Formal Recognition Type

Registered Heritage Structure

Heritage Value

The Cable Superintendent’s House was designated a Registered Heritage Structure by the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador in 2023 due to its aesthetic, historic, and cultural value.

The Cable Superintendent’s House has aesthetic value as an excellent example of a house built in the Second Empire style. Built atop Parish Hall Hill at the highest point in Heart’s Content, the Cable Superintendent’s House is a modified Second Empire style, 2-storey house with a mansard roof, dormers, covered front veranda with a central porch, and a sunroom on the eastern side. Timber framed with brick nogging, it featured keyhole-shaped bonneted dormers and 2/2 wooden windows. It was designed by architect John Thomas Southcott – of the well-known firm J. & J. T. Southcott, Architects, Carpenters and Builders – for the Anglo-American Telegraph Company. The firm solidified their relationship with the Anglo-American Telegraph Company in Heart’s Content in the 1860s, constructing cable offices and staff houses. In the 1880s, the firm was contracted to build six new staff houses to address the need for more staff accommodations in Heart’s Content. The Cable Superintendent’s House was included in this contract and was the last to be completed in 1883. By this time, the Southcott firm was building more and more Second Empire style buildings, to the extent that the style was often referred to locally as “Southcott style.” The style had gained popularity in St. John’s and was increasingly showing up in areas outside of the city.

The Cable Superintendent’s House has further aesthetic value as a landmark in the community of Heart’s Content. It is one of the largest and most elaborate buildings in Heart’s Content, located next to Cable Staff Houses #1 and #2 – staff duplexes also built in the Second Empire style. The Cable Superintendent’s House is about 2/3rds the size of the duplexes, partly because standalone Second Empire homes were often designed with three-bay facades, and due to design considerations meant to make the house more accessible for its first inhabitant – superintendent Ezra Weedon who had physical disabilities. The property includes a low, brick retaining wall on the western side, the brick remnants of an original coal ash pit, a row of European cherry trees, a copper beech tree, and other native English plants and trees. Its location and context are testament to the influence and affluence of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company in Heart’s Content during this period.

The Cable Superintendent’s House has historic value for its association with the Anglo-American Telegraph Company and its superintendents who lived there. The Anglo-American Telegraph Company took over the assets of the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company following a failed attempt to connect a transatlantic cable to Heart’s Content in 1865. In 1866, a cable link between Valentia, Ireland and Heart’s Content was successful. This revolutionized communication and had profound effects on the development of the community of Heart’s Content.

Ezra Weedon was a superintendent at the Heart’s Content Cable Station and the first resident of the Cable Superintendent’s House, which he called “Mount Pleasant.” He was born in 1839 in Dinton, Buckinghamshire, England. He arrived in Heart’s Content as a clerk on July 27, 1866, on the S.S. Great Eastern – the ship that landed the first successful subsea transatlantic telegraph cable in Heart’s Content. Weedon was promoted to clerk-in-charge in November of 1866 and to superintendent in 1867. It was Weedon who commissioned the Southcott firm to design and build new staff houses. While Ezra Weedon occupied the Cable Superintendent’s House, his brother-in-law Samuel Scott Bailey was the first occupant of Cable Staff House #1. Both had married daughters of George Cairns Rutherford, a merchant in Harbour Grace. Weedon’s wife Margaret Rutherford died in 1875, 3 ½ years after they married, and Weedon remarried to Sara Colley, daughter of Reverend Edward Colley, Incumbent of St. John the Evangelist Church, Topsail, in 1878. After years of failing health, Ezra Weedon died in September of 1884, at the age of 45, having lived in the Cable Superintendent’s House for only one year. He was predeceased by daughter Maggie and a son, and survived by his wife and four children. His second wife Sara died in December of 1885. Weedon was highly regarded in Heart’s Content, not just as a cable superintendent, but also as a community leader – petitioning for improved local roads and increased mail service, sitting on the Heart’s Content School Association, and serving as Justice of the Peace.

All successive superintendents lived at the Cable Superintendent’s House, which was acquired by Western Union in 1912 through a 50-year lease of all of Anglo-American’s assets. Superintendent Robert Mackey, third generation cable master, occupied the house when the station closed in 1965. In 1968, Edward and Minnie Matthews bought the house from Western Union, raised their family there, and remained in the home for 55 years. It was bought by Valerie and Hank Whelan in October 2023.

The Cable Superintendent’s House has cultural value as a physical testament to the technological, economic, and social developments that transformed the outport community of Heart’s Content into a booming town. The grandeur of the Cable Superintendent’s House, and other buildings commissioned by the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, was in contrast to the more modest buildings that had traditionally been built in Heart’s Content prior to it becoming a communications hub. Socially, cable employees were separate from other residents, and their housing reflected that divide.

Source: Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador property file “Heart’s Content – Cable Superintendent’s House – FPT 5286”

Character Defining Elements

All those elements that embody the building’s aesthetic value, including:
-number of storeys;
-chimney number, style and placement;
-mansard roof;
-size, style, trim and placement of semi-circular dormers with central keystone element;
-size, style, and placement of dentils and brackets at the eaves;
-size, style, trim and placement of front veranda with central porch;
-size, style, trim and placement of sunroom;
-size, style, and placement of rear wing;
-size, style, trim and placement of front veranda with central porch;
-size, style, trim and placement of other porches;
-narrow wooden clapboard;
-wooden corner boards;
-size, style, trim and placement of wooden windows;
-size, style, trim and placement of wooden storm windows;
-wooden dormer window size, style, trim and placement;
-size, style, trim and placement of exterior wooden doors;
-dimension, location and orientation of building.

Community

Heart's Content

Municipality

Town of Heart's Content

Civic Address

20 Parish Hall Hill

Construction (circa)

1881 - 1883

Builder

J. & J.T. Southcott, Architects, Carpenters and Builders