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Rang

Jellybean Row

St. John's

Wooden row houses in red, yellow, blue and green climb the hills above a foggy North Atlantic harbour.

Aerial view of downtown St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador (pop. 110,000). It is the easternmost city in North America (excluding Greenland).
Photo: Quintin Soloviev, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why St. John's is jellybean red

St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador, is one of the oldest European settlements in North America. Its downtown streets rise steeply from the harbour, lined with joined wooden houses built after a great fire in 1892. Each is painted a different strong colour with contrasting trim. People call the effect Jellybean Row, though it is not one street but many. A common story says sailors painted their homes brightly to find them in the fog. In fact the present look dates largely from a heritage project in the late 1970s that repainted run-down streets to bring life back to the centre; residents then carried it on. Small fishing sheds around the harbour are traditionally red ochre.

Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.

Colours tied to St. John's

About this page

Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador" on Wikipedia. If you know St. John's and we have it wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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