Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Carleton Martello Tower · Photo: Sajith T S · CC BY-SA 2.0The typical town has 18% of its homes from before 1961; Saint John has 36%. On the registers the town counts 24 historic places, 14 at the top. Scaled to its population, 3 per 10,000 residents beats 90% of Canadian towns. Counted by designation, there are 6 provincial or municipal listings and 4 Recognized Federal Heritage Buildings.
Among Saint John’s top-tier places, 12 are pictured. There are photos here of 20 of Saint John’s designated places. Old pictures of 8 places in Saint John fill their own pages.
Imperial / Bi-Capitol Theatre
Prince William Streetscape
Partridge Island Quarantine Station
Fort Howe
Fort La Tour+15See all photosPhotos from Wikimedia Commons, each credited to its photographer with its licence; names open the place’s page. Tap a photo to step through them full screen.
By date: 8 old photographs of the town, with the oldest views of 8 of its historic places. Swipe along the strip; each picture opens at full size.
1754
1851
1851
1899
1899
1895–1905
c. 1900
c. 1902
c. 1902
c. 1902
c. 1903
1904
c. 1905
c. 1910
c. 1910
c. 1910Public domain or CC0, made before 1950, from Wikimedia Commons; old views of places can be drawings, prints or maps of their time. Each credit opens the image’s page.
Each place by the first construction date on its record.
Of the 23 with a date, 11 predate 1867.
For the municipality of Saint John itself, Wikidata records 1604, a date that can be a founding as much as a merger. Saint John takes its name from John the Baptist.
Every place on the registers inside the town, by its designation.
Names show on hover, and a tap takes you to the place’s page.
The federal directory kept by Parks Canada supplies most of these places; provincial and municipal lists outside Québec aren’t open data, so only the ones Wikidata documents with an article appear.
Points from Wikidata (Parks Canada’s files carry none) and from Québec’s register, as mapped there. 2 places, placed by their register’s municipality, have no point and aren’t on the map.
The oldest, Fort La Tour, dates from 1631; the newest from 1912. National Historic Sites and Classified Federal Heritage Buildings, Canada’s highest federal recognition. Designations came from 1923 to 2014. Each one opens its own page.
The oldest, Barrack Green Armoury, dates from 1911; the newest from 1960. Recognized Federal Heritage Buildings, heritage railway stations and lighthouses. They were designated between 1984 and 2006. Each one opens its own page.
All told, 8 kinds of place appear. 4 places make stations, lighthouses and bridges the second group. The top of the list holds Fort La Tour and Fort Charnisay.
The groups come from each place’s name and its recorded functions, by what it was built as.
Provincial and municipal listings that Wikidata records and an encyclopedia describes. The oldest, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, dates from 1865; the newest from 1884. Each one opens its own page.
The places by the year of their designation.
It began with Fort Charnisay in 1923. Since 2011, one more has joined the list.
Homes built from 2001 to 2015 make up just 11% of Saint John’s, against 15% in the typical town. Few of Saint John’s homes date from 1981 to 2000: 17%, the norm 23%. 34% of Saint John’s homes were built from 1961 to 1980, more than the typical town’s 27%.
2021 Census, private dwellings by period of construction (Statistics Canada); the typical town is the middle Canadian town of 2,500 or more.
At the other end is Louis Murphy, from 1913. The earliest is Ward Chipman, born in 1787. By Wikipedia’s reach, Walter Pidgeon leads, with 37 articles. Counting only births before 1914, there are 119. The 20 best known are on the timeline.
Everyone born in Saint John → Born before 1914. Birthplaces from Wikidata, each checked against Wikipedia; national historic persons from Parks Canada’s Directory of Federal Heritage Designations, matched by name and life years.
Towns of 71,200 to 91,300 residents, by places on the registers.
The typical town its size has 3. 5 of them have nothing on the registers.
| Town | People | Places | Highest | Oldest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saint John | 79,371 | 24 | 14 | 1631 |
| Grand Bay-Westfield | 5,202 | 0 | 0 | — |
| Rothesay | 12,626 | 1 | 1 | 1858 |
| Westfield | 2,245 | 2 | 1 | 1659 |
| Quispamsis | 20,240 | 1 | 1 | 1833 |
| Simonds | 4,263 | 0 | 0 | — |
In Saint John, 36% of homes were built before 1961, against 18% in the typical town. The lists come to 24 historic places, 14 with the highest designation, including Fort La Tour. It tops the 16 towns nearest its size for historic places. Within 400 m of Saint John City Market stand 7 of the town’s places of the highest designation. Of its people of the past, the best known are Walter Pidgeon (1897), William Diller Matthew (1871) and Willy Logan (1907).
By its record, Fort La Tour, from 1631 (National Historic Site).
36% predate 1961, where the typical town has 18%.
These: Fort La Tour, Fort Charnisay, Fort Howe, Loyalist House, Carleton Martello Tower and St. John's Anglican Church / Stone Church, and 8 more.
Provincial and municipal registers outside Québec aren’t open data. Wikidata knows 6 more listings in Saint John, but without an open description or an encyclopedia article they get no page.
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada (Parks Canada).
Sources: Parks Canada, Directory of Federal Heritage Designations · Canadian Register of Historic Places (federal extract) · Wikidata (CC0) for map points, other names and articles · Statistics Canada, 2021 Census (homes by period of construction). Under the Statistics Canada Open Licence.
Adapted from Statistics Canada (Census of Population 2021, population estimates 2025, 2021 census boundaries) under the Statistics Canada Open Licence; this does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada. Neighbourhood names in some cities © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).
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