Description of Historic Place

The Ekins Residence is a one-and-one-half storey vernacular English Arts & Crafts-style building located in one of the city's oldest neighbourhoods, just north of the downtown core. The historic place is confined to the building footprint.

Heritage Value

Built in 1927, the Ekins Residence is a very good example of the English Arts and Crafts style, a romantic form that recalls an idealized medieval past. The Ekins Residence has many elements of the style, including a very steeply-pitched, bell-cast hipped roof, dormers, stucco cladding, tall brick chimney, and tall multi-paned wooden-sash casement windows.

The Ekins Residence is an excellent example of the type of prestigious housing that predominated in Newcastle Townsite from its first development, just after 1900, until the 1940s. Separated from the rest of Nanaimo by the Millstone River, Newcastle Townsite quickly became an exclusive residential suburb for the city's commercial and professional elite. Today, the neighbourhood is a mix of commercial buildings, condominiums, apartment buildings and single-family houses, but surviving residences such as this building are important evidence of the original character of the area.

Source: City of Nanaimo Planning Department

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Ekins Residence include:

- all of the elements of the English Arts and Crafts style, as expressed in the very steep, bell-cast hipped roof, tall, multi-paned casement windows, stucco cladding, hip-roofed dormers, gable projection over the front entry, and tall brick chimney
- the building's location in one of the city's oldest neighbourhoods, within a superior grouping of historic homes