Description of Historic Place

The Ioco Community Hall is a large, utilitarian, one-storey plus basement wood-frame building located on Third Avenue in Ioco, an early Imperial Oil Company town in Port Moody, British Columbia. The Ioco Community Hall features a distinctive jerkin-headed roof, triangular brackets and shingle siding. Adjacent and to the south is the Ioco Grocery Store, another large early surviving landmark. Ioco Community Hall is listed as a heritage site within the Ioco Heritage Conservation Area.

Heritage Value

Built in 1921, and contemporaneous with other structures in the Ioco area, the Ioco Community Hall is a testament to the origins of Ioco as a company town and is valued for its social links to the community. It reflects the ongoing development of the Ioco townsite, which was linked to the growth of the Ioco Refinery. By January 1914, Imperial Oil had selected a location for a refinery on the North Shore of Burrard Inlet. To house its workers, the Imperial Oil Company contracted architects Blackadder and MacKay, and the Dominion Construction Company, one of Vancouver's most successful construction firms, to build forty houses on a site across from the refinery in 1921. The town also included the community hall, two grocery stores, a restaurant, a meat market, churches and a school. The surviving buildings at Ioco represent the life of a company town in the 1920s. As the townsite was remote, self-sufficiency and the provision of community amenities were paramount to attracting and retaining skilled workers. The Ioco Community Hall was an important part of the social life of the close-knit Ioco community.

The Ioco Community Hall is also valued for its connection and contribution to the growth of the Ioco townsite and for its Arts and Crafts architecture. The rapid influx of new residents necessitated the construction of a community hall to serve the town's social functions and recreational needs, and the Ioco Community Hall served as a prominent social hub. It is valued for its association with many of the early residents of the area. The scale of the building reflects the size of the early community, while its modest design and simple ornamentation demonstrate the constraints on construction in this isolated company town.

Source: City of Port Moody Planning Department

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Ioco Community Hall include its:
- location on the west side of Third Avenue, set close to the road, within the historic company town of Ioco, with views of Burrard Inlet
- location adjacent to the Ioco Grocery Store
- commercial form, scale and massing as expressed by its one-storey plus basement height, low-pitched front jerkin-headed roof, symmetrical massing, rectangular plan and central front entry
- wood-frame construction, with shingle siding on the main level, and lapped wooden siding at the lower level
- Arts and Crafts details such as half timbering and louvered vent at the gable peak, exposed rafters, and triangular brackets
- additional exterior details such as an external pressed-brick chimney and gabled porch roof over front entrance.
- variety of windows now boarded over