According to the City's online property assessment, the house that my wife and I live in was built in 1882. Before we purchased in it August of this year, I did not know there were houses that old in Winnipeg that did not have bronze placards in front of them. As it turns out, there are a good number of houses from that year in my neighborhood of North Point Douglas, and in South Point Douglas, as well as just West of the Exchange District in Centennial.
This house would have been built as a result of Winnipeg's first great boom of 1881-82, when the reports of the Canadian Pacific Railway's transcontinental mainline would run through Winnipeg, set the young city of 10,000 abuzz. It was in those two years that the last sections of the old bucolic, agricultural Point Douglas was wiped away, as the remaining ancient Selkirk settler's farm lots above Euclid were surveyed to become Granville, Hallet and Grove Streets, and the old farm houses made way for new ones on new lots that would better serve the growing city. (Of course, the Barber House on Euclid Avenue still stands as a lone physical remnant of the pre-urban Point Douglas.)
We are probably the sixth of seventh to own this house, going from the present, back to when the houses on this street first bore the same street numbers the do today (sometime in 1888 or '89, according the Henderson Directories). The surnames of the owners went from Scottish in the 1880's to the 1930's, to Ukrainian from the '30's to the '80's. It was owned by a Chinese family during the 90's, until 2000, when this house was purchased by the young Mennonite family that sold to it to us five years later. In spite of doing only light renovations throughout the house, they sold it for $20,000 more than they paid.
Our house stands in good condition, but little remains of the original character it would have had. I suspect this has come as a result of flood relief money going towards the modernization of the houses around here in 1950, and from fix-up grants offered through the Neighborhood Improvement Program in the 70's. Those eras are not noted for their sensitivity to character.
And so, our job through the coming years is to restore this house to the glory it certainly would have had some 100-120 years ago. There is not one room that we do not have big plans for. Since we moved in at the beginning of September, my wife and I have slowly began to work on a few things, as we figure out the overall plan that we are going for.
The first thing I did was expose the brick chimney that runs up the back of the dining room. Then I removed the carpet on the stairs, and am presently in the very tedious process of stripping the wooden stairs and balustrade. In January, I will begin working on removing the linoleum and particle-board on the floors in the second bedroom upstairs (soon to be the baby room). With a belt-sander, I hope to strip the old paint off the boards, refinish them, and put new filler in the cracks.
And so, inspired by the folks at houseblogs.net, I think that I will occasionally be throwing updates on the progress that I am making with this old house into my usual mix of tirades. And of course, please feel free to comment and offer suggestions or renovation tips.
This house would have been built as a result of Winnipeg's first great boom of 1881-82, when the reports of the Canadian Pacific Railway's transcontinental mainline would run through Winnipeg, set the young city of 10,000 abuzz. It was in those two years that the last sections of the old bucolic, agricultural Point Douglas was wiped away, as the remaining ancient Selkirk settler's farm lots above Euclid were surveyed to become Granville, Hallet and Grove Streets, and the old farm houses made way for new ones on new lots that would better serve the growing city. (Of course, the Barber House on Euclid Avenue still stands as a lone physical remnant of the pre-urban Point Douglas.)
We are probably the sixth of seventh to own this house, going from the present, back to when the houses on this street first bore the same street numbers the do today (sometime in 1888 or '89, according the Henderson Directories). The surnames of the owners went from Scottish in the 1880's to the 1930's, to Ukrainian from the '30's to the '80's. It was owned by a Chinese family during the 90's, until 2000, when this house was purchased by the young Mennonite family that sold to it to us five years later. In spite of doing only light renovations throughout the house, they sold it for $20,000 more than they paid.
Our house stands in good condition, but little remains of the original character it would have had. I suspect this has come as a result of flood relief money going towards the modernization of the houses around here in 1950, and from fix-up grants offered through the Neighborhood Improvement Program in the 70's. Those eras are not noted for their sensitivity to character.
And so, our job through the coming years is to restore this house to the glory it certainly would have had some 100-120 years ago. There is not one room that we do not have big plans for. Since we moved in at the beginning of September, my wife and I have slowly began to work on a few things, as we figure out the overall plan that we are going for.
The first thing I did was expose the brick chimney that runs up the back of the dining room. Then I removed the carpet on the stairs, and am presently in the very tedious process of stripping the wooden stairs and balustrade. In January, I will begin working on removing the linoleum and particle-board on the floors in the second bedroom upstairs (soon to be the baby room). With a belt-sander, I hope to strip the old paint off the boards, refinish them, and put new filler in the cracks.
And so, inspired by the folks at houseblogs.net, I think that I will occasionally be throwing updates on the progress that I am making with this old house into my usual mix of tirades. And of course, please feel free to comment and offer suggestions or renovation tips.
posted by The Rise and Sprawl at
8:44 PM
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