Statement of Significance
Description of Historic Place
The Parker Residence is a single-storey, wood-frame, modest Edwardian Cottage-style house built circa 1913. It features a hipped roof with bellcast (curved) eaves, a half-width front porch, and minimal ornamentation. The house is located on a residential street in the Tuxedo Park community.
Heritage Value
The Parker Residence symbolizes early development in Tuxedo Park, and it is one of the oldest existing houses in the community.
Located within a vast area annexed to Calgary in 1911, Tuxedo Park was one of many new subdivisions developed during the city’s pre-First World War boom. Street railway connections made it possible for working class families to live in affordable outlying subdivisions, and developers offered concessions to The City in exchange for streetcar lines. The Canadian Estates Co. Ltd., which subdivided and promoted Tuxedo Park, was the first of two real estate concerns that secured street railway lines to their developments in exchange for concessions to The City. Joseph Ruse, the company’s president and manager, was a brother-in-law of Calgary Municipal Railway Superintendent Thomas H. McCauley. Ruse’s firm secured a street railway line by agreeing to build the line itself as well as the extension to the waterworks system and by providing a park that served as the streetcar line’s terminus. Streetcar service to Tuxedo Park commenced in September 1911. The park included gardens and a bandstand. As of fall 1911, there were no residents, but a year later there were 300 families (about 1,000 people) living there, mainly in single-family residences, along with a two-room cottage school, post office, churches, and shops.
This house was built circa 1913 just two blocks from the streetcar terminus, which was located at Centre 1 ST NE between 29 AV and 30 AV. Available sources do not reveal whether the house was built by a developer or for its original owner-occupants, bricklayer Richard A. Parker and his wife, Lavinia. The modest Parker Residence is representative of both the working-class circumstances of its original owner-residents and of Tuxedo Park’s early development.
The Parker Residence is a rare extant example of an Edwardian Cottage-style residence in the community, and it was most likely constructed from pattern book plans. Apart from its modified stucco exterior finish, the house retains a high level of integrity, featuring a rectangular plan, hipped roof with bellcast (curved) eaves and front porch.
Character-Defining Elements
Character-Defining elements of the Parker Residence inlcude such features as its:
- Single-storey rectangular plan; front verandah; rear bay; hipped roof with bellcast (curved) eaves;
- wood-frame construction;
- original fenestration (openings); and
- extant fir interior details, including baseboards, doors and door frames, windows and window surrounds, and built-in cabinetry in the bathroom.
Location