Christ Church / Quidi Vidi Church National Historic Site of Canada

Christ Church / Quidi Vidi Church National Historic Site of Canada is a modest, 19th-century, Gothic Revival style wood church, based on a modified cruciform plan with a side tower. It is located on a fenced lot on a steep hill overlooking the harbour in the former village of Quidi Vidi, now part of the city of St. John’s. The building is no longer used as a church and the interior has been altered. Official recognition refers to the building on its property at the time of designation.

Christ Church / Quidi Vidi Church was designated a national historic site of Canada in 1966 because:

- it is representative of the architecture of an early 19th-century out port villages of a type rapidly disappearing.

The heritage value of this site resides in its design, form and materials. Christ Church / Quidi Vidi Church was opened in 1842 as a chapel of ease for St. Thomas’s Anglican Church in St. John’s. Its original design by James Purcell, an architect and builder, was based on a cruciform plan with Gothic Revival detailing, an architectural form and vocabulary favoured by the Anglican Church from the mid-19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Christ Church / Quidi Vidi Church was modified by a series of additions in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the addition of a bell tower in 1890. In its wood construction, scale, plan and evolution, it is consistent with churches constructed across the island of Newfoundland in outport communities.

Source: Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, October 1966.

Key elements that relate to the heritage value of the site include:

- its location on a steep hill overlooking the harbour;

- its Gothic Revival style, including the cruciform plan of the church body under a crossed gable roof, the three-bay facade with central door flanked by pointed arch windows under drip mouldings, and its square side tower, capped by a spire;

- its elements typical of outport construction, notably its relatively small size, the entry through a storm porch, and its interpretation in wood of traditionally masonry construction with elements such as wooden Gothic Revival style detailing and clapboard siding.