Roscoe Residence

The Thomas and Zebby Roscoe Residence is a simple one and a half storey front gabled vernacular turn of the 20th Century house with full width porch.

Built in 1900, the residence is valued as a representative example of development in the Strathcona neighbourhood at the end of the 1890s which saw builders begin to infill empty lots throughout the neighbourhood in response to population growth and the expansion of transit options along Hastings Street and Campbell Avenue.

Strathcona was an ethnically diverse neighbourhood and social and cultural value can be found in the variety of nationalities that have occupied the Thomas and Zebby Roscoe Residence since its construction reflecting the evolving immigration and social patterns of the city’s east side including the available jobs at nearby industries.

Thomas Roscoe was an English carpenter born 1860, this was his first project in Vancouver and his personal residence. The house is unusual for its use of V’d edge siding rather than the more common lap or drop styles. As a carpenter, Roscoe went on to build a number of houses in the Strathcona area in the years before the First World War.

The house was painted in a historically authentic colour scheme with the assistance of a True Colours Grant in 2019.

Source

John Atkin, Historian