Maison Kittson

Maison Kittson, a modest 1 1/2-storey frame house built in 1878, is nestled within the oldest residential neighbourhood in St. Boniface, the French-speaking settlement in pioneer Winnipeg. The City of Winnipeg designation applies to the building on its footprint.

Maison Kittson, erected by contractor George Couture for pioneer businessman Alexander Kittson, is a very early example of a modest vernacular domestic style that was often repeated during the establishment of the fledgling francophone urban settlement of St. Boniface. As the son of a prominent regional businessman and Minnesota politician, the younger Kittson expressed his status in the community by adding such features as a bay window, a large central gable and a sweeping two-tiered verandah to his otherwise simple frame structure. In 1947, the house was moved a few blocks northwest to its present location where it remains a private home in a mixed residential neighbourhood.

Source: City of Winnipeg Committee on Environment Minutes, September 12, 1983

Key elements that define the site character of Maison Kittson include:

- its location on a quiet, mainly residential street in Old St. Boniface, near to the nucleus of the earliest local development

Key elements that define the spare, vernacular style of Maison Kittson include:

- the rectangular shape constructed in wood frame, 1 1/2 storeys high, with the longer side oriented across the lot under a gable roof, a two-tiered verandah sweeping across the front and a kitchen addition at the rear

- the large front cross gable over an upper door to the verandah roof, stacked in turn over the main-floor entrance, in a symmetrical design that expresses the centre-hall plan

- the walls of siding (now covered in stucco)

- the windows, rectangular in shape and stacked vertically except for those in a floor-to-ceiling bay on the east side

Key elements that define the dwelling's original interior features include:

- the wooden floors, baseboards and window and door mouldings on both floors throughout in the original spatial configuration, particularly around the front doors, top and bottom, and the bay windows

- the central, straight, open-string wooden staircase with a wood balustrade and decorative newel post

- an early fireplace moulding in an low opening between the hall and parlour on the west side