Description of Historic Place

The Hazel House is a one-and-a-half storey, wood-frame front-gabled house (plus basement) with a side-gabled one-storey extension located on a large lot at the north end of Hazel Street, on the Hope Slough in Chilliwack, British Columbia.

Heritage Value

Constructed in 1914, the Hazel House holds historical value for its association with farmland investment and a thriving farming industry in the early twentieth century. The B.C. Electric Railway inaugurated an interurban railway line from Vancouver to Chilliwack in 1910, after which Fraser Valley farmers were in easy reach of the New Westminster and Vancouver markets, resulting in a flourishing local dairy industry.

Practised for thousands of years by the Sto:lo peoples, farming on the fertile lands of the Fraser Valley was continued by settlers in the 19th and 20th centuries, and has been at the heart of Chilliwack's economic base ever since. The subject house has associative value for its connection with Robert Milling, who established a working farm and residence on the subject property, and with Alfred G. & Lynda Fulton, who took over the farm from Milling and won multiple farming prizes at local and regional fairs throughout their ownership of the property in the 1920s.

The Hazel House is historically valued as a testament to the rapid urbanization of the Fraser Valley in the 1950s. Successful businessman and owner of the subject house, Frank W. Sims, subdivided the property in 1951 and paved the way for mid-century suburban development on what was previously farmland and which now dominates the character of the immediate blocks.

The subject house holds aesthetic value for its Arts and Crafts architectural style, popular between 1910-1930, as well as for its large and well-maintained gardens, and for is location on and views of Hope Slough (Sk'WAH-lah, an important waterway for canoe travel by the Indigenous peoples of the area).

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Hazel House include its:

- Continuous residential use since 1914 (functioning as a farmhouse between 1914 and the 1950s)
- Original location on the north end of Hazel Street, on Hope Slough
- Original siting set back from the street, with large grounds
- Residential scale, form and massing
- One-and-a-half-storey height with full-front porch, hip-roof dormer and projecting square bay on the south elevation
- Architectural elements associated with the Arts and Craft (or Craftsman) style, including: A prominent low-pitched front-gabled roof with deep eaves, knee-brackets, tongue ­and-groove soffits, and exposed rafter tails; An full-width front porch with a hipped roof, a tongue-and-groove porch ceiling and soffits, square columns with capitals, brackets, a low wood porch railing, and wood front stairs; Wood lap siding; Cedar shingles on the front gable with a flared bottom row; Original window openings with wood trim and projecting sills. Early divided-light sashes; Wood front door; End-wall chimney on the south elevation
- Large grounds, well-maintained gardens and mature trees on the slough edge of the property