A house that predates the city may soon be designated as historic, providing its owners with much-needed funding.
McIntosh House, now a bed and breakfast at 4631 Ross St., was originally built in 1906 by Julius McIntosh.
Trudy Madole, the owner of the house, said the designation is overdue and the accompanying provincial matching funding will help her maintain the house.
“It’s still in pretty good shape, for 1906,” said Madole.
Julius McIntosh, whose great grandfather John McIntosh discovered the McIntosh apple, was a master brick layer who built several brick homes in the Red Deer area. McIntosh House is one of the few remaining brick homes in the city.
McIntosh worked as a brick layer in Red Deer for nearly 60 years and lived in the house until 1944.
“It’s one of the few of that vintage left in Red Deer,” said Madole, who has run the bed and breakfast in the Victorian-style house for 14 years.
“Many of the brick buildings left in Red Deer, he had a hand in. It’s quite historically significant.”
McIntosh House has been listed as a municipal historic district in the city’s land use bylaw.
It was not designated under the Alberta Historic Resources Act, which the city should have passed a separate bylaw but did not.
According to a city council agenda report from the Sept. 17 council meeting, an error occurred and the formal designation bylaw was never passed.
The City of Red Deer gave first reading to a bylaw, on Sept. 17, to approve the historic designation of the home to rectify the error.
It is partway through a 60-day public notice period before it returns for second and third reading. This gives anyone who may object to designating the house an historic resource a chance to make their case.
“If you go into the interior of the house it is almost intact” said Janet Pennington, City of Red Deer heritage coordinator. “Virtually everything that was there when the house was built is still there. The woodwork inside, the fret work, it’s just beautiful.”
McIntosh also worked on other Red Deer buildings including the Parsons House, the Red Deer Armoury and the old Red Deer Industrial Tower.
“I’ve seen lots of pictures of Red Deer from 1910, 1920 and 1930 and those beautiful buildings we had, we lost,” said Pennington. “It really is nice when we can save buildings like this and protect them and make sure they’re around for our kids.”
The provincial matching funding that will be supplied once the designation as a municipal historic resource is approved by council will go towards upkeep plans such as roof work or painting.
“It’s an ongoing thing to keep up the house,” said Madole.
Once the building is designated as a historic resource the city can apply to the province to have it registered as a historic site. This can mean matching funding up to $50,000 to do restoration work on the house.
The double-brick-walled house has corner quoins, artistic concrete blocks, fish scale shingles, gauged brick around the windows and a wrap-around porch.
“It really is a beautiful house and we absolutely want to work with Trudy to save it,” said Pennington.
McIntosh’s family immigrated from Scotland and Julius was a fourth generation Canadian when he headed West.
“I’m just hopeful that everything is going to go through fine and the house will be here for many years to come,” said Madole.
mcrawford@www.reddeeradvocate.com