H.C. Grant Heritage Museum Registered Heritage Structure

The H.C. Grant Heritage Museum and surrounding property has been designated as a Registered Heritage Structure because of aesthetic, historic and cultural values.

The H.C. Grant Heritage Museum building has aesthetic value as an example of a family dwelling of its age, place and type. While Springdale was settled in the 1880s, a forest fire spread to and destroyed most of the buildings in the community in 1904. Construction of the home that is now the H.C. Grant Heritage Museum began in 1917, and it is one of the oldest extant buildings in the Town of Springdale. The two-and-a-half storey, front facing gable with a side wing, and a shed roofed verandah form is typical of a sub-group of folk Victorian style. The exterior ornamentation is quite restrained, with simple eaves and window and door trims; square-cornered spindlework in the verandah roof trims; and square-cornered rails and posts in the verandah and front stairs.

H.C. Grant Heritage Museum has historic value through its association with the Town of Springdale’s first mayor. Construction of the dwelling was interrupted when the original owner was killed during World War I. Harvey Clarence Grant purchased the property in 1919, and construction of the Grant family home was finished in 1920. H.C. Grant became Springdale’s first mayor when it was incorporated as a municipality in 1945, and served in that capacity for twenty years. His substantial community service record includes helping to spearhead the province’s Newfoundland Federation of Mayors and Municipalities (now the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Municipalities).

H.C. Grant Heritage Museum has cultural value through its current function as a museum. H.C. Grant transferred ownership of his house to the Town of Springdale in 1979. In 1981 it became a museum in tribute to Grant, showcasing the house itself, along with domestic artifacts and furnishings from the 1940s to 1960s.