houses continued to follow the style and layout, maintaining the historic integrity of the town.

As the town grew during the nineteenth century, new construction sometimes reflected the grander styles that the town’s new wealth from fishing, shipbuilding, and exporting could support. As the town moved through the 1800s and into the 1900s, however, attention was paid to maintaining the overall sense of history. Added to this, the town continues to maintain its connections to its industrial ties to the past with its fishing and shipbuilding industries. For example, the Smith & Rhuland Shipyard that made the prize-winning Bluenose schooner is still in operation. The town’s history is further preserved in that both Bluenose and its successor, Bluenose II, are on display in the town.

In addition to the preserved architecture and the structures that contributed to the town’s financial success for nearly three centuries, a number of other historic buildings remain in Old Town Lunenburg. These include the Lunenburg Academy, St. John’s Anglican Church, and an old fire hall. Town leaders have also paid homage to the town’s past in other ways, such as using historic cannons that once defended the city from attacks as attractive barriers to slow traffic, as well as plaques and monuments throughout the town that share points of historical interest.

While care has been paid for decades to preserve and protect the town’s historical value, this has become increasingly difficult. Wood buildings decay and historic restoration and construction is expensive. The goal of having the town as a cultural World Heritage site is to attempt to preserve this living example of a colonial British town for as long as possible.

Bibliography

“Lunenburg History.” Lunenburg, www.lunenburgns.com/living-in-lunenburg/history/. Accessed 30 June 2022.

“Lunenburg Old Town Historic Conservation District.” Canada’s Historic Places, www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=2253. Accessed 30 June 2022.

“Old Town Lunenburg.” UNESCO World Heritage Convention, whc.unesco.org/en/list/741/. Accessed 30 June 2022.

“Old Town Lunenburg Historic District National Historic Site of Canada.” Parks Canada, www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/page‗nhs‗eng.aspx?id=307. Accessed 30 June 2022.

“Old Town Lunenburg UNESCO World Heritage Site.” Nova Scotia Canada, www.novascotia.com/see-do/attractions/old-town-lunenburg-unesco-world-heritage-site/2615. Accessed 30 June 2022.