Vancouver Hobbit House has sold. It’s one of three in Metro Vancouver designed by Ross Lort
587 West King Edward
The Hobbit House has sold. David Mooney already owns the properties to the west and is looking to incorporate the West Kind Edward property into a town house development.
Mooney works with W.T. Leung Architects and has retained heritage consultant Don Luxton. Luxton will figure how best to preserve the original bones of the house and incorporate it into a low-rise strata development.
It’s early days yet, but Luxton says the intent is to restore the house to its original appearance. He wants to keep the leaded windows and repair the distinctive shingle roof.
“Solving the building envelope issues will be the most challenging part of this heritage conservation project,” says Luxton. “Conversion to a strata use involves a very complex series of regulations.”
It doesn’t sound like a bad bargain. It would mean the restoration and upkeep of the original house on its original site, while Mooney tells me he would get 22 units instead of 18. Three of the units would be at the back of the Hobbit House and not visible from the street.
Have to think that having the Hobbit House as part of the development won’t be bad from a marketing standpoint either.
Other recent townhouse developments by Mooney include Boxwood Green on West 6th and Viridian Green at Collingwood and 4th.
Mooney wouldn’t tell me what he’s offfered, just that it was a fair price and nowhere near the asking of $2.86 million.
A couple of weeks ago I was taking photos of this house on Somerset when Bob Findlay politely asked me what I was doing skulking around in his bushes. Fortunately, Bob, the current owner, has researched his house’s social history and kindly invited me inside to take a look around.
The house was built in 1912 as a hunting lodge for Alvo von Alvensleben. One of the first houses built in the area, it sits on a high piece of property overlooking Burrard Inlet. A century ago, it would have looked like it was carved out of the forest, with a grand wrap-around veranda and a circular carriage drive.
437 Somerset Street ca.1916
Son of a Count:
In 1912, Alvensleben was at the top of his career. The son of a German count, he came to Vancouver in 1904 with $4 in his pocket and dreams of finding gold in the Wild West. He was about 10 years too late, and ended up fishing for salmon until he made enough money to speculate in property.
He was wildly successful. Before WW1 he brought millions of dollars of German investment into BC. His family home is now part of the Crofton Girl’s School in Kerrisdale. He developed the Wigwam Inn into a luxury resort, financed the Dominion Building on Hastings Street, and he owned huge tracts of land all over BC, including Pitt Meadows.
Branded a Spy:
Like many land speculators Alvo went broke in 1913. While he was out of the country the following year, war broke, rumours abounded that he was a spy and he couldn’t return to Canada. The federal government confiscated everything he owned, and what’s really fascinating is that you can still see a bit of the red wax on the windows of his Somerset House when the government impounded the house.
I’ve written about Alvensleben and this house in At Home with History, and the history of the house gets interesting again in 1931 when the parents of actor John Drainie rented it for a few years. Orson Welles called him the greatest radio actor in the world. Young John was self-taught, and in a biography written by his daughter Bronwyn, she says one Christmas when her father was about 15 he directed a production of Twelfth Night in the living room.
The Gundry’s bought the house in 1945 and the family lived there until 1972. Mr. Gundry was a psychiatrist, and their daughter Fran was an archivist in Victoria. She told me that she spent years searching for secret tunnels but never found any.
Senator Ray Perrault and his wife Barbara, a former City of North Vancouver councillor lived here from 1974 until 1995.
Spy Story:
My favourite story of the house comes from Don Luxton, who has connected it to another of Alvensleben’s properties on Harris Road in Pitt Meadows, and to Baron Carl von Mackensen’s house in Port Kells. Don says that after war broke out there were rumours that the Pitt Meadows house, the Somerset Street House and von Mackensen’s Port Kell’s house were used by the Germans to pass secret signals by mirror. A century later it’s hard to imagine–and it’s a long distance between the three houses–but it’s possible. They did find a secret radio room in the turret of the Port Kells house, now the Baron’s Manor Pub.
The Trend House at 4342 Skyline Drive in North Vancouver has just sold for $1,375,000.
The house was one of 11 built in 1954 for Ted and Cora Backer, designed by Porter & Davidson Architects, and sponsored by BC forest industries to boost retail lumber, plywood and shingle sales in the province.
The house needs love. What was once wood (and may still be underneath) has been carpeted over, wallpapered and dry walled. It’s looking tired and in need of an update. But at 2,472 sq.ft. it’s still a good sized family home with a dramatic split level open concept plan, sweeping vaulted ceilings, and floor-to-ceiling glass.
4342 Skyline Drive, North Vancouver
Originally the exterior cedar shiplap was painted gunmetal black with terra cotta trim. At the time, the house was a showroom for modern conveniences—the latest thermostatic temperature control, remote control touch-plate lighting, copper plumbing and fibreglass insulation.
The 2400 Motel on Kingsway opened in 1946. It still has an old fashioned, retro feel and its huge red and blue neon sign.
I discovered the 2400 Motel on Kingsway when I wrote Frommer’s With Kids Vancouver about a decade or so ago. Loved the old fashioned, retro feel of the place and its huge red and blue neon sign. The freshly painted green and white bungalows had the feel of a country cabin. Kids could play on the lawn outside, the rooms were clean and functional, and staying there was inexpensive.
Will Rafuse painting
Endangered List:
The 18 bungalows and the office have made Heritage Vancouver’s Top 10 Endangered hit list for 2011. “It’s really hard to isolate 10 sites in the city that are in danger—there are hundreds and hundreds that we could put on our list,” says Don Luxton, president of Heritage Vancouver.
People, says Luxton, are always surprised to find that a 1946 building is considered heritage. “Our city is only 125 years old,” he says. “Why would it not be a heritage site?”
Post-war car culture:
The heritage case for the 2400 Motel is that as an auto court, it is one of the last and best examples of post-war car culture. The 2007 Statement of Significance by Birmingham & Wood Architects for the City of Vancouver describes it as “a rare place of shared memories.”
“Not only did the 2400 function as a home-away-from-home for many travelers…but it has entered Vancouverite’s collective imagination as a seemingly immutable part of the city—a whole, miniature world from an earlier simpler time.”
The City of Vancouver bought the 2400 its three-acre site in 1989 as part of the proposed Norquay Village neighbourhood centre. But the plan, released earlier this year, lacks any heritage retention. Luxton says that while it’s unrealistic to expect the entire site be preserved, he’d like to see certain elements such as the neon sign and maybe one or two of the bungalows remain.
“Will that happen or will this turn into a high-rise? We don’t know, but we’re sounding the alarm,” he says.
The other sites on the list in order of most endangered are: Carleton, Kitchener and Sexsmith Schools, Shannon Estate, Strathcona North of Hastings, Gordon T. Legg Residence, Collingwood Library, Lower Mount Pleasant and several Granville Street buildings from the 1880s.
