Description of Historic Place

The historic place is the single-storey, wood-frame A. McKim House, built in 1936 and located at 855 Bernard Avenue in Kelowna's North Central neighbourhood.

Heritage Value

The A. McKim House is valued for its association with a series of occupants who were major contributors to the growth and development of the community, and for the architecture as a representative example from the pre-WW II period in Kelowna. It is one of many notable heritage buildings along Bernard Avenue east of the downtown core area.

The house was built by J. Emslie Ltd. in 1936 for Albert L.T. and Thelma McKim. Albert McKim was an electrician who became superintendent for West Kootenay Power and Light Co. Ltd. He built the living-room fireplace himself, collecting the smooth stones from local streambeds. Typical of many residences built between the world wars, the house is one-and-one-half storeys high with stucco-clad exterior walls. It is simply treated, with windows 'punched' into the walls.

In 1949, the house was sold to Dr. Hynes, a radiologist at Kelowna General Hospital; and in 1954 was again sold, to Owen L. and Marjory Jones, who lived here in their later years during the 1950s and early 1960s.

The house has particular value for its association with Owen L. Jones (1888-1964). Born in Wales, and serving in First World War in the Welsh Fusiliers, he and his wife Margaret came to the area in 1920. After a year on an orchard in Oyama, they moved to Kelowna, where Owen Jones and partner Paul Tempest established a furniture store on Bernard Avenue. Successful as a merchant, Jones became active politically. He served as alderman at various times between 1929 and 1948, and as mayor from 1936 to 1939. When the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF, now the New Democratic Party) was formed in 1933, he ran unsuccessfully for that party in the 1933 provincial election. Shifting to federal politics, he held the Yale riding for the CCF from 1948 until 1958, at which time he was living here. Jones was also on the boards of the Okanagan Regional Library, the Kelowna Hospital, the Board of Trade, and was the first president of the Kelowna and District Credit Union from 1938 to 1940.

Source: City of Kelowna Planning Department

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the A. McKim House include its:
- location on Bernard Avenue, forming part of Kelowna's North Central neighbourhood
- residential form, scale and massing, expressed by its one-and-one-half-storey height and L-shaped plan
- medium-pitched, cross-gabled roof, with a projecting one-and-one-half-storey gabled facade facing the street, containing a small enclosed porch with a flat-arched opening
- random-sized stone entrance steps, with wide random-sized stone railings
- asymmetrical fenestration, with mixed three-over-one fixed wood-sash windows and plain, narrow wood trim
- mature landscaping in side yards and front yard, with curvilinear random-sized stone pathway to street and side yard