An Architecture of Closeness: The Ross Family Double Farmhouse in St. Mary’s, Nova Scotia

Abstract

This paper analyzes an early 20th-century double or duplex farmhouse in the St. Mary’s River valley of northeastern Nova Scotia built by brothers Thomas and George Ross. Although double houses are common in urban and industrial contexts where an economy of space is required, such forms are atypical across the agricultural built landscape. In exploring the shared architecture of the Ross family farm, this paper seeks to understand the Ross family and their idiosyncratic architectural choice in the context of a rapidly changing rural landscape where economic underdevelopment and outmigration threatened the stability of established social structures. While partition may seemingly create a division between those living in double or duplex houses, in the case of the Ross family, the farmhouse reproduced and strengthened kinship.