Description of Historic Place

The Vaughan Residence is a one-and-one-half-storey, vernacular wood-frame house that demonstrates the influence of the Craftsman style, including a front verandah with tapered piers. It is located in the residential area of Moody Centre, at the corner of Elgin and St. George Streets.

Heritage Value

Built in 1923-24, the Vaughan Residence is a good example of the type of housing constructed during the interwar period for Port Moody's middle class. It is of modest vernacular form, with Craftsman-style detailing that added a measure of modernity and contemporary fashion. True to its mill town origins, the house was built of wood-frame construction and clad in cedar shingles and lapped wooden siding.

The Vaughan Residence reflects the importance of the resource industries that contributed to the growth and economic development of Port Moody. When this house was constructed, owner Burton Leslie Vaughan was working as a lumberman for the Thurston-Flavelle Company. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Vaughan had lived in Tacoma, Washington, before moving to Port Moody in 1922; five years later he married Elva Irene Horner, a schoolteacher. The Vaughans were typical of working families in Port Moody, drawn to the area because of its rapid development as a mill town. The construction of the house during the mid-1920s is a representation of the post-war return to prosperity and renewed confidence in the continued growth of trade and commerce.

Indicative of the city's early development patterns, the Vaughan Residence sits near the base of a slope, the original limit of residential expansion, directly south of the downtown area. The City of Port Moody is naturally constrained by water and steeply sloping topography. As it grew, the city extended southwards up the hill as far as houses could be easily constructed.

Source: City of Port Moody Heritage Planning Department

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Vaughan Residence include its:
- corner location at Elgin and St. George Streets, on a large sloped lot
- residential form, scale and massing, as expressed by its one-and-one-half-storey height and regular rectangular plan
- steeply-pitched front-gabled roof with hipped roof over full-length open front verandah
- cedar shingle roofing
- upper-storey wall cladding of cedar shingles
- lapped wooden siding on main floor
- Craftsman-style details, such as triangular eave brackets, pointed bargeboards, tapered verandah piers, and open eaves with exposed rafters
- fenestration, including double-hung one-over-one wooden-sash windows
- additional features, such as an internal red brick chimney
- landscaped setting of mature shrubs and hedges, with early concrete steps and concrete retaining wall at the perimeter of the lot