Brian Whiteley MRTPI is a Planning Advisor for Planning Aid England.
A Canadian garden city
Grand Falls is among the first garden cities created outside the UK in the early 1900’s. Designed and built by the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company, the town’s layout was inspired by Ebenezer Howard’s pioneering theory of 1898 - with separate residential, commercial, and industrial zones, and suburban housing lots organized along a series of sweeping curvilinear streets meant to integrate scenic views and landscape into the urban experience.
Whilst developed in both a very different time and economic context, perhaps there are five pointers Grand Falls offers for New Towns now under consideration in the UK:
- Location
- Key economic driver
- Master Plan
- Housing and community facilities developed concurrently
- Building a place using landmark buildings
Location
During the early 1900’s UK press baron Alfred Harmsworth looked for an alternative source of newsprint, safely removed from a war-threatened Europe. Searching for a suitable location to build and operate a pulp and paper mill, he chose Grand Falls on the Exploits River.
The Falls could provide hydroelectric power with ready access to plentiful lumber and the nearby trans Newfoundland railway and a port at Botwood.
Key economic driver
He founded the Anglo Newfoundland Development (AND) Company which built and opened the world’s largest pulp and paper in 1909, together with a surrounding company town which followed shortly afterwards, Grand Falls. It housed a workforce soon attracted there from both Newfoundland and the Empire.by the employment and wages offered. The mill remained in operation for a century, for most of that time being the community’s main employer.
Master Plan
Once the AND Company started building the mill in 1906, it soon prepared a Master Plan for Grand Falls. Published in 1907, This depicted five main components: the mill, town centre, two residential districts, and a recreational area.
A high street was laid out east of the mill to be the commercial and administrative centre. Further east was a residential area with a peripheral circular road and two pairs of intersecting streets forming a grid within. Houses were arranged on spacious lots along each street, as per Howard’s Garden City model. North of the mill, another residential area was built featuring an irregular curvilinear street network, dictated by the hilly terrain. A recreational area was laid out to the east of this.
Housing and community facilities developed concurrently
Initially, mill staff were housed temporarily in hostels or boarding houses before more permanent homes were built. Only employees of the AND were permitted to live in the community; non-AND employees, e.g. forest workers, merchants and sundry service providers, resided in the adjacent town which grew up in the shadow of Grand Falls alongside the railway – at Grand Falls Station. Later renamed Windsor, in contrast this had no formal planning. Effectively, the two communities separated different classes of workers and services.
Company housing in Grand Falls was modelled on that in Letchworth Garden City (the world’s first garden city, built 1903-05), arranged along wide streets with front and rear gardens and featured modern amenities like indoor plumbing and electricity. Also, in keeping with Garden City ideas, buildings in Grand Falls were of local materials, chiefly wood.
The AND Company also built shops, clubs, churches, schools, and a hospital for its workers, along with an abundance of greenery in the form of athletic fields, parks, and gardens. The company also directed all aspects of social life in Grand Falls, sponsoring picnics and sports teams - and banishing alcohol.
Building a place using landmark buildings
In addition to many surviving examples of the original housing stock, several historic buildings remain which have become key landmarks unique to the town, including Grand Falls House and portions of the original AND Co. Pulp and Paper Mill.
Perhaps the most notable historic building today, Harmsworth Hall, was constructed by the AND Company in 1929. For decades it served the community as a theatre, playhouse and meeting hall. When Grand Falls was incorporated in 1961, the company gave the building to the new municipality as a town hall.
Does Grand Falls offer lessons for proposed UK new towns?
- Location – it was a place able to attract internationally mobile capital, with good transport links, attractive to work and live in, and with ready access to any raw materials or technologies and labour needed to forge a new local economy.
- Key economic driver – it took decades to build a new community and there was a durable economic driver able to support that growth over that period.
- Master Plan – Municipal control and private land ownership were both later facets of Grand Falls’s development. A single company which owned and leased back land to developers, ensured the town developed to its original master plan, giving certainty as to growth and development from its initial beginnings.
- Housing and community facilities: developed concurrently – the Garden City concept ensured that the social and community needs of the workforce needed at Grand Falls were attended to from its early stages. Temporary housing was in place ahead of permanent housing developed by the AND Company in the carefully planned streets of the master plan.
- Building a place: using landmark buildings – importance was given to developing community buildings in prominent positions across the town to give it an identity and sense of place.
