Description of Historic Place

The W.H. Falding Residence is a one-and-one-half storey Queen Anne Revival-style cottage with elaborate wooden detailing, including an asymmetrical front-gabled, projecting semi-octagonal bay and distinctive patterned wood siding. The house is located the east side of Fourth Street in the historic Queen’s Park neighbourhood in New Westminster.

Heritage Value

The W.H. Falding Residence is significant for its association with the late Victorian-era development of the historic Queen’s Park neighbourhood, the most affluent and desirable residential area of New Westminster. The historic character of Queen’s Park is based on its consistent streetscapes of fine restored homes, augmented by mature landscaping.

Built in 1891, the W.H. Falding Residence is also valued as an excellent representation of the Queen Anne Revival style of the late Victorian era. Despite its small scale, this cottage is elaborated through the use of carpenter ornamentation that demonstrated the introduction of new technology at a time when steam-driven band saws, drills and lathes had become readily available. Typical of the Queen Anne style is the complex, irregular form, as expressed through its picturesque roofline and projecting front bay that balances the partial-width front verandah. The first owner was W.H. Falding (1858-1931), Registrar of the Supreme Court of BC, who owned the house until 1907. In the mid 1980s, the house was restored through a grant from the BC Heritage Trust and with help from the New Westminster Heritage Preservation Society. It was designated as a municipal heritage site in 1985.

Source: City of New Westminster Planning Department

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the W.H. Falding Residence include its:
- residential form scale and massing, as expressed by its one-and-one-half storey height, and hipped roof with projecting front gable and gabled dormers
- wood-frame construction with wooden drop siding and cornerboards, and extensive carpenter ornamentation
- Queen Anne Revival style-detailing, such as patterned diagonal and vertical siding on the front façade, partial-width open front verandah with decorative frieze and lathe-turned columns, wooden roof cresting, decorative millwork gable screen at front-gable peak with drop finial, cutaway brackets, glazed wooden front door, and shallow boxed eaves with scroll-cut brackets
- internal red-brick corbelled chimney with chimney pots
- windows, such as two-over-two double-hung wooden-sash windows at side of house, decorative large pane of glass flashed with smaller panes in the front semi-octagonal bay, multi-paned feature window at porch, multi-paned windows in dormers, and lunette window in front gable peak