Jenniex House Municipal Heritage Building

Jenniex House has historic value within Norris Point as one of the community's oldest dwellings. It was built in 1926 in neighbouring Neddies Harbour by Augustus Major, whose family was amongst the first fifty settlers in the Norris Point area in the mid 1880s. When Augustus Major died, his wife Alma married Garfield Jenniex, and in the winter of 1938 the house was moved across the ice from Neddy Point with the assistance of horses, to what is now known as Jenniex Lane in Norris Point.

Jenniex House has cultural value as it is currently operated by the Norris Point Heritage Committee as a tourist attraction and community museum with period artifacts. The Jenniex family donated the house to the Norris Point Heritage Committee in the late 1990s. The committee refurbished the dwelling and moved it to its current location, the Norris Point Lookout, with an impressive view of Bonne Bay and the Tablelands of Gros Morne National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Jenniex House has been relocated several times. Indeed, the moving of houses, sometimes whole towns, is a common tradition in Newfoundland and Labrador. Some alterations have been made to Jenniex House and its materials, yet the building itself generally retains its architectural and aesthetic values as an example of a 20th century vernacular dwelling in outport Newfoundland. Its key, intact features include its simple, rectangular, two-storey form; low-hipped roof; narrow clapboard siding; plain wooden trims and cornerboards; and original openings for doors and windows.