Description of Historic Place

The Forestry Farm Superintendent's Residence is a Municipal Heritage Property located on a 115 square-metre parcel of land at the Forestry Farm and Zoo in Saskatoon. The property features a 2 ¼-storey, red brick residence built in 1913, with landscaped green space and foliage surrounding the building.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of the Forestry Farm Superintendent's Residence resides in its association with prairie settlement and the federal government's tree-planting program, which operated from this site from 1913-1966 and promoted the propagation and distribution of seedlings, horticultural research, and farm beautification. The Superintendent's Residence and its surrounding outbuildings were purpose-built to serve as the focal point of the nursery and as a model farmyard for prairie newcomers as they established their homesteads. As a result, the residence, its surrounding grounds, and ornamental plantings played a key role in shaping the prairie environment.

Heritage value also resides in the site's importance to Saskatoon residents. From its earliest days, the residence and its opulent grounds were a major recreational site for city residents; by 1930, the nursery could boast as many as 3000 visitors on a pleasant weekend, including the Governor-General and his wife, Lord and Lady Byng, in the early 1920s.

Further heritage value lies in the structure's architecture. Simple in design, the building reflects a muted Georgian influence with its brick materials, symmetrical lines and proportions, and evenly spaced windows. It comprises 2 ¼ storeys with a flat-front façade and features a complex hipped roof, which is pierced by two hipped dormers. Not typical of a prairie farm house, the Superintendent's Residence, along with its ornamental plantings and cultural landscape, continues to symbolize the original role of the nursery and is a testament to the government forestry policy that had a profound impact on the environment of the prairies.

Sources:

City of Saskatoon Bylaw No. 7122.
"Forestry Farm Park and Zoo." Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.
Letters to the Saskatchewan Heritage Property Review Board Hearing, April 2, 1996.

Character-Defining Elements

The heritage value of the Forestry Farm Superintendent's Residence resides in the following character-defining elements:
-those features that speak to the building's architecture and design, including the simple, symmetrical lines, the evenly spaced windows, the red-brick cladding, the hipped roof and dormers;
-those elements that speak to the relationship of the house to its surrounding landscape, such as its central location on the grounds and the ornamental plantings that surround the residence.