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Historic Red Deer home up for sale

Home at 4922 55th St. was built in 1904 in Queen Anne style
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Red Deer’s LaFrance house was built in 1904 and is one of the city’s few surviving Queen Anne-design homes. (Photo from Chris Forsyth Facebook page)

A historic Red Deer home with a connection to the city’s sporting past is up for sale.

The LaFrance house at 4922 55th St. was built in 1904 and is one of Red Deer’s few surviving Queen Anne-style homes.

The home with its distinctive turret was built by Charlie Eline, who went on to live there. Eline was responsible for building many of Red Deer’s homes in the early 1900s.

In 1929, the home was purchased by Joseph and Lillian LaFrance, a sports-oriented couple who were very active in the community.

Lillian helped start Red Deer’s first women’s hockey team that went on to be called the Amazons.

Joseph organized the city’s first professional baseball team. An accomplished curler, Joseph was part of Red Deer’s “dream team,” which won the Alberta Brier in 1931 and travelled to Toronto to participate in the Macdonald Brier Canadian Curling Championship.

He died in 1951 but Lillian continued to live in the home until the late 1950s.

Another well-known owner for some time was local architect John Murray.

Over the years, the home has been renovated but retains much of its original woodwork and finishings. It has been converted so that part of it can now be used as commercial space.

“There is not really a lot of those Victorian Edwardian houses still left in Red Deer,” said local historian Michael Dawe. “Most of what we had left were in the downtown core and demolished quite a long time ago.”

Lillian was a granddaughter of Leonard and Caroline Gaetz, who had 11 children together and helped found Red Deer.

Chris Forsyth, of Coldwell Banker OnTrack Realty, is listing the home at $399,900. Forsyth says the buyer can apply for up to $50,000 from the province’s Historic Resource Conservation Grant to help retain its heritage value.

The listing states this home has over 2,500 sq ft. of living space with 1,100 sq ft. that is zoned for commercial use. This offers flexibility for anyone looking to start a business out of their home. The basement has a separate entrance and is ideal to run a business such as hair salon or tattoo parlour. There are four private parking spaces as well as free street parking. The house has four bedrooms and three bathrooms.



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