Shelley Fralic
Sun
The first one, held 26 years ago this month, attracted about 200 people who each paid $3.50 to tour five old New Westminster houses.
They were local residents, attracted by the opportunity to compare notes on turn-of-the-century homes just like the ones they owned in the neighbourhood, fixer-uppers that not only needed restoration and a little TLC, but protection from developers bent on demolition, and city officials for whom heritage meant a roadblock to progress.
Fast forward to May 28, 2006, when it’s expected that close to 2,000 heritage “tourists” from all over the Lower Mainland — paying $30 for the privilege — will respectfully tiptoe their way through the nooks and crannies of 15 historic homes in the Royal City that will open their doors for the 27th Annual Heritage Homes Tour & Tea.
Homes like the storybook yellow cottage in Queens Park that many viewed as nothing more than a teardown a few years ago — until a young couple, who had already restored one New Westminster old-timer, breathed new life into the 1902 cottage’s old bones, nursing it through a complete renovation inside and out.
Homes like the roomy 1912 arts and crafts bungalow in Moody Park that is a testimony to the endurance of spar-varnished first-growth fir, and to TLC — it was a rundown multi-unit building until its owners bought it in 1988 and returned it to shiny single-family splendor.
No question, then, that a finely built old house, a standing legacy to a time when craftsmen really were, when built-in cabinetry and stained glass defined character, is an architectural buffs’ magnet.
With that first spark of interest, the New Westminster Heritage Foundation continued its conservation quest, and watched as the numbers grew each year for the annual home tour, as more and more old-house lovers signed on to support the preservation cause and share the experience with fellow heritage hounds working on their own labours of love.
The locals still hit the tour every year, daintily doffing their shoes before testing the trueness of the refinished floors in their neighbours’ homes.
But these days, the die-hard veterans have been joined by some new kids on the block.
While yesterday’s ticketholders, says the heritage foundation’s Jim Hutson, “lived in old homes themselves and were interested in getting tips on how to strip paint from mouldings or wallpaper the parlour,” today’s heritage tourists are skewing younger.
And they come to the perennially sold-out New Westminster tour from all over the Lower Mainland, and even Vancouver Island and the Okanagan.
Often, they are first-time home buyers, or young couples who appreciate quality and hope one day to own an older home that speaks to history and comfort and that all-important thing called character.
Which means that these days, where cheap and fast is often the construction credo, where condos still leak and where most new homes have everything but character, a solid fixer-upper has become an appealing goal for many Lower Mainland house hunters, especially those in their 30s and 40s.
The kind of house that is becoming a rare commodity — both in availability and affordability — in the relatively young settlement that is the Lower Mainland.
While Vancouver proper boasts a healthier population of decades-old character homes — most of them on the east and west side of the city — New Westminster’s cache of heritage homes on the city’s official inventory numbers only 900.
Jim and his wife Catherine, who bought their handsome 1912 craftsman in Queen’s Park in 1999, and who have long been involved with the heritage foundation, are not surprised at this newfound interest in old houses, especially among a new generation of house hunters.
“There is a trend to solidness,” says Catherine, adding, “we don’t appreciate soul, character, and personality until we get older.”
That, everyone agrees, is what old-home ownership is all about.
Along with the maintenance headaches that come with old age — knob and tube wiring, stucco over wood siding, lath and plaster walls, wonky ceilings, layers of bad renovation and expensive-to-replicate woodwork — owning a heritage house is all about tending a piece of historical art.
An old house not only has a life of its own, but in New Westminster often carries a pedigreed name — Wimbledon Cottage, Breezehurst, The Robert Cheyne House — that can be traced to city pioneers and historic events in the community.
The lure of heritage is the same in Vancouver, where operators of the fledgling annual home tour have also noticed the changing face of participants.
Diane Switzer of the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, which runs the Open Vancouver Heritage Tour, says when her organization first started doing exit polls, at local heritage and antique shows, they discovered most of the interest in Vancouver’s old houses came from women in their 50s.
And while that component has remained strong, there’s a new lookie-loo showing up for the tour, which takes its fourth spin on June 4.
“What I’m seeing coming through is great interest from the 35- to 45-year-olds who are seeing great quality in building materials, commenting on things like beautiful original fir flooring, and I’m not sure you would have heard that a few years ago,” says Switzer.
The Vancouver event, which includes lunch at Hycroft Manor, is also expected to sell out its 1,500 tickets at $35 each.
This year’s tour features 10 houses, including a 1930 Shaughnessy house built in the Prairie School style, a Point Grey arts and crafts home that was slated for demolition but has since been restored, and an assortment of homes in Strathcona, Mount Pleasant and Hastings Sunrise.
Two of the houses on the tour are the work of CBK Van Norman, often referred to as the “father of modernism in Vancouver.”
Switzer is pleased that young people are taking note of the city’s architectural history.
“The increased interest is fascinating for those of us in the heritage conservation business,” says Switzer, who lives in a west side old-timer, and says the trend is an ideal opportunity for conservation education.
“There’s just this appreciation for what’s come before.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
