Shaughnessy’s biggest mansion will be restored to its original glory, thanks to a new offshore owner who fell for its glorious 1910s craftsmanship.
It’s fortuitous that a 16,000-square-foot Shaughnessy house would find a heritage-loving owner in today’s white hot, globally driven property market. But the Rosemary, as the home is called, will live to see another century, if the new owner from China has his way.
He’s painstakingly renovating the Edwardian/Tudor style mansion at 3689 Selkirk St. in Vancouver as part of a $3-million, two-year project. The house is a Heritage Register A-listed house, which means it has a plaque; but, in less sensitive hands, it would have been perfectly legal to have gutted its interior down to the studs. In fact, it would have been routine for all its carved oak woodwork, delicate plaster flower motifs, inlaid oak flooring, coffered ceilings, numerous fireplaces, oak banisters and stained-glass windows to have been ripped out.
Instead, a team of heritage pundits are advising, an expert European restorer and his crew have been brought in, and the owner – who wishes to remain unnamed – is on-site, visiting every day. He is collecting antique furniture for the rooms, and becoming more and more enchanted with the house, say those who are working with him. When it’s done, he plans to live there. Those working with him say he doesn’t understand all the fuss surrounding his decision to renovate the house. But for anyone trying to save Vancouver’s stock of exquisitely crafted heritage homes, the owner is something of a hero.
FairTradeWorks president Jim Perkins, who is overseeing the project, believes that the Rosemary will set the bar high enough that it will open a few eyes to the possibilities for old houses.
“This will set the standard for heritage homes in Vancouver and what can be done, and what can be achieved, and the value that is created from the business side,” said Mr. Perkins, seated in the house’s opulent living room. “Because as Vancouver gets chopped up and subdivided, and density grows, properties like this will become ever more valuable for the right individual, which I believe is good for Vancouver.”
It’s hard to believe that it takes convincing for some people to see the beauty in a house like the Rosemary. Over our heads, there is a garland of intricate gold cast plaster decorating the circumference of the high ceiling, an enormous bay window with window seat, leaded glass windows and a forest worth of carved golden oak. The light streaming through the windows feels like it’s from another time. The house even had the service bells in each room that would have been used to call for the butler, à la Downton Abbey.
“It was a sleeping dinosaur,” says Mr. Perkins.
The Rosemary was built by one of the wealthiest men in British Columbia at the time, a lawyer from Hamilton, Albert Tulk. He had already made his money in the liquor trade when he went into law, becoming a successful barrister until he died in 1922. He had four children, including daughter Rosemary, who was born the year construction on the house started. It was built by famous architects Maclure and Fox over a six-year period that included the First World War, which meant they had to scale back from the original brick and stone design as a result of material shortages. Despite the war, it was the biggest and most expensive house built by the talented duo. The house was later owned by John W. Fordham, who’d become B.C.’s lieutenant-governor, and gold-mine owner Austin Taylor.
After the Second World War, Shaughnessy mansions were too big for most families and often got carved up into rooming houses. By 1947, the Rosemary was turned into a retreat run by nuns. The nuns moved out in 1994, and it was sold in 1996 to a local owner who protected the house with a Heritage Revitalization Agreement, which allowed it to be subdivided into three parcels. An on-site caretaker moved in, and eventually it was leased out to film studios, operating as a movie location the past decade or so.
“I think the new owner is very sensitive to the history and the value,” says Heritage Vancouver’s Don Luxton. “I would say it’s pretty exceptional and a wonderful opportunity to maintain a Maclure and Fox masterpiece. But the problem is, a house of this size and age needs this kind of investment or it will just start shredding and falling apart. So it’s important to make sure the investment happens. They have to love this house and bring them back or they won’t survive.”
So far, Mr. Perkins and his crew are doing the significant repair work that a mostly neglected// 100-year-old home would need. They have rewired the house, replaced the asbestos-covered boiler, as big as a shed, and replastered some walls and ceilings. Everything is being returned to its original glory, except for the kitchen and bathrooms, which need updating. On a tour given by construction adviser Conor Doyle, he points out that even the original kitchen cabinets are being stripped of paint and restored for use in the new kitchen.
“It’s a huge undertaking,” says Mr. Perkins. “People have looked at this house many, many times and have been scared by it because there are so many unforeseens. Everywhere you look, there is a leak. It’s a daunting task – that’s why he’s a special individual who purchased the home, because he’s willing to take this on. It’s like an antique car or something, it requires continued maintenance.”
About 1,000 houses a year in Vancouver are sent to the landfill as a result of investment-minded purchasing of homes. The city is trying to abate the trend with hefty new requirements that demolition materials will need to be recycled for houses built prior to 1940. But Mr. Perkins believes a shift in values is already under way.
“With construction practises, and education, and real passion about what they are purchasing, and not just seeing it as a piece of land, there has been a real shift in people, especially around Shaughnessy. They are willing to invest in extensive renovations.”
It’s a nice reprieve for the old houses, in light of the fact that historic Legg House in the West End was demolished last month. Besides, many of the old houses are of far greater quality than most of the new builds. Jeremy Nickel of Nickel Bros. House Moving says that houses built between 1902 to 1928 “belong to a tremendous period” in construction. Mr. Perkins, who is from Britain, and understands and appreciates historic buildings, concurs.
“With a brand new house, you get, ‘Where’s my wine cellar and my swimming pool?’ There’s a checklist of features that people expect when they pay a certain price tag. But I had a discussion over dinner with the owner, and I said, ‘I can’t build this house anywhere else. How can I create the age, the soul of this house?’ You can’t in new construction.
“Out front of this house, there’s a plaque that tells you who built it, who owned it. People need to know that. … These days, it’s a numbered [building] company, and people are paying multiple millions of dollars for a home and they have absolutely no idea who built it. They are just throwing these houses together, out of sheer demand … and there are going to be huge problems.
“Come and talk to me in 50 years and this house will be standing and those houses won’t.”