Jelly Bean Houses

Having recovered, more or less, from being screeched last night - although our fragile state had less to do with the ceremony and a lot more about our dinner and drinks afterwards, this morning we headed out to check out another of St. John's tourist attractions:  the "jelly bean" houses.  We had been told most of them were located along Gower St. so we programmed the GPS for that.  Little did we know that it was one block away so you can imagine how surprised we were when 2 minutes later, we were there!

The following text is from a website called “o.canada.com”:  Colourful is a term thrown around the travel-writing world like so much clichéd confetti.  But the “painted ladies” of San Francisco, terraces of stately and vividly clad Victorian houses, and the “jelly-bean” row houses of St. John’s transcend the hackneyed with their splashy paint schemes.  Indeed, no less than the New York Times has described the hilly streets, artsy vibe and sweeping harbour views of the Newfoundland capital as a “smaller but earthier” version of the Northern California tech hub.  The rainbow row houses of St. John’s are not confined to one row, either.  They spill down to the harbour along several tightly packed streets in the haphazard downtown core, exciting Instagrammers prowling for perfect backdrops and injecting joyousness into the “mauziest” of wet and foggy days. [Note:  mauzy is a Newfoundland weather term used for wet, foggy weather].  Alas, there is no “colourful” explanation for the candied homes (and later, businesses) of St. John’s.  It seems they were not beacons for fishermen returning home through the fog, romantic as that may sound, but rather a 1970s civic initiative to revive a flagging downtown that caught the public’s imagination and rapidly spread.  Today Jelly Bean Row is as much part of the St. John’s tourist experience as getting “screeched in” at a cod-kissing, a ceremony whose authenticity is on equally dodgy ground.  But who cares about provenance when you’re a come-from-away looking for a fun time in one of Canada’s most fascinating cities?

So, we started on Gower Street stopping off and on along it to take photos of the houses on this and other side streets off Gower we’d had been told to check out called Cochrane, Colonial, Kings, and Flavin.  They certainly add a certain character or appeal to the neighbourhood - not to mention the innumerable commercial spinoffs from them like tea towels, t-shirts, books, calendars, glass and pottery replicas, fridge magnets and numerous other knickknacks and souvenirs.

Even though it was an overcast morning making photo taking a bit dull, the following photos will give you a pretty good idea what they looked like.









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