The Upton Residence: An Innovative Heritage Project

The Upton Residence is is receiving a major upgrade for the next century

The Upton Residence at 1035 1 AV NW. Photo credit: Heritage Calgary.

With peeling paint, boarded up windows, and picket fence in need of repair, why bother preserving a modest Edwardian Bungalow? It’s a “tear-down” after all.

Not this gem. This is a story about a house that has seen many neighbourhood changes over the past 100 years, and one that is receiving a major upgrade for the next century.

It is also a story about how one project can inspire a community and demonstrate the benefits that heritage homes bring, including how they can help to mitigate climate change.

Calgary has a rich vein of century homes that were built during this city’s first building boom, prior to the first World War. These century homes provided housing to newcomers and shaped the future of many of today’s inner-city neighbourhoods. Century homes continue to provide property owners an opportunity to create a home that is unique to their needs and vision. These heritage places are ripe for updates and reuse, and with a strong vision and the right team, anything is possible.

The Upton Residence was listed on Calgary’s Inventory of Evaluated Historic Resources (aka the Inventory) in 2009. It is valued as a rare example of an Edwardian Bungalow in the Sunnyside neighbourhood and represents the earliest phase of suburban development in this area.

1912 view of residential build-out in Sunnyside [Credits: Alberta provincial archives pa-4037-6]

It was built in 1908 when this area was sparsely populated, and shortly after the area's subdivision in 1906-07. In 1907 the area was annexed by the City of Calgary and began its transition from ranch and farm use into a suburban neighbourhood. The Upton Residence stood as one of a small number of houses in the Sunnyside community until the rickety Bow Marsh Bridge connecting the area to downtown was replaced in 1909. The introduction of streetcar service to Sunnyside in 1909, and the pre-war economic boom, accelerated development in this community.

The modest character of the property recalls Sunnyside's development as a working-class residential area. Prone to flooding at the time, the area was characterized as inexpensive to build. The Upton Residence was constructed by tinsmith, Frederick Upton, for whom it is named. Upton owned and occupied the house until 1911, and then it became a rental property until 1951, attracting travelers (salesmen), clerks and a variety of other working-class residents.

Sunnyside panorama (cropped), ca. 1911. Photo Credit: City of Calgary Corporate Archives CalA 2000-003

Fast forward to the 21st century when in 2022 the “For Sale” sign in front of the Upton Residence caught the eye of Dana McKechnie. After passing by it on his daily walk to work, Dana shared this opportunity with his wife, Tonya.

“Dana saw the opportunity for the lot itself,” Tonya explains. “When he finally got me there, I looked at this house and it conjured up all these feelings of nostalgia, and I just couldn't get past the charm of the house.”

“We're at a space in our lives where our kids are off doing their things, and it's just the two of us and the dog. So we thought, you know, what? If there is ever a time to take a chance and kind of learn new things and do different things, this might be it!” So Tonya and Dana took the plunge and bought the Upton Residence to convert into their dream home.

To help realize their dreams, the McKechnies hired local architect Tom Chute of the Marre Design Group to develop a design that incorporated the original house and a vision for their future home. Chute’s early renderings show the newer build integrating with the existing structure.

Preliminary sketch showing the proposed addition incorporating the Upton Residence, east façade. Image courtesy Marre Design Group.

Chute took a lot of design cues from the existing house. “As we met at the Upton residence for the first time,” he recalls “there's just a certain romance to it. There is just something special about what we wanted to try and do and so I was excited to be part of it after that.”

Modest in size and detail, this square, wood-frame house still has a high level of its original material and design elements, including its hipped roof, narrow-width lapped siding, and an open front porch. Some of these details inspired the design of the new addition, including the decorative, scroll-cut window casings and a hood over the front window with scroll-cut brackets. These houses were easily and quickly built from a package of materials, which allowed many owners to build them themselves.

