Description of Historic Place

Located on West 5th Avenue between Stephens and Trafalgar Streets, the McKinnon House is a two-storey wood frame house built in the Craftsman architectural style. The house stands with a cluster of other Craftsman style houses, typical of Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of the McKinnon House lies in its architectural, contextual, and associative significance.

Completed in 1914, the McKinnon House is a good example of a Craftsman house in Kitsilano, an architectural style common to the early development of the area. It features a full width front porch with curved balustrade and rounded posts, and a recessed porch above. It also features natural elements, including wood cladding and shingle siding common to Craftsman houses.

The contextual value of the McKinnon House lies in its orientation among a grouping of four buildings dating from the same period of a similar Craftsman architectural style, with varying degrees of intervention. These houses are examples of the first wave of early development that occurred in Kitsilano, completed at the end of the pre-war housing boom. Their Craftsman style was relatively new to the era, replacing the Edwardian style as the most popular form of working-class housing.

The house has an early association with the Presbyterian church community: Reverend Alex D. McKinnon, was the initial occupant and later owned it (1921-1939). He is shown as Pastor at Kitsilano Presbyterian Church in 1916, and by 1923 was Minister of that church. The Presbyterians first met in 1905 in a small store on Cornwall Street, near Yew Street. Kitsilano Presbyterian Church was subsequently built in 1910 at the corner of West 3rd Avenue and Vine, prior to McKinnon’s arrival. McKinnon had departed that congregation by 1924 and the following year it joined with the Kitsilano Methodist Church to become St. Stephens United Church.

Source: City of Vancouver Heritage Conservation Program

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the McKinnon House’s Craftsman architectural design include its:

- location among a cluster of other Craftsman style buildings in the Kitsilano neighbourhood
- residential form, as expressed by its front-gable roof and two-storey elevation facing West 5th Avenue
- full width porch with three large, equally-spaced turned wood columns and an arched spandrel between each
- curved balustrade centrally placed in the left half, flanked by a shingled section below each column, contrasting with the right half, which is entirely open
- shingle clad porch enclosure extending along each side of the porch to face of the house
- shingle cladding extending to include the inside face of the spandrels
- tongue and groove wood ceiling of front porch
- wide staircase spanning the full width of the open right half of the front porch
- wood front door flanked by upper sidelights with lower wood panel
- triple window arrangement facing the front porch
- centrally-placed cantilevered “Juliet” balcony on upper floor, a modest adaptation of the Craftsman sleeping porch, with wood brackets underneath
- paired doors leading on to the upper balcony
- square windows on either side of the balcony, placed at outer edges of front face
- shingle cladding on main and upper floors
- lap siding with corner boards on lower level
- knee brackets in front gable
- wood window surrounds