Wicks Store Municipal Heritage Site

Wicks Store is a two-storey, vernacular, wooden building located shoreside at Wicks Point off Main Street in the town of Jackson’s Arm on the northwest side of White Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador. The municipal heritage designation is confined to the footprint of the building.

Wicks Store has been designated a municipal heritage site because it holds historic, cultural and aesthetic values.

Wicks Store was built in 1926 and has historic value as one of the oldest surviving buildings related to the fishing industry in Jackson’s Arm. It also has historic value because of its original function as a branch store of John Reeves Ltd., a major fishery supply firm in the region.

The economy of the Jackson’s Arm area has been strongly linked to the fishing and lumbering industries, and Wicks Store has cultural value as it encapsulates the rural community’s connection to both the land and the sea. The store was constructed of local lumber by Edgar Wicks, and dealt in goods for John Reeves Ltd., with schooners carrying supplies to the site. And, from 1949 to 1952, Wicks built there the mission boat which carried clergy to communities along the coast.

Wicks Store has aesthetic value as its vernacular style and basic materials are typical of many traditional fishing stages and stores, perched between the edge of the land and the Atlantic Ocean. The store has a simple, utilitarian design and is entirely constructed of wood: narrow clapboard siding and simple trims, a low pitch roof sheathed in felt, a foundation of posts, wooden doors of narrow vertical boards, and wood windows with multiple divisions.

Designation source: Town Council meeting minutes, Town of Jackson’s Arm, 2006/01/12.

All those exterior features of the building indicative of its historic function, age and vernacular style, including:

-low pitched gable roof;

-wood post foundation;

-narrow clapboard siding and wooden trims;

-wooden doors and windows;

-symmetrical placement of windows and doors in the facade;

-the dimensions and general massing of the building;

-orientation of the building, with respective gable ends facing land and sea;

-and its oceanside siting.