The charm and heritage of Royal City homes is being showcased in a new walking tour.
The New Westminster Heritage Preservation Society has launched a new, online virtual walking tour featuring residences that have been showcased on Heritage Homes Tours during the past 38 years. The tour, which is accessible from a mobile device or computer, currently features photos and write-ups of about 50 heritage homes, but houses are being added all the time.
“The beauty of this is that it’s not just Queen’s Park. There are heritage houses all over New Westminster. This virtual tour covers those,” said Nancy O’Connor, a board member with the society. “When we are finished or up-to-date, we will have about 200 houses on the site.”
Each spring, the New Westminster Heritage Preservation Society hosts the Heritage Home Tour, where owners of heritage homes open their doors to the public. This year’s tour is set for Sunday, May 27.
“It’s time has come,” O’Connor said of the digital tour. “I think it opens it up to a whole lot more people who might be interested in actually going on a physical heritage homes tour, or at least finding out the history behind these houses.”
Following a demonstration of the new walking tour at its annual general meeting on Feb. 20, the society held a soft launch of the app on Feb. 25, giving people a chance to pull out cellphones, open the app and follow along as they toured some homes in the Queen’s Park neighbourhood.
“It works really well. People were impressed,” O’Connor said of the tour. “They were really impressed. You see a picture of the house and a little mini history.”
People can access the tour through the Take a Heritage Homes Virtual Walking Tour link on the New Westminster Heritage Preservation Society’s website at www.newwestheritage.org.
The society, which received a grant from the City of New Westminster to help fund the project, will demonstrate the digital tour and thank the city for its support at the March 5 city council meeting.
The walking tour, launched during Heritage Week 2018, is one of a number of new initiatives being considered by the New Westminster Heritage Preservation Society. A refresh of the society’s website is being done this spring.
“It will take our existing website and make it a bit more user-friendly,” O’Connor said. “It’s five years old. It’s been great, but if we want to go in a new direction where we are offering more and making it easier for people, well we have to go with the times, because a lot of changes have happened in the last five years.”
Steve North, the society’s new president, is keen on expanding the society’s offerings to the community and utilizing the fount of information that exists within the society, O’Connor said.
“There’s lot of people out there I think who would like the information; maybe they’re not tour goers, and we’d like to go beyond the tour as an organization. This is the first step. The tools are there. It’s now deciding on the best avenue to do this. Offering workshops? Offering special speaking sessions? Or maybe having small tours that are examples of craftsman houses – maybe there are five houses on a summer tour with a smaller group?” she said. “It’s like any society – they have to evolve to what other people are expecting as well, not just stay with the same tried and true, because there is too much to offer.”
