Ceperley House was built in 1911 for Grace Ceperley and designed by Samuel Maclure. The mansion is situated along Deer Park Lake in Burnaby.
Based on a story in At Home with History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Houses
I love this photo of Grace Ceperley and her family taken a century ago. I went out to Burnaby this week to take a comparison shot of the house.
Designed by Samuel Maclure:
When it was built in 1911 it cost $150,000 and was the largest house in Burnaby, sitting on 20 acres of land, 10 of which was landscaped. A story in the local newspaper described it as a palatial home “with its fine lawns, terraces, rockeries, greenhouses, pumping station for irrigation. Lodge stables and outbuildings.”
Many of the original buildings have been demolished, but the stables, root house and steam plant are still there. So is the chauffeur’s cottage, but it’s unclear who actually occupied it. Mr. Muttit, the English chauffeur, told the Ceperley’s that, as a socialist, he would not live a “feudal life” on the estate.
Grace:
While Henry Ceperley owned a successful real estate and insurance business, it was Grace who bought the land and built “Fairacres” as a retirement home. Grace used money she inherited from her brother-in-law A.G. Ferguson (the same Ferguson of Ferguson Point in Stanley Park). The condition was that after her death she would leave a chunk of money to go to the improvement of Stanley Park.
She did just that when she died in 1917 at age 54. She had carefully earmarked $13,000 in her will and specific instructions to fund a children’s playground. The playground, still called Ceperley Park in Grace’s honour, is by Second Beach in Stanley Park, but little of the original fixtures remain. At the time it was one of the largest in Canada, filled with giant slides, ladders and seesaws, a sandbox, wading pool, bridge canal, and track and field facilities.
Sells to cult:
Fairacres sold to Frederick Buscombe one-time Mayor of Vancouver in 1922, and future owners included a group of Benedictine monks from Oregon, and the Temple of the More Abundant Life. The cult was shortlived when it transpired that its leader, Archbishop John had fled the US as a convicted bigamist with a string of extortion and wife-beating charges.
The City of Burnaby bought the estate in 1966. It survived as a frat house for SFU students for a couple of years and is now the home of the Burnaby Art Gallery.
Related:
- Halloween 2022
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14 comments on “Ceperley House/Burnaby Art Gallery”
Very well researched article Eve! The link with Stanley Park is interesting. One question – do you know what the motivation was for the City of Burnaby to buy the estate?
Hi Will: Thank you. And just heard back from Jim Wolf at the City of Burnaby. He says that a group of well-heeled and connected Deer Lake residents and members of the Burnaby Art Society lobbied for the purchase of Fairacres as part of Burnaby’s 1967 Centennial project and received matching funds. Jim says the City had already purchased the waterfront portion of the property for Deer Lake Park and this second purchase just made sense.
Hi
Really enjoyed your article. It has been helpful as we used to own an old converted railway carriage at Dungeness and while doing some renovations I found an old scrap book that the owner had made up why he was converting the carriage into accommodation. I have been thinking of doing a blog about it and your post has been very helpful towards that.
So thanks again lee
Hi Lee:
I would love to read it–can’t wait to find out about the contents of the scrap book.
Eve
This house has a great history! I work at Burnaby Village Museum and we do a Halloween walking tour of this home as well as 2 others at Deer Lake and 2 more at the Village. I am not trying to sell anyone anything, but if the history interests you check out the Burnaby Village Museum website for times/prices. The SFU frat boy art can still be see on the top floor – very 60’s inspired haha.
Just did a walking tour of Deer Lake Park, led by Jim Wolfe. It was wonderful. What a gem we have here in Burnaby. Jim Wolfe is a fabulous tour guide, very passionate, animated, and information!
I was sorry to miss it, glad it went well. Just posted a photo and write up of your Burnaby tour via Michael K on our FB page https://www.facebook.com/Vancouverhistoricalsociety/
Thanks for the page! My great grandfather, Charles Allen, was the contractor who built this house 🙂 and then in the 60’s and 70’s, my dad was a carpenter for the municipality of Burnaby, and did a lot of renovation work on Ceperley Mansion and James Cowan Theatre.
Great grandpa also built the lovely old home that was on Kingsway a couple of blocks from Kingsway and Royal Oak – and they moved it to the complex on the corner of Kingsway and Royal Oak back in the 80s where it became a restaurant… did a search and there’s a photo of it, called sushi oyama. Earlier years, that home had been a funeral home. These were sure well built homes!
What a great history! Love this house. Is the house at Kingsway and Royal Oak still there?
Hello Eve,
A very late comment as I was just reminiscing of my time as a resident of the mansion in 1966 as a member of the as hoc fraternity that rented it.
Two points to make.
When we arranged the rental and moved in to the mansion, everything including all the walls, ceilings, hardwood railings and balustrades, window panes, etc we’re painted a pale green.
After drawing straws for bedrooms and dormitories, the 23 of us started to gently remove the paint from the hardwood, stone fireplaces, windows, etc. while repainting our rooms in more realistic tones.
Secondly, and more to the haunted rumours, I found a secret passageway from the back of the master bedroom shower that led via a ladder way up to the attic and down each floor to a cupboard in the kitchen, a closet in obviously the maid’s room and eventually to the basement where there was a coal shoot.
On visiting the Art Gallery years later, I explained this to a staff member and paced off two offices showing there was 3’ of missing space that had been renovated.
Obviously, some locals still knew of the egress and access through the interior of the mansion up to the attic.
Anyway, I thought you might like this little ditty of the history.
That’s amazing Bob and I’ll be talking to you for a podcast this Halloween! You are also the first person I’ve found who has actually lived in the house (well still alive I mean)
[…] Ceperley House/Burnaby Art Gallery […]
[…] Club, built in 1893 and with members who lived close by back then, and included people such as Henry Ceperley, B.T. Rogers, Alfred St. George Hamersley, Gerry McGeer, Wendell Farris, H.R. MacMillan, and the […]
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