Structure Type: built works - dwellings - houses

Designers: Milner, Warren H., Architect (firm); Warren H. Milner (architect)

Dates: constructed 1909-1910

3 stories

view all images ( of 1 shown)

1973 Robson Street
West End, Vancouver, BC Canada V6G 1E8

OpenStreetMap (new tab)
Google Map (new tab)
click to view google map
Google Streetview (new tab)
click to view google map
The Russell house occupied the northeast corner of Robson Street and Chilco Street.

Overview

This large residence, designed for a lawyer, his wife and daughter, stood on hilly corner lot in a residential neighborhood of Vancouver, BC. The building was mix of modern and traditional; it had the simplified compound hipped roof and outdoor living porches of an early-century bungalow but displayed a complex fenestration and expressed chimney and stack of a nineteenth-century Queen Anne Style house. Plain stucco clad the upper stories, while uncoarsed ashlar covered the foundations exposed on the house's downhill rear portion as well as the veneer facing the arched front porch. The stacks of the chimneys, picked out in stone, were emphasized like a late-century Victorian. At least three porches, providing access to Vancouver's views and salubrious light and air, can be seen in a period photo.

Building History

The New Brunswick-born lawyer and police magistrate Joseph Ambrose Russell (1866-1949) commissioned the Seattle architect Warren H. Milner (1865-1949) to design this residence for his Jessie Millar Russell (d. 1925), their daughter, Flora McDonald Russell (1901-1969), three servants, and him. The Russells occupied it for about 27 years, from 1910 until 1937. (See "Russell, Joseph Ambrose (1866-1949)." West End Vancouver History.com. accessed 03/17/2015.)

Demolition

The Russell House was torn down to make way for an apartment building and its parking lot.

PCAD id: 19527