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Researching the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site of Canada
  Recherche sur la Forteresse-de-Louisbourg Lieu historique national du Canada

DOMESTIC BUILDING CONSTRUCTION 
AT THE FORTRESS OF LOUISBOURG, 1713 - 1758

By

Eric Krause

1996 Draft Report

(Fortress of Louisbourg
Report Number H G 10)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CONCLUSIONS

Louisbourg was a French maritime town that accepted traditional European and North American building construction techniques while developing techniques of its own because of the unique climate of Isle Royale. The half-timber and rubblestone masonry buildings of Louisbourg were not unlike those of Europe; the piquet type not unlike those of Newfoundland or New France. Yet the beveled weatherboard had no counterpart anywhere else in North America or Europe.

The Louisbourg approach to building did not have a long lasting impact upon island construction techniques. With its fall in 1758, the fortress town quickly deteriorated. By 1785 only four original houses were left standing and soon these would disappear too. The site of the original town was barren, the soil poor, the climate disagreeable, and better land was available elsewhere, across the harbour and in Sydney, the choice as the new capital of the island that same year. The new settlers to Sydney were American Loyalists, with their own ways of building, and the final death knell of French Louisbourg was sounded. All eyes were now focused on Sydney and its development.