Are We on the Way to $10 Million Dollars in Dunbar?

Astounding--just listed in Dunbar is a house for $8,680,000. Earlier in the summer there were a couple of houses listed for over $7 million. Where will this trend lead?

The expensive house at 3815 West 39th was built in 2015 according to e-valueBC. It has 6 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms.

What was here before? This "castle", which received a lot of publicity.

In fact there were two castles side-by-side, both with turrets, visible in the above photo. The neighbouring house at 3825 is on the left. Here is the before and after for 3825, still under construction:

These original houses were admittedly in need of renovation and upgrading, but they were memorable, and the one at 3825 merited having a drawing of it included in Robin Ward's Heritage West Coast, page 26, available at the VPL.

Kerry Gold wrote a recent article in the Globe and Mail about bland architecture in Vancouver.

For more information on the castles, see my blog of February 24, 2015, or Vancouver Vanishes.  

Update: Check out 4055 West 39th, for sale at $10,800,000 in August 2016. The answer is "yes", we are on the way to $10 million dollars in Dunbar.

A Castle Crumbles

Save the castles! Once upon a time there were two "castle" houses situated next to each other. However, that is no longer the case. There was a demolition of one of them on Saturday, February 21, 2015. This demolition reminds me of "The Dorothies", where there were twin houses lived in by two women named Dorothy, except those houses were saved from demolition and moved from their original location to West 41st.

In the above two photos, you get only a tiny peek of the timbered neighbour, but here is a full view of the lucky house that remains.

On page 163 of The Story of Dunbar, published in 2007, there is a photo of the demolished house. The caption states: "Dozens of 'castle houses' like this one at 3815 West 39th were built by Dunbar developer Jack Wood during the 1930's. Wood and his wife lived in this particular house." Wood was an active developer in the area. From the same book: "Within six months, he had sold one hundred lots and built over fifty homes. One reason for Wood's commercial success might have been his thrifty nature...Wood enforced a rule that any piece of wood over 12 inches long had to be built into the building." In those days, very little went to the landfill! There is more interesting information in the book about the history of house architecture in Dunbar.

Obviously, the castle houses are historic items in the Dunbar area and other nearby areas. But there is yet another reason to save the castles, relating strangely enough to the telephone! A long-time Dunbar resident who is an expert on the history of telephone service in the Dunbar area wrote this to me: "When dial telephones were introduced... we were assigned a number in the newly created Castle exchange, abbreviated CA. The pool of numbers available was doubled by adding a number - either a 4 or an 8. Hence Castle 4 or Castle 8, eventually that became the 224 or 228 that we are familiar with today." So, if your land line number begins with 224 or 228, you are saving a castle! But it would be good to have a few "real" castles remain to enhance our neighbourhoods and provide relief from all the 21st century architecture.

The house was sold in May 2014. Will the new house have a castle entrance way? You can see unhappy comments on Vancouver Vanishes.