Rod Stears Photography
142 Queen St, St. Andrews, N.B.
Asking price: $1.35-million
Lot size: 0.294 Acres
Taxes: $7,623.28 (2024)
Listing agent: Debbie Grant, Coldwell Banker Select Realty
In the tiny town of St. Andrews, N.B., lies an art history riddle wrapped in a historic building inside a national historic site.
At least, that’s what Karen Ludwig has experienced since she bought the Harris Hatch house in 2012, becoming just the fifth family to own the Neo-Classical brick building that dates back to 1847. Ms. Ludwig, a former Liberal Party MP for the area, learned fairly early on that the home had more than one historical significance, and may even have a connection to Edward Mitchell Bannister, a significant Canadian-American Black artist.
According to the Smithsonian museum in Washington, Mr. Bannister was born in St. Andrews in 1828 to a local woman named Hannah Bannister (nee Alexander) and Edward Bannister, a Black man from Barbados. By 1844 both his parents had died, and he was living with local official and merchant Harris Hatch. There are two homes associated with the Hatch family in St. Andrews, so it’s not clear which Mr. Bannister lived in, but records say by 1848 Mr. Bannister had moved to Boston, where he studied painting over the next 20 years before moving to Rhode Island.
His story took a sensational turn in 1876 when a landscape he submitted to the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition won first prize: it was the first time a Black artist had won a national art prize in the United States. He became a prolific artist over the remaining decades of his life, and after his death in 1901 his work continues to be collected and exhibited in American art museums, and at least one of his landscapes has hung in the White House.
But despite being born in Canada, his story hasn’t been widely told here. Ms. Ludwig admits she hadn’t been familiar with his connection to St. Andrew until she moved into the Harris Hatch house.
“Over the years – five, six times – we’d receive different calls and e-mails, asking if we ever found any paintings or drawings on the walls,” Ms. Ludwig said. Then, in 2020, as she was renovating the third floor attic her husband found some unusually well-protected plaster on one of the chimneys that had a mix of blue and green paint on it. “It looks like a landscape brush all over the brickwork. I posted it on social media, and a number of historians reached out to me.”
The discovery made the local news, but ultimately there wasn’t enough evidence in the remnants to make it clear who painted it, what they painted or if they had any connection to Mr. Bannister. Nevertheless, the colourful plaster was preserved and is part of the third floor in the house today.
“I think it’s a sense of responsibility when you own a heritage home,” said Ms. Ludwig, who doesn’t need proof of a connection to Mr. Bannister to appreciate the heritage embodied in her 177-year-old house. “We really are stewards of the house.”
The house today
Home of the Week, 142 Queen St., St. Andrews, N.B.Rod Stears Photography
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The home is quite large by the standards of its day and ours: almost 5,000 square feet over three levels. The Harris House had been an inn for a number of years when Ms. Ludwig bought it, and there remains two separated rental buildings on the property, but her attention has been on reviving the original structure.
The house is essentially two wings that split off a central hallway that starts with the foyer and staircase (behind which nestles a powder room). Off to the right on the main floor is a billiards room (with one of the three working fireplaces that remain in the home) with much of the original moulding and trim preserved including a gracefully arched pocket-door that leads to formal dining room at the rear.
To the left was likely once a formal parlour, but is now a combination living room and open kitchen that was added by Ms. Ludwig, including exposed brick and connections to the butler pantry between the it and the dining room.
Off the left of the kitchen is a mud room and laundry room that wraps around the corner to open into the garage and backyard.
On the second level the two wings are occupied by two large bedroom suites with connected ensuite baths. One has a decidedly 1990s flair with, the one with a contemporary update is used as the primary bedroom.
At the back of the building is the former servants stairs to the attic rooms, now refurbished into a series of bright and spacious guest quarters with skylights, dep dormer window arches, and the preserved chimney. Some of the original floorboards on this level came from enormous old-growth trees providing two-foot-wide planks, some of which have been repurposed into millwork elsewhere in the house. And of course, the mystery chimney is in what is now a TV room.
“We spend a lot of our time on the third floor watching TV in that room,” said Ms. Ludwig, and from the windows on this level you can get views of the harbour (just a few streets away down the original colonial grid) particularly in the winter.
Good bones
“I used to walk past this house and always loved it, but I couldn’t imagine owning it,” said Ms. Ludwig. What makes Harris Hatch house stand out in the small community is the red brick construction.
“I can count on one hand how many brick homes there are in St. Andrew,” said Ms. Ludwig. “For this house the bricks were made on site.” According to masons who have been called in to work on it, the brick exterior is four layers deep giving the home the kind of deep window wells more common to stone houses.
Even before questions were raised about whether Mr. Bannister left behind some art history on its walls, the home was on the historic register and would form part of heritage tours of the town (which actually haven’t been happening since the COVID-19 pandemic). These are all things Ms. Ludwig is going to miss after they sell it.
“We all really love it, but the house is more than what we need,” she said. Their next project is to restore another historic property in town, which is by comparison a spring-chicken at just 90 years young.