Today's History Lesson:
James Rutherford House
by Lawrence Herzog
It's Our Heritage | Vol. 27 No. 16 | April 23, 2009
Rutherford House is located at 11707-96 Street. Photo by Dave Robb
Built in 1927 as the modest home of an Alberta Avenue business owner, the James Rutherford House has been recommended for designation as a Municipal Historic Resource. The one-storey clinker brick house at 11707 96th Street was designed with Craftsman influences including an intersecting gable roof and exposed rafter tails.
The house was built using clinker bricks, which are over-fired partially vitrified bricks, typically formed by being too close to the fire. One hundred years ago, volcanic-textured clinkers were typically discarded, but then Arts & Crafts designers and daring architects began to use them for their distinctive texture and appearance.
The Pasadena, California architectural firm Green and Green made clinker bricks famous by using them in walls, foundations, and chimneys. The name “clinker brick” is said to come from the sound that they would make when banged together, being heavier than regular bricks. The term is also used for the hardened residue of coal fires.
In the late 1920s, clinker bricks became valued for their unique appearance and design enhancing capability. The James Rutherford House employs clinker bricks on the exterior, making it unusual and distinctive.
A report on the house compiled by the City of Edmonton’s planner says it is “historically significant for its association with the development of Alberta Avenue neighbourhood. This house is indicative of the modest home of a local business owner who operated on 118 Avenue during this period.”
Rutherford was the owner of hardware store at 9574 118th Avenue. He lived in the house from its construction in 1927 until 1935. “As a local merchant, Rutherford would have been an important local resident, especially during the Depression when the kindness and generosity of local merchants helped many to survive,” the report says.
The name Alberta Avenue first came into use in 1904, the year before Alberta became a province. The name Alberta comes from the wife of the Marquess of Lorne, Governor General for Canada, from 1878 to 1883. Her name was HRH Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, and she was the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria.
The neighborhoods surrounding 118th Avenue are some of the oldest and most diverse in Edmonton. They had their start just after Alberta became a province, when the communities of Eastwood, Parkdale, Spruce Avenue, Westwood, Delton and Alberta Avenue were surveyed.
The area around Alberta Avenue became home for thousands of newcomers who were arriving in the rapidly growing city. They poured into what was then Edmonton's northern suburbs, creating a smorgasbord of ethnic diversity that has evolved and endured to this day.
It was a multi cultural and diverse neighbourhood when Rutherford moved into his new home in 1927, and the avenue was alive with activity and excitement. Streetcars trundled up 95th Street to the avenue, and turned and headed east to 66th Street.
The streetcars were the catalyst that gave Alberta Avenue its edge right from the first day they arrived in 1909. The streetcars operated until 1951, when Edmonton Transit replaced them with trolleys and, more recently, diesel buses.
The house that Rutherford owned was built atop a concrete foundation. Outside walls were constructed with brick. The Craftsman influenced house features large windows on its west façade with decorative brick sills and lintels. All windows on the front facade are single hung wood framed windows with decorative vertical and horizontal mullions, the heritage planner’s report states. Windows on the sides are both single hung and small casement windows.
Up and down the streets near the James Rutherford Residence, the architectural legacy of the early days of the 20th century is still to be found in great American four-square style houses with enormous front verandas. More modest bungalows and semi-bungalows tell the story of housing that was built in the oil-driven boom of the late 1940s and 1950s.
More than a century after the first immigrants arrived, the endowment of ethnic diversity is reflected in many ethnic businesses that may be found along and near Alberta Avenue. International influences include Polish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Latin American and Caribbean.
As it has been since the beginning, immigrant Canadians are owners and operators of some of the avenue's most successful grocery stores, bakeries, pawn shops, gift shops and salons. The Alberta Avenue district has one of Edmonton's highest concentrations of ethnic business ownership.
Eighty-two years after its construction, the James Rutherford Residence retains most of its original features. The city report says restoration work is needed on the roof, foundation, and exterior, including re-pointing of the original brick work and painting of windows, rafter tails and trim.
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