How many heritage sites does Nelson have?

Nelson is widely acknowledged as having many heritage buildings and sites. But how many exactly? A couple of numbers are usually cited, along with a couple of resulting claims.

• “Our designation as the Heritage Capital of BC is well deserved: we have more heritage buildings per capita than any other city in the province. These 350 lovingly restored heritage buildings nestled on tree-lined streets create a warm and welcoming ambiance.” — City of Nelson website

• “With around 300 identified heritage sites, the City of Nelson has the highest number of heritage structures of any BC community outside of Vancouver and Victoria.” — City of Nelson website, heritage planning page

Heritage homes in Nelson.

So by the city’s reckoning, there are 300 to 350 heritage buildings, representing either the third-largest concentration in BC, or the most per capita, or both. Based on the 2021 census, which found Nelson had 11,106 people, this would work out to 0.027 to 0.032 heritage buildings per person, or one building for every 32 to 37 people.

I would actually argue the number of heritage buildings in Nelson is far greater than that, since our thinking about heritage has broadened over the years. In fact, there is no universal definition of what constitutes a heritage building. It’s not dictated by a specific age or architectural style, although these can certainly be factors. It’s more about what a community deems significant, something that can be measured in different ways.

While counting heritage sites is therefore a bit of a mug’s game, we can at least see how many appear on various heritage registers — although for a long time these sorts of lists have prioritized built history and colonial history to the exclusion of almost everything else. That’s starting to change.

• Only one Nelson building is federally designated: the Canadian Pacific Railway station, which was rescued by the Chamber of Commerce and restored over many years. It reopened with a variety of offices in 2016.

The Nelson CPR station in 2000 (top left), during restoration in 2010 (top right), and today (above).

• The CPR station and a dozen other buildings are municipally designated. Most received that status between 1979 and 1995. They include the courthouse, the Nelson Museum, Kootenay Studio Arts, the gas works, and several churches. There are also a couple of private homes (810 Hendryx and the CPR superintendent’s house at 420 Railway). One oddity is 202 Vernon, now the Yellow Deli, which is in an old house, but probably wouldn’t be top of mind for anyone thinking of Nelson heritage buildings.

• The above sites are all on the city’s community heritage register, which was completed in several phases. The initial registry in 1979 listed 175 commercial, institutional, and residential buildings, the vast majority of them downtown or in Uphill. A 1994 update added more sites, although I’m not sure how many. The register was updated again in 2011 and statements of significance were prepared for 70 sites. These documents lay out the historic values of a place and key aspects considered important to protect.

The statements were prepared not just for buildings, but also streetscapes, intersections, street grids, Cottonwood Creek and falls, the waterfront, a tree species, and the so-called catacombs. Some were already on the community heritage register, others were not. The 2011 update also contained a list of 104 more sites and things that could potentially be added later, including concrete walls, a sledding run, heritage gardens, and viewscapes.

Since then, the city’s heritage working group has had at least 65 more statements of significance prepared. Some of the more unusual ones include the bunker under the post office and the attack warning sirens that both date to the Cold War, as well as the Ladybird speedboat. A number of buildings have also been added whose historical significance was long obscured, often because they didn’t look like much.

Lots of other statements could be written, but it’s very time consuming work.

• Approximately 70 downtown heritage buildings were part of the Main Street Canada program and were restored between 1980 and 1985. Many are on the above registers and have statements of significance, but not all.

The CPR superintendent’s house at 420 Railway Street is one of 13 municipally-designated heritage sites in Nelson.

• The city has an online map showing some, but not all, of these sites. It includes 69 sites on the Canadian Register of Historic Places that have statements of significance, plus another 137 sites on the community heritage register, for a total of 206. I don’t think any of the sites whose statements have been completed since 2011 have been added, but if you did so, you would get a total of 271.

That’s still fewer than the 300 to 350 sites cited at the top of this post. So where did those numbers come from? I think the answer is a 1981 book called Nelson: A Proposal for Urban Heritage Conservation, prepared by the provincial heritage conservation branch based on work conducted in 1978.

