Home » Posts » 2004 » November

This Old House
November 9, 2004 at 5:30 pm AST by Rodney MacLeod

There is a house back off the street on Queen Street. If you don’t look for it you probably will miss it. It is not a spectacular looking house, but it is about 150 years old and city council notices it. This house is a heritage home and because of this it is protected. You can read more about it here.

I think heritage homes are great. I like the fact that I can go downtown and see some nicely preserved homes. I don’t even mind that the government throws a little money their way to help keep them presentable. I do find it rather ridiculous that the city is telling this property owner what to do with her property. I suppose that the owner probably knew this was a heritage home when they bought it and they should live with it, but things have changed. The building caught fire and now will cost the owner $400,000 to bring it up to the cities standards. I think it was initially thought to be some sort of insurance fraud when it caught fire, and I think some people suspect that it was set on fire so that it could be demolished and a new apartment building could be built in its place with out all the hassle of preserving heritage.

What good is a heritage home anyway? Can I go up to the door of one knock and ask for a guided historical tour of it? Is there a guided tour that goes up to this house on Queen Street and declares, ‘This is an old house. There is nothing particularly special about it, it just happened to still be standing when people started caring about old houses. You see that roof there? It is 100% 21st century. We made the owner rebuild it to look like it did 150 years ago. If you go in side you would not see a 19th century woodstove, instead there is a very efficient oil burning furnace. If you are lucky the owners might even tell you about how much fun it was spending $400,000 to rebuild this house because the city took them to court over it.’

I say let them tear it down and build and apartment building. Let them put the $400,000 into a nice 8 unit apartment building. Would you rather live in an old house that is quartered off into the weirdest of apartments with odd sized and shaped rooms, drafty windows and turn of the century wiring, or would you like to live in a well planned out security building with in floor heating.