Since the house is listed on the Inventory, the home owners also reached out to Alastair Pollock from the City of Calgary’s Heritage Planning department, and Heritage Calgary, to review Tom’s designs and ensure that they maintained and respected this modest home’s heritage character. The resulting plans were created through a collaborative process.

Rendering of the Upton Residence and new addition. Courtesy Marre Design Group.

Modifications to the original proposal were made to ensure it didn’t overwhelm the existing structure, and to prepare the property for designation. Designated properties are legally protected through a Municipal by-law and cannot be altered without permission from the Heritage Planning department. Designation also provides access to City of Calgary grant funding, and most importantly saves a property from the specter of demolition, in this case securing the Upton Residence’s existence for another century.

The plan to retain an existing residence requires vision, and a detailed understanding of the existing resources that a building or site has. It is one of the most environmentally sounds ways to create a sustainable building for the future. Unfortunately, incentives to encourage retention and re-use of existing buildings and materials aren’t readily available and can add to the cost of rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Chute describes how most inner-city residences are demolished and replaced with new in-fills: “Most of the time…a bulldozer comes in and just knocks down the house at the same time as they're digging the hole and off you go.” Although a new building may use sustainable materials to achieve LEED[1] status, as Chute notes “you just wasted an entire house worth of material. So it's hard to really justify that green building status on that new house that you're that you're building.”

Chute has experience working on older homes that have been carefully deconstructed in order to salvage materials for use in a new building. “I think that that's what's special about this project,” he points out. “We're reusing resources in a more meaningful way so that nothing is wasted, and then it's being repurposed.”

To assist with the salvage of the existing house and to ensure it tied in with the new, the project required someone with heritage expertise. David Chalmers of Chalmers Heritage Conservation has a depth of experience with projects ranging from the rehabilitation of Old City Hall, to restoring the tiny Hunt House Cabin – one of Calgary’s oldest buildings - located behind the Deane House. Chalmers’ involvement includes determining the conservation scope and feasibility.

The Upton Residence it moved to the rear of the property to allow for a new foundation to be poured. Photo credit: David Chalmers.

For starters, the old home and the new addition required a new foundation. To accommodate this, Chalmers’ team deconstructed the existing garage, and moved the Upton Residence to the rear of the property where the garage had been located so that a new foundation could be poured.

Salvage of materials is crucial to Chalmers’ vision too. “It’s a small building, so it's important to try and reuse as much as possible and keep some of that original character of the home” he notes. “If you're not careful, you keep picking away the existing pieces and saying, ‘oh, we'll just replace it, we'll just replace this,’ then eventually you're not left with much to interpret.”

“It's recycling at its absolute epitome.” Chute adds. “It's what we should be doing.”

Some of the challenges with the project include working with a narrow lot (only 275 m2) with a multi-unit residential block to the east and a single family home to the west. According to Tonya McKechnie, the process requires patience. “There are a lot of pieces that need to come together, and they all have to work together.”

Although not without its challenges, all of the project participants I talked to are thrilled to be part of it and excited about bringing the McKechnie’s vision to fruition. As Chalmers says “the easiest part is falling in love with the idea. The easiest part is just wanting to be a part of it. The easiest part is the energy and the excitement and just how novel the idea is, and wanting to be a part of its success.”

The collaboration of various parties, although complex, is at the heart of what makes this project special for the property owners. For Tonya, the best part of the project is brainstorming with different people, including Heritage Calgary. “I think the process is just starting to get real right now because we've been meeting with all these people for a while, but it's real now. It's started and I think that's one of the most exciting things!” The couple feel the support from the project and team, which has inspired them and they feel the collective excitement building.

The advice to anyone inspired by this project and contemplating an update of a heritage home is to research and understand the unique elements that each property has so that planning can incorporate them. A century of living and modifications create character for a place, and each house has a different story to tell, and thus a different approach may be required. This is why this type of project requires big dreams, creative ideas, a professional team, and a lot of patience.

[1] LEED® is an acronym for ‘Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design’ and LEED certification provides independent, third-party verification that a building project was designed and built to achieve high performance in support of human and environmental health.