King George V Building - St. John's, NL
Posted by: elyob
N 47° 34.016 W 052° 42.217
22T E 371860 N 5269575
This historic building is across the street from Newfoundland's national war memorial.
Waymark Code: WM14MW7
Location: Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
Date Posted: 07/28/2021
Views: 1
At first glance, this neoclassical rectangular building might look ordinary. However, the building's history includes many interesting stories. The City of St. John's officially recognized the heritage structure in 1989.
The following paragraphs are taken fron the HistoricPlaces web site.
The building is historically important because of its long historical
associations with the military and maritime history of Newfoundland and Labrador. It was originally constructed for the welfare of seamen and working outport girls, a hostel for the crews of allied warships and merchant ships, and was known as the Caribou Hut, after the emblem of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.
The King George V Building has great cultural value to community and to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, associated as it is with the public works of the Grenfell Mission. The building has a great deal of local sentimental value, and serves as an unofficial memorial to the great sealing disaster of 1914. Following the disaster, the frozen bodies of dead sealers from S.S. Newfoundland were thawed in vats of hot water in the basement of the building.