Search
Website Design and Content © by Eric Krause,
Krause House Info-Research Solutions (© 1996)
All Images © Parks Canada Except
Where Noted Otherwise
Report/Rapport © Parks Canada / Parcs Canada
---
Report Assembly/Rapport de l'assemblée © Krause
House
Info-Research Solutions
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.