Description of Historic Place

The Kilvert Residence is a modest one-storey, front-gabled Arts and Crafts bungalow with an inset corner porch, cedar shingle siding and triangular eave brackets. The house is adjacent to the Ioco Community Hall within Ioco, an early Imperial Oil Company town in Port Moody, British Columbia. It is situated on the east side of the street at the top of a steeply sloping lot. The Kilvert Residence is listed as a heritage site within the Ioco Heritage Conservation Area.

Heritage Value

The Kilvert Residence is valued as a reflection of the early development of the Ioco townsite, a company town developed by Imperial Oil near its refinery on the north shore of Burrard Inlet. The site was selected in 1914 and subdivided in 1921. Forty new workers' houses were designed by prominent local architects Blackadder and MacKay and built by the Dominion Construction Company of Vancouver. Fifteen additional houses, originally situated on the Ioco grounds, were also moved to the townsite, creating an instant community. The houses were situated strategically according to rank, with lower paid workers assigned to the western side of the townsite. The town also included a community hall, two grocery stores, a restaurant, a meat market, churches and a school. The surviving residences represent the birth of Ioco as a community and company town.

Built in 1923, the Kilvert Residence is important as the last remaining early residence on Fourth Avenue. It is also significant for its modest Arts and Crafts details and for its association with the first owners, John Archibald Kilvert and his wife Mabel Elizabeth. The couple moved into this house shortly after their marriage in Vancouver in 1920. John Kilvert was employed as an engineer at the Imperial Oil Company Refinery.

Source: City of Port Moody Planning Department

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Kilvert Residence include its:
- location, on Fourth Avenue within the historic company town of Ioco, amongst other houses of similar form and scale, with views of Burrard Inlet
- residential form, scale and massing as expressed by its one-storey plus basement height, front-gabled roof, rectangular plan, corner inset porch and projecting shed roof over front window
- wood-frame construction, with shingle siding and heavy timber porch piers
- modest Arts and Crafts detailing such as triangular eave brackets, and open soffits with exposed rafter ends
- additional details such as an internal red-brick chimney
- variety of windows including six-over-one double-hung wooden sash casement windows in single and double-assembly, now boarded over
- mature informal landscape including deciduous and coniferous trees; slope down to ravine at rear