2104 E 19th Ave

2104 E 19th Avenue was likely built around 1912 as Goad’s 1912 Fire Insurance maps shows a structure at this location, across lots 18 and 19. A one and a half storey Edwardian style house, it features a steeply pitched front gable roof line, roof skirt, flared eaves, an integral porch with an asymmetrical entry, second floor deck or sleeping porch in the front gable, and Craftsman-like features such as eave brackets, ornate porch columns and shingle siding. Many of these features have survived or been restored.

The house is first found in the 1914 city directories listed as 1770 East 19th Avenue (between Marshall and Lakewood Streets). From 1921 to 1927, the address is listed as 1770 Lakeview. Then in 1928 and 1929 the address is once again 1770 East 19th Avenue. After the 1929 amalgamation of Vancouver, South Vancouver and Point Grey, Lakeview Avenue was officially changed to East 19th Avenue and street numbers were realigned. The house became 2104 East 19th Avenue after amalgamation with Vancouver in 1930.

After being listed as vacant or occupied by laborers for years, the Cohoon family purchased the house in 1921. Atherton Thornhill Cohoon was a master mariner and worked for BC Coast Steamship Co. A 1911 Census record shows the family of four living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, including wife Emma, daughter Mildred and son Christopher. Atherton's was suspected to have died in 1930 as he disappeared on a boat ride from Vancouver to Victoria at age 70. Emma and daughter Mildred, a nurse at St. Paul’s Hospital, remained in the house. Christopher moved to a town outside of Nelson, BC, in the 1940s after his marriage and worked as a constable until his family returned to the Vancouver area. Emma passed in 1968, while Mildred continued to live in the house until her death in 1996. The Cohoon family owned the house for seven decades until 1998 when it was sold and became the subject of a Heritage Revitalization Agreement. In 2001, the house was moved from the center of its double lot to the where it stands now at the corner of 19th Avenue and Marshall Street allowing for the construction of sympathetic infill dwellings at 2110 East 19th Avenue and 3508 Marshall St.

This house was built during the wave of expansion as the BC Electric Interurban Lakeview tram stop at 18th and Commercial provided convenient access from the area south-west of Trout Lake to the port and jobs in Vancouver. Initially a farming community, the area at the north boundary of South Vancouver started to evolve to the residential area it is today in the early 1900’s.

Across the street is John Hendry Park, originally a natural peat bog lake fed by many streams and home to trout, salmon and beaver. Trails used by Indigenous people passed by nearby Trout Lake. The neighbourhood filled in with homes over the decades and remains a residential area of mostly single-family homes. The interurban has been decommissioned and in the 1980’s Vancouver’s Skytrain was built along a similar route.

Research Credit: Laurie S.

Source

BC City Directories, Canadian Census, City of Vancouver, Vancouver Daily Province, Victoria Daily Times