Description du lieu patrimonial

Bunachie is a two storey, Edwardian-era wood-frame house, located on a prominent corner lot across from Queen's Park on First Street at Third Avenue. The house, which features a hipped roof, a projecting corner bay and a wraparound verandah, is a landmark house in the Queen's Park neighbourhood in New Westminster.

Valeur patrimoniale

Constructed during a period of substantial growth in New Westminster, Bunachie is valued as an illustration of the Edwardian-era development of the historic Queen’s Park neighbourhood, the most affluent and desirable residential area of New Westminster. The historic character of Queen’s Park is based on its consistent streetscapes of fine restored homes, augmented by mature landscaping.

This house is further valued for its association with longtime owners, the McKay family. It was built for Barbara S. McKay in 1905 by her father.

Bunachie is also a superior example of Edwardian-era architecture, reflective of a booming period of prosperity and growth in New Westminster. The design is attributed to well-known local architect, Edwin George William Sait (1867-1949), who immigrated to western Canada in the 1890s. He had a successful career in architecture, including the New Westminster Carnegie Library (1902-04) and several large structures at the Provincial Exhibition grounds in Queen’s Park. The use of a crossed-mullion pattern, as seen in this house, was typical of Sait’s work. Other elements of the design reflect the transitional nature of residential architecture in the mid-Edwardian era, when the newly-fashionable Classical Revival style was supplanting the picturesque eclecticism of the Victorian era. In Bunachie, this is evident in the generally symmetrical massing, and the use of Doric columns and triglyph detailing on the verandah.

Source: City of New Westminster Planning Department

Éléments caractéristiques

Key elements that define the heritage character of Bunachie include its:
- location on a corner lot on First Street at Third Avenue, across from Queen's Park
- residential form, scale and massing as expressed by its two-storey height, generally symmetrical massing, and hipped roof with hipped dormers and wide boxed eaves
- wood-frame construction
- transitional, Edwardian-era architecture, as expressed by its Foursquare massing, wraparound verandah with lathe-turned columns set on tapered piers, decorative frieze along verandah fascia, including triglyph and bulls’eye detailing, two-storey projecting corner bay with hipped roof and scroll-cut modillions, and entry door assembly with panelled, glazed wooden door with cross-mullioned transom and sidelights
- windows, such as single and double assembly one-over-one double-hung wooden-sash windows with horns, wooden-sash casement assemblies, some with decorative cross-mullions, and others with stained and leaded glass transoms on the ground floor, and multi-paned windows in the dormers