Sir John Johnson House National Historic Site of Canada
Williamstown, Ontario
General view
© Parks Canada Agency/Agence Parcs Canada, 1989.
Address :
Highway 19, Williamstown, Ontario
Recognition Statute:
Historic Sites and Monuments Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. H-4)
Designation Date:
1961-05-23
Dates:
-
1784 to 1792
(Construction)
-
1784 to 1813
(Significant)
-
1813 to 1830
(Significant)
-
1860 to 1865
(Significant)
Event, Person, Organization:
-
Sir John Johnson
(Person)
Other Name(s):
-
Sir John Johnson House
(Designation Name)
Research Report Number:
1961-021
DFRP Number:
56478 00
Plaque(s)
One of the oldest buildings standing in Ontario, the original five-bay structure at the centre of this house was built between 1784 and 1792. It was once part of a mill site developed by Sir John Johnson to encourage Loyalists to settle along the St. Lawrence River after the American Revolution. The original log house, constructed in the French-Canadian manner, was enlarged to the west after 1813 and to the east with a large Gothic Revival wing in the 1860s. This house provides an excellent record of vernacular building in early Canada.
Description of Historic Place
Sir John Johnson House National Historic Site is a large, wooden house of typical nineteenth-century Ontario vernacular design, set amidst spacious grounds on the banks of the Raisin River in Williamstown, Ontario. The evolved house is built around a late eighteenth-century core. The designation refers to the house, as well as a shed, an ice-house, the remains of the west wing and the burnt layer from initial clearing of the land.
Heritage Value
Sir John Johnson House was declared a national historic site for: its historical association with Sir John Johnson, its age as one of the oldest surviving buildings in Ontario, its architectural design.
The heritage value of Sir John Johnson House lies in its illustration of late eighteenth-century frontier building techniques and in its association with Sir John Johnson. The original core of the house was built 1784-1792 as part of a complex of buildings centered around a mill. It was expanded around 1813-1830 (west addition), and in the early 1860s (east addition).
Sources: HSMBC Minutes, May 1961; Commemorative Integrity Statement, 1996.
Character-Defining Elements
Key features contributing to the heritage value of this site include:
the irregular, vernacular massing of the evolved house as expressed in its T-shaped footprint with a low rectangular one-and-a-half-storey original structure under a pitched roof broken by gables and chimneys, an extension to the east of similar massing and roof form, and a two-storey addition with a steeply pitched roof, and set at right angles to the original core, the siting and orientation on a knoll with viewplanes over the Raisin River,
the eighteenth-century core in its surviving classically inspired design, form and materials including: the symmetrical, five-bay main elevation, with central entry, gable and chimney, and simple, regularly spaced fenestration, the front-sloping pitched roof, evidence of original centre-hall interior plan, its pièce sur pièce log construction, surviving original pine log, wood clapboarding and shingling,
archaeological features associated with the Sir John Johnson period including remains of the first west wing construction and the burnt layer from initial clearing of the land.