Clements House

The Clements House at 828 Keefer Street is a two-and-one-half storey wood-frame gabled Victorian house in the Strathcona neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Clements House is valued for its association with the late 1890s development period in Strathcona, as a working-class home predominantly Chinese ownership and occupancy, and for its Victorian design.

Built in 1899, the Clements House is valued for its historical association with the second period of significant development in Vancouver's first residential neighbourhood, originally known as the East End and later taking the name of the local elementary school, Strathcona. Initial development here (1886-1892) was marketed and led by the Vancouver Improvement Company, appealing to the working class for the area's proximity to Hastings Mills and the Burrard Inlet industrial waterfront, as well as for the neighbourhood's relatively low lot prices. After a downturn in the economy for about five years, prosperity and growth returned to the City in the late 1890s, sparking a building boom with which this house is associated and which locally filled-in about 50% of the subject block. The subject house contributes to what is today a relatively intact turn-of-the-20th-century streetscape of similarly scaled wood-frame working-class houses.

The Clements House holds social, historical, and cultural significance for being home to a succession of working-class families from diverse backgrounds, with a strong predominance of Chinese-Canadian families. After being constructed by William and Sarah Clements (William was a carpenter) who made this their home until 1906, the majority of the subsequent tenancies here lasted only for a year or two for working-class residents with occupations such as teamster, policeman, farmer, fisherman, music teacher, weaver and metal worker. The nine-decade ownership by local Chinese families (since the 1920s) who ran it as a rental business, and from the late 1950s until 2018, as a home to three local Chinese families illustrates Strathcona's evolution from a multi-ethnic immigrant neighbourhood to a predominantly Chinese neighbourhood just outside of a growing Chinatown. The subject house's occupancy pattern also stands testament to the prominence of Vancouver's Chinatown (up until the 1970s) and Strathcona's enduring identity as a Chinese neighbourhood.

The Clements House holds aesthetic value for its vernacular Victorian style as expressed by its gable roof, its tall form and window openings, as well as several ornamental details on the front, all typical of west coast Victorian-era design traditions.

The elements that define the heritage character of the Clement House are its:

- Residential use since 1899

- original location on Keefer Street in the Strathcona neighbourhood

- original siting, inline with the similarly aged homes in its immediate vicinity

- residential form, massing and setback with modest front yard

- two-and-one-half storey height

- main floor and entrance at grade

- medium pitch front-gabled roof; full-width front porch with projecting bay and a hip roof

- tongue-and-groove soffits; clapboard siding on first and second storeys and alternating rows of fish-scale and square-butt shingles in the front gable.

- original window openings with double-hung horned wood windows, with two double assemblies on the second storey of the front elevation; wood window trim with decorative aprons, and projecting sills; original front door opening with wood front door and transom light above

- Narrow, tapered Victorian porch posts with a carved, rectangular base and decorative brackets

- Two square-light stained-glass fixed windows: one at the facade gable and one on the western elevation