Description of Historic Place

212 East 38th Avenue is a simple one and one-half storey, L-shaped house located adjacent to a lane at the rear of a Main Street commercial property on the south side of East 38th Avenue in the Riley Park neighbourhood, one block east of Main Street in Vancouver.

Heritage Value

Built in 1912, this house is important for its cultural and aesthetic values, and for its survival in a residential area that has seen much change in housing forms over the decades. Its siting behind commercial buildings fronting onto Main Street is a valuable record of this form of mixed-use development associated with Main Street’s early history. Its atypical farmhouse-like siting and room layout (Edwardian Boxes and Craftsman bungalows with standard setbacks from a residential street were the dominant house forms of Vancouver in the years leading up to the First World War) reflect the more rural nature of the South Vancouver area at the time of its construction, and marks it as one of the early houses in this out-of-the-way area of the burgeoning city.

The building is culturally significant for its association with commercial development along Main Street, and its continued use as rental accommodation, and its association with one family from 1937 to 2007.

The house is aesthetically important for its simple gable roof form and shed roof additions, its simple detailing, and its grounds that together are more reminiscent of rural domestic architecture. The house is valuable for its possessing relatively unchanged exterior materials, and its original relationship to ground level.

Source: City of Vancouver Heritage Conservation Program

Character-Defining Elements

The character defining elements of the house at 212 East 38th Avenue include:

- Simple main gable-roofed house form with single-storey wing extension
- Front porch at inside corner of main house and single-storey extension
- Original window forms, locations, and materials
- Gable-end bargeboards with curve at eaves
- Prominent brick chimney
- Original close relationship of ground floor level to grade
- Original horizontal wood siding, and wood trim
- Colour scheme, though probably not original: white painted except for forest green window trim
- Picket fence at perimeter of property