Every Place Has a Story

The Trend House – North Vancouver

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See the story about Victoria’s Trend House 

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.

One of 11 Trend Houses built across Canada in 1954
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.

Aaron Rossetti from Re/Max Rossetti Realty, says the new owners seem interested in the house and its history and he thinks their intention is to keep it. The house is on the District of North Vancouver’s modern heritage inventory and it is one of the 152 houses recommended for the heritage register.

The District held a meeting last month, invited the homeowners of the houses slated for the register and brought in heritage guru Don Luxton to try and explain the benefits.

It was a mistake. All it did was make a heritage register seem like a big deal, and from the angry responses generated from the packed house, needlessly confuse and scare many of the homeowners.

Aaron says there is a general uneasiness among buyers about the registry, and that’s a shame, because it means we’ve done a lousy job of explaining it. Being on a heritage register does NOT mean designation. It does NOT mean that a home owner is restricted in what they can do with their home. It’s simply a listing of houses and buildings deemed to have heritage value. What it does do is give both parties some breathing room. The District can offer incentives and financial alternatives to demolition or a crappy renovation, but it does NOT mean that the home owner need accept.

The City of Vancouver has had a heritage register since 1986, Surrey got one in 1997, Delta in 1999, New Westminster in 2005, Burnaby and Coquitlam in 2007. It’s an important step in recognizing our heritage, attempting to preserve it, and the Trend House is a good example of why we need to.

The house has architectural merit, social and cultural value and a great story.

The story of Stephen Winn and Sandi Miller’s Victoria Trend House appears in Sensational Victoria. It was originally owned by Gwen Cash, one of Canada’s first female general reporters who joined the Daily Province in 1917. In her memoirs she wrote: “Mine was the smallest of the Trend Houses but the most talked and written about. Conventional Victorian viewers, addicted to pseudo-Tudor or modern box construction, were puzzled and vaguely angered by its unique design. Like modern painting it was something that they couldn’t understand.”

All the Trend Houses were architect designed, furnished with  Canadian designed products and initially opened to the public.

John Di Castri designed Gwen’s 835 sq.ft. house. Di Castri, she wrote, “designed a house that frankly took my breath away, so imaginative was it.” Like its North Vancouver counterpart, the design tends to blend the indoors with the outdoors.

The other trend houses are in Victoria, Calgary, Halifax, Toronto, London, Winnipeg, Regina and Edmonton. Unfortunately, the Montreal trend house came down last year.

For more information see:

Michael Goodfellow on the demolition of the Montreal Trend House

Michael Kurtz, owner of the CalgaryTrend House

For  information on a heritage register, inventory and designation

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

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