Description of Historic Place

The Walker Residence is a rustic cottage at the eastern end of Deer Lake, which is now located within Deer Lake Park. It is a one and a half storey, wood frame, shingle clad vernacular structure. The historic place includes the house and grounds.

Heritage Value

The Walker Residence is important as it references the economic activities in the Deer Lake area prior to the development of grand mansions in Deer Lake Park. It is typical of the cottages built by workers in the market gardening and lumber milling industries that operated around the lake primarily from 1904-1925. This is the only cottage on the shores of Deer Lake remaining from the era when these industries were the focus of the area's development.

The house demonstrates the aesthetic values of Olive Walker and her husband William J. Walker, a rancher (market gardener, poultry farmer) who built the house as a retirement home, in the quality of its construction and interior finishing. The Craftsman styling of the house was a popular design vocabulary of the time and reflected the modern taste and values of the owner. The construction of the house also illustrates the use of locally milled lumber.

The extant cold safe at the side of house is indicative of food storage methods in the early twentieth century and provides insight to the everyday domestic lives of people at this time.

Source: Heritage Site Files: PC77000 20. City of Burnaby Planning and Building Department

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Walker Residence include its:
- location close to the lake and the site of the Deer Lake Lumber Company where the wood for construction of the house was milled
- Craftsman style characteristics such as the house's orientation (front gable facing the street) and the combination of gable and double pitched shed roofs
- front entrance with its gabled porch supported by distinctive oversized diagonal brackets, and substantial front door of Douglas fir decorated with hand forged iron plates
- cedar shingle siding
- multiple assembly, wooden sash casement windows with transoms
- projecting cold safe
- interior finishing that dates to the original construction of the house, such as the diagonally laid tongue and groove Douglas fir ceilings, wood panelled walls, and Clayburn brick fireplace