Description of Historic Place

The Campbell House is a two-storey, wood frame house of Craftsman design located on the south side of Pandora Street between Slocan and Kaslo Streets, in the Hastings neighbourhood in the northeast part of Vancouver.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of the Campbell House lies in its contextual, architectural, and associative significance.

The contextual and architectural significance of the Campbell House lies in its location in Vancouver’s Hastings neighbourhood and its typical late Craftsman design. The Campbell House represents the second phase of development that occurred in the former Hastings Townsite following its amalgamation with the City of Vancouver in 1911. It is central to a cluster of five houses built between 1908 and 1928: the first three were built between 1908 and 1912, with two infills between those, including this house, built in 1927 and 1928. Its style represents the later stages of Craftsman design in the city, when more ornate details were excluded. The house was built by Marcel Tardif, who with Arthur Langlois, completed other houses in the neighbourhood in the late 1920s, including a pair of similarly-styled houses at 2703 and 2709 Franklin Street.

The associative significance of the Campbell House lies in its relationship to Harry and Margaret Campbell, who were the original owners, and who lived here until Harry’s death in 1956. Harry was a deliveryman with the Pacific Ice Company, delivering block ice from door to door before the advent of the electric refrigerator. It is interesting to note that the interior of the house attests to this fact: there was no place in layout of the kitchen, even after a 1950s modernization, for a refrigerator.

Source: City of Vancouver Heritage Conservation Program

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Campbell House’s Craftsman architectural design include:

- its location in Vancouver’s Hastings neighbourhood, central among a series of other heritage homes on Pandora Street
- residential form, expressed by its two-storey, front-gabled, rectangular plan
- half-width front porch with gabled overhang supported by two rough stucco piers and flared wood posts, enclosed by a heavy wood balustrade
- facia board with decorative dentils along the front face, forming the base of the porch overhang and dividing main gables at the front
- secondary facia board at lower level, running around all sides, dividing the main floor from the lower level
- shingle cladding on main floor level and in the rear gable face
- narrow, bevelled lap siding with corner boards on lower level
- rough pebble stucco in porch gable and main gable at the front
- vergeboards featuring a circular cut located in the flared ends
- large decorative wood brackets set under the vergeboards at the peak, midpoint and ends of the porch gables (front and rear)
- piano windows, two on west side and one on east side near the rear
- double-hung wood windows throughout with muntins in the upper sash, and where placed in a paired or triplet arrangement are divided by a strong mullion
- fixed window adjacent the front door, single wood windows in basement level, and a wood casement window in the west dormer
- stained glass windows, octagonal and square, in the east dormer and rectangular stained glass in the west dormer
- wide board surrounds for the wood windows, with a flared top head casing
- front door and rear door both of wood, the front more decorative with muntins in the window
- wooden front stairs, centred on the front door, with a low wood cap base supplemented by a steel hand rail
- exposed eaves
- layout of kitchen, without space for refrigerator