Owners of some of Barrie’s historic homes and buildings, as well as the people whose mission it is to preserve the city’s architectural heritage, were honoured this week.
The seventh annual Heritage Barrie Awards were handed out at city hall, Monday night, during the final council meeting of the 2014-18 term.
To be nominated in the property groups, a building must be at least 100 years old, well maintained and sensitive to various architectural heritage features, especially if they have been restored.
Residential heritage awards were presented to Pat and Carol Quinn, owners of 101 Clapperton St., and David Orti and Katherine Ellis, from Allandale’s 50 Burton Ave.
Heritage Barrie chair Chris Tribble called the Clapperton Street structure, located near downtown Barrie, “a true grand home” and “one of the few remaining Wellington Street mansions.”
“It’s hard to miss this magnificent Gothic Revival-style house at 101 Clapperton St.,” Tribble said in his presentation to council, adding the home was “one of the prettiest spots in town” in the late 1800s “and it still is, a treasured reminder of the past.”
Tribble said the Clapperton Street house was built in the 1870s and its first owner was Thomas David McConkey, an entrepreneur and local politician who served on Barrie town council and was also reeve and sheriff.
McConkey also helped found the Barrie Examiner newspaper and was elected as an MP in 1867 to the House of Commons in the year of Canada’s birth.
Tribble said the Orti-Ellis home on Burton Avenue is an “elegant Victorian Gothic Revival home … that still has as much curb appeal today as it did when Innisfil steam engineer John Little … built the home around 1891, purchasing a lot from lumber merchant James Burton.”
Burton Avenue United Church, a few steps up the street in the Allandale neighbourhood at 37 Burton Ave., won the institutional heritage award.
Tribble said the location isn’t the first place the congregation gathered, “but it has become the most enduring.”
The original wooden Allandale Methodist Church opened in 1873 and was located at Gowan Street. In 1895, the corner lot where the church now stands was purchased and the current brick sanctuary was built, Tribble said.
In 1925, when four Protestant denominations merged, it became Burton Avenue United Church.
“Despite two major fires by lightning in 1933 and 1966, Burton Avenue church has prevailed, celebrating its 100th anniversary in 1995,” said Tribble, who also called the structure an “enduring and in so many ways a beautifully unchanged community fixture for well over a century.”
The commercial heritage award went to Vision Store, located at 214 Dunlop St. W.
Tribble noted that city plans before 1854 show the building being on Elizabeth Street, which was renamed Dunlop Street West in 1952, only went as far as Frances Street, “where the graceful Victorian home at the corner of Dunlop and Frances streets has stood since the late 19th century.
“Despite urban expansion, the many families who have lived there, and the architectural changes and additions, the Vision Store has ensured the original charm of 214 Dunlop St. has been maintained,” Tribble added.
The Allandale Neighbourhood Association (ANA), which was formed in 2008 and formalized in June 2011 through its constitution and its first elected executive committee, won the group category. The ANA’s mandate is to engage the community to promote and preserve the cultural history of Allandale.