Description of Historic Place

The Blaney Residence is a two-storey wood-frame house with a compound roofline. Located north of the Pitt Meadows town centre in a rural setting, the house is set back far from the street on a large property facing Harris Road, the major historic north-south road in the area.

Heritage Value

The Blaney Residence is significant for its association with John Blaney (1855-1948), the first Reeve of Pitt Meadows. Blaney originally settled in Maple Ridge in 1884, one of the early settlers in the area. Blaney established a farm in the remote northern uplands in Maple Ridge, where nearby Blaney Creek and Blaney Lake were later named after him and by 1893, he was living in Pitt Meadows. He was the Reeve of Maple Ridge three times (1903, 1905 and 1906) and became the first Reeve of Pitt Meadows (1914) after its incorporation.

The Blaney Residence is one of the oldest surviving houses in Pitt Meadows and illustrates the utilitarian nature of construction during the time of early settlement. It is a simple and unadorned structure that reflects its frontier origins. The turn-of-the-century house dates from the time when Pitt Meadows was developing rapidly as an agricultural town, after the construction of the dyking system allowed farming in the area to flourish. Typical of period farmhouses, the Blaney Residence was influenced by the popular Queen Anne Revival style. Significantly, the house retains its original wooden drop siding and many of its double-hung windows. Also located on the large property is a circa 1920s single car garage, which displays a distinctive jerkin-headed roof.

Source: Department of Development Services, District of Pitt Meadows.

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Blaney Residence include its:
- rural location, set back far from the street
- residential form, scale and massing, as expressed by its two-storey, L-shaped plan, and hipped roof with lower front gable
- wood-frame construction with horizontal wooden drop siding, cornerboards, plain frieze, dimensional window and door trim, and closed eaves with wooden, tongue-and-groove soffits
- original double-hung 1-over-1 wooden sash windows and glazed front door
- early twentieth century wood-frame garage, rectangular in plan with a jerkin-headed roof, wooden drop siding, double entry doors and a six-paned wooden sash window
- associated rural landscape setting, including mature hemlock, deciduous trees and grass fields