A 153-year-old Waterdown home will likely be designated as a property with cultural historic value, after getting approval this week by the city’s planning committee.
The planning committee voted 8-0 to move the recommendation forward to council. The designation will protect the building from potential development and stop new owners from making changes to the building without a heritage permit.
The house at 340 Dundas St. E., also known as Eager House and Little Woods, sits just on the other side of Grindstone Creek in the village’s east end.
The house was one of the first to be built on Waterdown’s Vinegar Hill and, according to city documents, set the style for the surrounding Victorian neighbourhood with its beautiful Gothic Revival facade and intricate craftsmanship.
Flamborough Archives director and local historian Lyn Lunsted said the designation, if approved, will mean future owners of the home will have to leave its gables and stonework alone.
“They can do whatever they like to the inside, but for the outside, it would have to go through an approval process,” she said.
Home belonged to Eager family for over a century
Eager House was built in 1871, by one of the first families to live in Waterdown, said Lunsted.
Joseph Eager and his son, James Eager, bought the property. The home itself was designed by prominent Hamilton architect William Leith, with the iconic sun motif on its front porch crafted by Waterdown’s John Reid.
In 1880, the family purchased Griffin’s General Merchant Store, at the corner of Mill Street and Dundas Street, and changed the name to Eager General Store. The family owned the store for three generations, before selling it to the Weeks family in 1924. The family operated Weeks of Waterdown hardware store at the site before moving it to Hamilton Street.
The Eager family owned the home at 340 Dundas St. E. until 1989, when Helen Eager (born in 1904) passed away.
"It was in the same family for over 100 years, and it's virtually unchanged. From the pictures I saw from the real estate listing, most of the original stuff is there. Plus, it is the only house that we have architectural drawings and floor plans for in the archives," Lunsted said.
Eager House is currently for sale, listed at $1.3 million for its four bedrooms, two bathrooms and spacious living areas. Lunsted said the home going up for sale caused the city to move forward with the designation.
Bill 23 poses threat to historic buildings
Eager House is just one old home on a short list of less than 100 buildings in Hamilton up for a historic designation, Lunsted said, and time is of the essence for all of them.
Ontario’s More Homes Built Faster Act poses a threat to many of the city’s older buildings waiting for designation, she said.
Previously, older homes like Eager House were put on a master list registry with the city, and any attempts to change or demolish registered homes without a historic designation would have to go through a 60-day hold, where the city could decide to approve or deny those changes.
“All of a sudden all over the province, you have people scrambling to try and go through their listings on the register to see which buildings they can deal with and have properly designated, which takes months of background work usually,” she said.
Lunsted said she estimates the city had about two or three thousand properties on that registry.
“What that bill did was say that if a property is on a register, it has to be designated by January 1, 2025, or it comes off the register, and it cannot be re-registered for five years,” Lunsted said.
The bill was amended and now the final deadline for heritage designations is January 1, 2027. Lunsted said the big concern is the five-year period where older buildings cannot re-register.
“[Developers] could go in, they could buy up properties, they could demolish things and there's nothing anybody could do,” she said.
She said Eager House likely isn’t in any danger of being bought up by a developer, and the extra two-year window from the province has provided breathing room.
“The owner is fully in favour of the designation, so it's just the last step in protecting the house,” she said.
