|
Edith Bell was the daughter of Harry Nelson and Lydia Rich, Her father was known to all as "H. N.", the legendary mainstay of Ladner commerce. Edith had travelled to England to be married in 1917, in the midst of the Great War. No doubt the special permit required had been obtained by her father's pulling all the available political strings. The Bells returned to British Columbia after the war ended, living first in Vancouver and then in Ladner.
Their first home in Ladner was on of the McNeely cottages on Delta Street before they had this house built in 1929. According to local sources, the bill presented by Carter, Harr, and Adlinger of Vancouver, the contractors who had built the Delta Central School, was $5600. The newspaper of the day, however, reported the house as having been built by Nels Olund, who was the contractor for the Community Hall, as well as a number of other projects in Ladner.
Three children grew up in this house where the Bells remained until 1965 when they moved to a smaller home at the corner of 45th Avenue and Evergreen Lane. This was then sold to several short-term owners, before Andrew and Marion Ponzini purchased it in 1972, and they lived there until at least the 1990s.
The exterior of the house looks as elegant as it does in photographs from the period. Inside there were four bedrooms upstairs nd living space on the main floor. In the full basement was the hot water heating system, using first wood, then coal, and then other fuels for heat. The photograph taken circa 1940 tells us the house looks the outside the same on the outside today as it did when it was built; for that we can thank its modern-day owners.
The gambrel roof, which we are more accustomed to seeing on barns and which is an element of Dutch Colonial Revival style, is unique among the houses in Ladner, although it was popular in Vancouver in the 1920s and 1930s.
|
