Devon Row Municipal Heritage Building

Devon Row has been designated a Municipal Heritage Structure for its aesthetic and historical values.

Devon Row is aesthetically valuable because it is an excellent example of a pre-1892 Second Empire brick row house. This building was one of several built by the firm J and J.T. Southcott, purveyors of the Second Empire design in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Southcotts were so commonly associated with this style of architecture that it is known locally as the Southcott Style. Devon Row consists of the concave curved mansard roof, bonnetted dormer windows and two-storey bow windows, three of the main features of the Southcott Style.

Devon Row is historically valuable because of its associations with Anna Mary Mitchell and Rev. Moses Harvey (1820-1901). Ms. Mitchell, suffragist, lived at 1 Devon Row. A meeting at her residence after World War I inspired a group of women to agitate for voting rights in municipal elections and sparked the Votes for Women campaign. In 1921, St. John's City Council enfranchised all female property holders and in 1925 allowed all women over 25 to vote.

In 1892 the Rev. Moses Harvey, Newfoundland historian and resident of Devon Row, helped to save the buildings from the Great Fire. The row houses were in the direct path of this devastating conflagration that burned for a day and a night, and consumed a huge portion of the capital city. Rev. Harvey witnessed the initial stages of the fire and Devon Row was saved almost miraculously by placing blankets at the gable of the westernmost house and keeping them wet. Rev. Harvey compiled a detailed account of the event, giving historians a very personal and heart wrenching version of the disaster.