Description of Historic Place

The George Durrand Residence is a two and one-half storey brick dwelling built in an Edwardian style. It is located on one city lot on the south side of Saskatchewan Drive on the south escarpment of the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton, facing north across the North Saskatchewan River Valley to the historical city core.

Heritage Value

The George Durrand Residence is valued for its association with well-recognized Edmontonians, the Durrand family, who were representative of the type of entrepreneurial and professional families that began to populate the city of Strathcona, early in the twentieth century. Not only representative of a prosperous economic class, the family is also noted for its contracting business, which was responsible for the construction of this house among others and was well-known in historic Edmonton and Strathcona.

The George Durrand Residence is important to the understanding of the growth, development, and socio-economic values associated with Strathcona prior to the First World War. A neighbourhood of affluent upper-middle class citizens, the social aspirations of many of its prominent residents is reflected in strong, formal and stylish architecture. The George Durrand Residence is a prominent Edwardian structure that implies stature, grace and civility through its neoclassical building elements and strong symmetry. It is part of a significant grouping of houses along Saskatchewan Drive.

The economic climate until 1913, when the George Durrand Residence was built, was generally optimistic, heightened locally by the amalgamation of the cities of Edmonton and Strathcona in 1912 and the construction of the High Level Bridge in 1911. This confidence was reflected both in the architecture and in the active business and social communities of the time. The generous proportions of this house's interior reception spaces indicate an associated value with formal entertaining among the social and business elite of the affluent Strathcona and Edmonton communities.

The house was later home to Harold Gould MacDonald, a noted Edmontonian and founder of the H.G. MacDonald Company of contractors that has grown into the well-recognized firm of Christensen and MacDonald, still active to this day. He lived in the house until 1923.

City of Edmonton (Bylaw: 13077)

Character-Defining Elements

Character-defining elements of the George Durrand Residence incorporate neoclassical and Edwardian features including:

EXTERIOR:
- form, scale and massing;
- brick structure faced with red stretcher bond brick;
- bell-cast hip-roofed;
- overhanging eaves in front and side gables;
- a 'grand entrance' with arched open front entry porch with six columns resting on square brick piers;
- bay windows on east and west sides, and on front facade above front entry;
- numerous decorative supporting brackets in the roof soffit;
- sandstone window and door headers, sills and rusticated stone quoins;
- wooden sash windows with decorative muntins.

INTERIOR:
- central core of building;
- largely intact interior.