Altese

Altese demonstrates Burnaby's real estate and construction boom following the completion of the interurban tramline in 1911. The house was built for John Albert Thurston (1874-1944) and his wife Sarah Sedona Thurston (1879-1961). Typical of the entrepreneurial spirit of the age, John Thurston, a manager for the Leckie Shoe Company Limited in Vancouver, was also involved in real estate development, and purchased a twenty-one lot subdivision consisting of 3.2 hectares bound by the interurban tramline right-of-way to the south, Boundary Road to the west and Smith Street (now Thurston Street) to the north.

Additionally, Altese is an excellent, high quality example of an Arts and Crafts style dwelling, with numerous notable design elements such as the battered piers, the elaborate second storey dormer and stained glass windows with landscape and seascape motifs. The enormous scale of the house reflects a time when large families were common and domestic servants were needed to run the household. Indicative of the labour-saving devices and luxury features being introduced at the high end of the housing market, it was equipped with a built-in vacuum system, refrigeration, servant summoning devices and a round safe built into a fireplace mantle. Altese also represents the proliferation during the Edwardian era of homes built from pattern books and standardized designs as a means to expedite the construction process and offer competitive costs.