In recent weeks this column has brought you accounts of a couple of interesting structures.
One was of a house that used to be right in the centre of downtown and the other of an early office building.
Today, we look at a 1911 home that is still in place in the city's uptown area.
Our personal knowledge of the home goes back to former residents, Ken and Rosemary Wright, who lived there for many years. Both Wrights were very involved in the community with Ken especially well known for sports, teaching and local politics. Rosemary was of the Edmonds family and that fact leads us to the story in the 1911 newspaper discussing a new home in the city.
"On the corner of Fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, Mr. H. L. Edmonds has erected and already occupies a commodious new home. The building is of very pleasing exterior appearance and is painted a neat Vandyke brown with pale green trimmings." So starts the early article simply titled, "H. L. Edmonds Residence."
We learn from the piece that the house has large broad verandahs front and back and also sleeping verandahs where the residents could escape summer heat late in the day and throughout the night.
The reporter had obviously visited the home, as many details are included such as, "there is a general impression on passing around and through the house that the place has been erected with a view to combining comfort and hygiene."
The house, noted as being 32 by 34 feet, had two storeys and a higher foundation than in other homes, "thus giving a splendid basement."
The main floor had a hall, living room, dining room, kitchen and pantry, and upstairs provided the Edmonds family with three "comfortable bedrooms" as well as an "exceptionally fine bathroom" along with linen and clothes closets.
Occasionally articles like this give us a little more detail than simply rooms and layout. This 1911 example has supplied the house colour and regarding the interior, it adds, "the finishing of the main floor is tinted plaster and antique tile . (the) general effect being very pleasing."
This home, and we want to emphasize that this is a private home, is still there at Fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, kitty-corner from the Westminster Centre building.
When built, it was sited to take advantage of the many changes taking place in the area surrounding the corner of Sixth Street and Sixth Avenue as stores and the streetcar system were added to the neighbourhood.
This house, constructed one block away from the developing shopping area that would become Uptown was prominent, "cost in the neighbourhood of $5,000, and is justly considered one of the most desirable residences in that part of the city."
An interesting home with an interesting story - too bad it cannot tell us of all the Uptown changes it has witnessed in the last 102 years.
