Barney Oldfield Archives

You can be forgiven if National Inventors’ Day (February 11) passed you by yesterday, but it gives me a great excuse to write about Barney Oldfield, one of British Columbia’s own treasures.

The rotating house at 5321 Old West Saanich Road. Eve Lazarus photo, 2010

Barney Oldfield:

Horace Basil (Barney) Oldfield was a mechanical genius and inventor who lived most of his life in Saanich, just outside of Victoria. He and brother Brian founded the Prospect Lake Garage in 1934 on Old West Saanich Road, which amazingly still operates as a family-run business. It was inside his little shop that he built a 24-ton truck out of scrap metal, specialized bulldozer blades and he developed a portable welder and other tools for the logging industry.

Teardrop car:

The two inventions though that attracted the most public attention was the teardrop car he designed and built in the early 1940s, and the rotating house located just a few blocks from his garage.

According to a Times Colonist story from September 1967 the aerodynamic car which he custom-built was the size of a VW bus and could reach speeds of 180 kilometres an hour. He called his invention the Spirit of Tomorrow. It was a combination of a 1939 Dodge frame, Ford V8 engine, transmission, two-speed Columbia over-drive, and front and rear suspension. John Norton, a Victoria-based metal worker built the aluminum body. A large metal fin went on the back of the car to provide better directional control in crosswinds.

For six months Barney carried sandbags in the uncovered chassis, putting them in different positions until he found exactly the right balance that he wanted in the car. John Norton told the Times Colonist reporter. “The airfoil design makes it sink at high speed. It drops a whole inch at 90 miles an hour.”

Rotating House:

Barney, who never married, built his 12-sided rotating house out of steel on top of Saanich Mountain. When he finished the house in the early 1970s, it rotated at 360 degrees with the flick of a switch and could spin at two speeds and reverse. The ground floor was 1,150 sq. ft with a fireplace and bathroom in the centre and kitchen, dining area, living room, two bedrooms and laundry facing outward. On the top was a 200 sq. ft round room with views of Mount Baker, the Malahat and part of the Olympics, and the controls to make the house rotate. Underneath he built a garage and basement.

Barney died in 1978 at 65. He had hung himself in his home.

For more stories like this one check out: Sensational Victoria: Bright Lights, Red Lights, Murders, Ghosts and Gardens

Sources:

Five Eccentric BC Houses
Times Colonist, September 5, 1967; June 28, 1973
Website: Spirit of Tomorrow
BC Assessment

Here are five of my favourite eccentric BC houses that still stand (or did at the time of research).

1. The Hobbit House(s)

There are two in Vancouver and one in West Van designed by Ross Lort in the early 40s, and against all odds, all survive. Hobbit house at King Edward and Cambie is now part of a town house development. The future looked shaky for The Hobbit House on West Broadway when it sold to a developer six years ago, but instead of razing the place, James Curtis did a deal with the City where he sunk close to a million dollars into renovating the house, designated it, and in return was allowed to subdivide and build a second house on the large lot.

2. The Rotating House

Barney Oldfield (1913-1978) was a mechanical genius and inventor. In 1969 he built a 12-sided rotating house out of steel on the Old West Saanich Road on Vancouver Island. This house rotates at a complete 360 degrees, can spin at two speeds and reverse. His other inventions include a specialized 24-ton logging truck, bulldozer blades and a custom-built aerodynamic car he built in 1940 called “the spirit of tomorrow.” When I took this photo in 2010, the house was still in the Oldfield family, but renters had hooked up a television in a way that interfered with the houses mechanics and stopped it from turning.

3. Chuck Currie’s Polka Dotted house

Chuck Currie moved here in 1989 and painted his house three years later — 2105 East 3rd Avenue

Technically, the only thing that’s eccentric about Chef Chuck Currie’s house is the paint job. But it’s so startling that it rates a spot on this list. Chuck bought the house at 3^rd and Lakewood in 1989 and painted it white with huge red polka dots a few years later. It was a joke, he says. A friend who owned a painting company went on holidays and came home to find that his friends had painted his house with purple polka dots. Chuck loved the idea and thought it was a great way to spruce up his neighbourhood.

4. The Steel House

When I wrote about this house in December 2010, Shaun Torontow, its designer and owner had it for sale. I suspect he still does. At 35 feet long and three levels, the house comes in at just over 1,000 square feet. And at just nine feet wide, it’s one of the skinniest houses in Canada (The Sam Kee building in Vancouver’s Chinatown holds the record at just under five feet). Shaun, an artist and welder, built his house out of steel and outfitted it with steel furniture, a bathroom that looks like a laboratory and an elevator to an underground pool.

5. Paul Merrick’s Tree House

Architect Paul Merrick designed this West Vancouver for his family in 1974. The original structure was less than 900 sq.ft. Later Merrick added a major addition incorporating cedar stone and glass and recycled building materials. There are soaring ceilings, multiple levels and exterior decks that blur the indoors with the outdoors. Because it’s built on a rocky promontory and nestled within private forest much of the house has the feel of living in a tree canopy. The current owner describes it as “part tree house, part Winnie the Pooh.”

“Living in this house is a lifestyle, it is your life and it becomes who you are,” she told me for my chapter about West Coast architects in Sensational Vancouver.

The Marvellous Inventions of Barney Oldfield (1913-1978)

Barney Oldfield:

Teardrop car:

Rotating House:

Sources: