Blackburn Community Association Wins Heritage Award
By 250 News
Prince George, B.C.- The City of Prince George and the Prince George Heritage Commission have announced the Blackburn Community Association as the winner of the inaugural Heritage Places Award for their work on the RJ Blackburn House. “The Blackburn CA is an outstanding example of a community group that is preserving our local heritage” stated Mayor Dan Rogers. “Our community is full of excellent volunteers that are making heritage preservation a reality”. The new Award honours examples of outstanding efforts in the preservation, restoration, rehabilitation or adaptive reuse of local properties. “The Heritage Commission created this award to help educate and showcase the wonderful heritage we have and to encourage others to examine their heritage properties” indicated Commission Chair Jo Graber. The Award is being presented to the Community Association at the Blackburn House Tuesday morning,
during National Heritage Week.the Blackburn Community Centre. Once set on its new foundation, new vertically sliding fir windows were installed which duplicated the originals. Much of the original log home was restored to a state it would have been in its original era. The lumber addition was in too poor condition to restore. A similar looking addition was built but, to adapt to a more flexible community use, it included modern materials and a modern kitchen. To facilitate more community use, a modern concrete basement was included and now houses children’s programming.
The log house was completed in the spring of 1920 by R.J. (Robert James) Blackburn and his sons after arriving in Prince George just a few months earlier in October of 1919. Soon after moving in with his whole family they decided to build an addition from lumber rather than logs, which became the kitchen and laundry room.
The Blackburns became very involved inthe community while working their farm but as the family aged so did the home. In 1965 the house became vacant as brothers John and Hugh Blackburn move into Prince George. It remained unattended until November 1995 when the BlackburnCommunity Association proposed moving the structure and restoring it as a heritage house. Planning began and in the summer of 1999 renovation started to help stabilize and restore the structure. A new roof was installed using cedar shingles as per the original structure, new floors (the joists were rough-cut fir, like the originals), new bottom logs as well as two logs on the upper wall were replaced. The two original chimneys were not available as these had been donated years earlier to the restoration of the Huble Homestead.
On October 16, 1999 the log home was moved from its original Pineview location to its current location beside
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