That inventory found 284 residential, 70 commercial, 13 institutional, and five industrial heritage buildings, for a grand total of 372. If you go by that count, the city’s estimate of 300 or 350 is conservative. (Perhaps the lower number reflects the loss of some buildings. More on that below.)

The criteria the book used was standard for its day: historic association with particular people, organizations, or events; age; architectural significance; design qualities; contextual considerations (visibility, component of a skyline, uniqueness, authenticity); and condition. I don’t think they came up with any buildings that we would reject today. However, in addition to restricting itself to only buildings, the book had blind spots, including some that now seem baffling.

For example, it said “The 100 and 700 blocks [of Baker Street] contain no buildings rated of heritage significance.” Yet there were at least five buildings with heritage value in the 100 block alone. (They included the Savoy Hotel; what was then the Allan Hotel and is now the Dancing Bear Inn; the Sherbrooke Hotel, later the Victor Apartments, demolished in 1993; and 182 Baker, which has had many different functions.)  

While these buildings were probably overlooked because they weren’t aesthetically pleasing at the time, many other buildings with similarly obscured values were included.

Sadly, a few buildings listed in that book or on the community heritage register have since been lost. One was Kerr’s Apartments, which burned in 2011. Another was Malone Manor, which burned in 1985. Quite a few others were never on the register, but could have been — not that it necessarily would have saved them. Statements of significance are no bulwark against demolition, or at least not much of one. For instance, a couple of small homes in Railtown have statements of significance, but the city, which owns them, wants someone to buy and demolish them.

So if we start with the 372 buildings included in the 1981 study and add a bunch more sites that are now on the community heritage register or have had statements of significance written for them, we come to a total of well over 400, with lots of others that could and should be added.

Back to the claim about Nelson having the most heritage buildings/sites in BC outside Vancouver or Victoria or the most per capita in BC. I don’t know who first made that statement, but I doubt too much work went into it. It just sounded good and no one was likely to dispute it. But I tested the claim against some other communities that have heritage registers. The results are in the chart below.

Municipality	Heritage sites	2021 population	Per capita
Rossland	158	4,140	0.038 (26 people per site)
Nelson	400+	11,106	0.036 (28 people per site)
Revelstoke	300+	8,275	0.036 (28 people per site)
Kaslo	14	1,049	0.013 (75 people per site)
Victoria	997	91,867	0.011 (92 people per site)
Vancouver	2,300	662,336	0.003 (288 people per site)
Fernie	19	6,320	0.003 (333 people per site)
New Westminster	225	78,916	0.002 (351 people per site)
Nanaimo	180	104,064	0.001 (578 people per site)
Kelowna	200+	144,576	0.001 (722 people per site)
Surrey	200+	568,322	0.000 (2,841 people per site)
Kamloops	20	97,902	0.000 (4,895 people per site)
Prince George	15	76,708	0.000 (5,114 people per site)

Based on this sample, Nelson does have the third highest number of heritage sites in BC, behind Vancouver and Victoria, but Rossland has a higher per capita number, despite the fact that Rossland limits its heritage register to pre-1930 sites, with a couple of exceptions.

Nelson and Revelstoke have identical per capita rates, but only if you use my upper estimate of 400 for Nelson sites, rather than the 300 or 350 more commonly cited. Otherwise Revelstoke’s rate is higher.

A huge caveat is that some of these figures reflect heritage registers that have been created more recently or have been seldom updated. Registers are living creatures that can and should be added to. All of these places doubtless have more heritage sites that haven’t yet been captured in statements of significance.

And therein lies the rub: the totals further reflect not just what heritage assets each municipality has, but how proactive it has been in recording them. For instance, while Kaslo has a modest number of designated heritage sites, none are homes, and there are some glaring omissions (to my eyes) among commercial buildings. 

Even if only the lowest-hanging heritage fruit was added to Kaslo’s register, I’m sure the total would increase fivefold. It’s not achieved easily (see “very time consuming work,” above), but how about it, Kaslo? Want to give Nelson a run for its money as BC’s Heritage Capital?