Property Watch: New Westminster’s Historic Rostrevor House offers a rare opportunity to own a piece of the past

When you buy a heritage home, you don’t become just an owner, you become a custodian for the time you own it, says Oakwyn Realty’s Lori Fralic, listing agent for New Westminster’s Rostrevor House, which is listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places. “Living in one of these houses is truly owning a piece of history,” she says.

Rostrevor, also known as the Charles Murray House after the original owner, was designed in 1890 by local architects Samuel Maclure and Charles H. Clow and built for $5,000 by contractor Robert Brown Bell. Streetcar service from the Queen’s Park neighbourhood to downtown New Westminster had just been completed, which prompted construction of other grand Victorian homes in the area.

The two-and-a-half storey wood-frame Queen Anne revival-style mansion was renamed Rostrevor by its next buyer, in 1901, lumberman Walter R. Gilley, whose family owned it until 1961. According to the listing on Historic Places, the home was constructed with asymmetrical massing, a variety of cladding — including fish-scale shingles — lapped wood siding, raised red tuck pointed granite foundation, multi-pitched rooflines, projecting semi-octagonal bays, tall corbelled red-brick chimneys, a two-storey stacked front veranda, a third-floor balcony with lathe-turned columns, and the original double-leaf wooden front door with multi-paned glass insets.

The next buyer drastically altered the home to convert it into six apartments. “Old homes of this size were often converted to apartments or rooming houses,” says Fralic. “Walls were put up and pocket doors were walled over. It was not uncommon for high ceilings to be dropped for heat conservation, fireplaces and even stained-glass windows to be boarded over.”

Successive owners worked to restore the house to its original condition by removing the stucco, reconstructing the roof and chimneys, restoring period features including scalloped shingles, Tudor half-timbering, veranda posts, extensive interior mouldings and uncovering cedar pocket doors that had been covered in drywall.

Fortunately, the rare Bloomfield glass windows in Rostrevor, which occupies a 13,000-square-foot corner of St. George and 4th Streets, have been preserved, as have the oak and walnut mantels over the four fireplaces, maple staircase, and two Juliet balconies — a symbol of elegance and refinement typical of the romantic character of the era’s architecture — which had been enclosed as part of the apartments conversion.

During restoration to convert it back to a single-family residence, upgrades included a new kitchen and reconfiguration of the dining and family spaces. Further mechanical upgrades and major roof replacement have taken place over the last few years.

“The kitchen is spacious but not an area of ‘fine detail’,” says Fralic. “It’s probably one area that the next custodian will make some modification to. What makes this space so wonderful is the size, abundance of natural light, French doors that lead to the back patio and the fact that it flows seamlessly to the adjoining family room.”

A staircase off the kitchen connects to the second level, and a third set of stairs leads to the top level, accessed through what’s been called a “hidden” or “secret” door off one of the hallway’s series of cedar panels.