Description of Historic Place

The Hayden House is a two-storey Edwardian era Foursquare-style residence located on a large corner lot on Fourth Avenue in downtown Kamloops, adjacent to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Built in 1911, the house features a broad hipped roof with exposed rafters, two hipped dormers and an open wrap-around verandah.

Heritage Value

The Hayden House is valued as an illustration of the strong economy in Kamloops during the boom years of the early 1900s. Spurred by the natural resource and economic boom in British Columbia, and linked to the Canadian Pacific Railway, Kamloops was a fertile location for the establishment of agricultural, mining, lumber and ranching industries. Downtown residential areas flourished during this time of unprecedented growth, speculative real estate deals and rapidly increasing population. Set on a large property, the scale and generous proportions of the Hayden House are a reflection of the prosperity of Kamloops in the pre-First World War era.

The Hayden House is also significant as a fine, intact example of Edwardian-era housing built for the burgeoning middle class of the time. It was designed in the Foursquare style, suitable for standard urban lots, and retains its original rectangular plan, hipped roof, wrap-around verandah and substantially intact interior. Such houses were usually built from pattern book plans that were readily available at the time. Several early alterations, including rear additions, extension of the verandah and the construction of a large brick chimney, are sympathetic to the original character of the house.

The house is also valued for its association with early owners such as William Frank Hayden (1862-1918), an insurance agent and Canadian Pacific Railway agent who built this house in 1911 but did not live here. A later owner was Irish-born Harold William Howard (1881-1968), a Canadian National Railway agent who purchased the house in 1925 with his wife Jessie May Leary, a celebrated pianist and piano teacher. Howard was recognized for his community involvement as a director and chairman of the Royal Inland Hospital.

Source: City of Kamloops Planning Department

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Hayden House include its:
- prominent location in downtown Kamloops on Fourth Avenue, adjacent to St. Paul’s Cathedral
- location on a large corner property, with minimal set-back from the street
- residential form, scale and massing as expressed by its two-storey height with a broad hipped roof, wide eaves with exposed rafters, and hipped dormers
- Foursquare style as reflected in its symmetry, open-front verandah with wood-panelled porch columns, closed balustrade with drainage scuppers, and asymmetrical front entry
- wood-frame construction with lapped siding
- external corbelled red-brick chimney
- regular fenestration, including one-over-one double-hung wooden sash windows in single and double assembly and rectangular coloured leaded glass window on north side