Formal Recognition Type

Registered Heritage Structure

Heritage Value

The Fishermen’s Union Trading Company Cash Store was designated a Registered Heritage Structure by the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador in 2007 for its historic, aesthetic and cultural values.

The Fishermen’s Union Trading Company Cash Store has historic value due to its age and its origins as a Fishermen’s Protective Union (FPU) store. In 1908 William Coaker formed the first organized protest movement among Newfoundland fishers, the Fishermen’s Protective Union (FPU). The FPU functioned in part as a cooperative, attempting to weaken the monopoly of merchants on purchasing and exporting fish and on retailing supplies. This included opening stores under the Fishermen’s Union Trading Company (FUTC). Musgrave Harbour was a strong site for the FPU movement, with a local FPU council established in 1909, and the first FUTC store in Newfoundland opening at there at Doting Cove in 1911. This store was also referred to as the Union Cash Store, as part of its original purpose was to have fishing families deal in cash rather than credit or barter as with the merchant system.

The Fishermen’s Union Trading Company Cash Store has aesthetic value as one of the most distinctive buildings in Musgrave Harbour, and one which evokes a sense of time and place, set against the seascape. Its vernacular design, simple rectangular form, low-pitched roof, wood post foundation, narrow clapboard siding and cornerboards, and wooden windows and doors are typical for the time and place in which it was built. These combine with telltale features like exterior double doors on both floors and large window openings, and original interior features like wooden floors and ceilings, visible posts and beams, and retail shelving, all of which make the building readily identifiable as an historic general store.

The Fishermen’s Union Trading Company Cash Store also has cultural value as it has operated as a museum since 1977.

Source: Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador property file “Musgrave Harbour – Fishermen’s Union Trading Company Cash Store – FPT 1457”

Character Defining Elements

All those exterior features which relate to the age of the building or mark it as an historic store:
-wood post foundation;
-number of storeys;
-low-pitched roof;
-rectangular form;
-narrow wooden clapboard sheathing;
-wooden cornerboards;
-size, style, trim and placement of wooden windows;
-double sets of 1/1 wooden windows on front facade;
-size, style, trim and placement of exterior wooden doors;
-wooden double doors on both levels;
-dimension, location and orientation of building at the site of the Fishermen’s Protective Union Premises at Doting Cove.

Those interior elements which relate to the age of the building or mark it as an historic store:
-original wooden ceilings and floors;
-retail shelving;
-wooden posts and beams.

Notes

The first floor of the FPU Store contained barrels of goods, bags of bread, engine supplies and fishing gear. The upper floor had a counter and shelves for general goods. In 1915, near the Union Cash Store, the FPU also built a wharf and a fish store to hold salt dried fish until it was shipped for marketing to FPU headquarters in Port Union. The mural now mounted on the side of the FPU Store was designed and painted by Wayne Cuff of Musgrave Harbour and has a fisheries history theme.

Community

Musgrave Harbour

Municipality

Town of Musgrave Harbour

Civic Address

004 Marine Drive

Construction (circa)

1911 - 1911

Builder

Fishermen's Protective Union

Style

Rectangular Short Façade