Description du lieu patrimonial

The Creelman House is a one-and-one-half storey, stucco-clad, wood-frame residence, designed in an eclectic Period Revival style with modernist details. It is located mid-block on the east side of 182 Street amidst a cluster of interwar suburban houses of similar quality, age and scale in an area to the east of Cloverdale's town centre.

Valeur patrimoniale

The Creelman House is valued as part of an enclave of suburban homes built during the 1920s and 1930s in east Cloverdale. A number of the town's more prominent citizens relocated to this street, drawn to its semi-rural estate character. The development of a high quality subdivision, with many of the homes built during the time of the Great Depression, was an indication that the drop in the cost of labour and material after 1929 was a boon for those with financial resources. Of note are the associations with the Creelman family, who acquired this site in 1934 and had this house constructed circa 1936. The house was owned by the Creelman family until 1996.

Barry Creelman moved to Cloverdale as a young child and remained in the community until his death in 1992. Barry Creelman worked for the Surrey Co-op for 48 years and was at the helm of the Co-op during its height. In 1957, the Surrey Co-op was the largest of its kind in Canada. In addition to his position with the Co-op, Barry Creelman was instrumental in the founding of the Surrey Credit Union and was active in many local organizations within the Cloverdale community.

Additionally, the Creelman House is valued as an eclectic example of domestic architecture based on French precedents. Typical of smaller French manor houses, the Creelman House has a formally composed symmetrical front facade, corner quoins, a prominent front-gabled wall dormer and a gabled roofline with clipped eaves. Unlike most houses of this type, the Creelman House features a side-gabled roof instead of the more common hipped roof. The complexity of the house is increased by the incorporation of features of the Modern movement such as the flat-roofed extension and smooth stucco cladding. Reputedly, the Creelman family had seen a photograph of a similar house in a magazine, and used that as the basis for the design of this house.

Source: Heritage Planning Files, City of Surrey

Éléments caractéristiques

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Creelman House include its:

- location amidst a grouping of high quality suburban houses of similar age, scale and character
- form, scale and massing as expressed by its one-and-one-half storey height, and regular, rectangular plan with flat-roofed side extension
- steeply-pitched, side-gabled roof, with hipped eave returns across the front wall dormer, and rear shed roof dormer
- wood-frame construction with stucco cladding
- eclectic French-influenced Period Revival features such as clipped eaves, central front wall dormer with gabled roof and eave returns, curved metal roof over front porch and pronounced corner quoins
- additional exterior elements such as wrought iron railing detail at the central second floor front window, internal red brick chimney and random-laid red slate on the front steps
- regular and symmetrical fenestration with leaded wooden-sash casement windows and round-arched feature window on the second floor above the entry
- interior features such as wooden floors and coved ceilings
- landscaped setting with mature trees