Uphill Neighbourhood - Nelson, BC - Western Canadian Heritage on Waymarking.com

DESCRIPTION OF HISTORIC PLACE
The Uphill Neighbourhood is a predominantly singlefamily residential area located to the south of the downtown commercial district of Nelson, B.C. Uphill is bounded approximately by Victoria, Park, Falls and Houston streets. The neighbourhood steps up the steep slope from the downtown core, and is an area of attractive houses, steep roads, and streetscapes with mature trees.

HERITAGE VALUE
The Uphill neighbourhood has historical value through its identification in the earliest surveys as land suited to residential development above Nelson’s commercial core. It is important for its layout associated with these early surveys, demonstrating lot lines that closely follow the original Frank Herbert Latimer survey of 1891 which subdivided the remaining unsurveyed lots in District Lots 95 and 150 and the Hume addition, surveyed by A.S. Farwell in 1889. The Uphill area is representative of typical frontier town development, which laid out the geometric street grid regardless of the local geography, and is noted for the uniformity of its parcels for primarily residential purposes.

The neighbourhood is important culturally for its demonstration of housing and development trends in Nelson. Generally, earlier town houses were constructed lower down the slope near the commercial areas, providing living accommodations for professionals, merchants and their families. Later town houses were built further uphill, reflecting a growth outward from the commercial core as Nelson grew due to the prosperity of nearby mines and the local population swelled. Farm-like cottages in upper Uphill reflect the area’s early development as agricultural and orchard lands.

The locations of the anomalous mixed-use and industrial-use properties scattered among the houses often relate to original natural features, such as the location of the brewery near the Ward Creek bed, The numerous churches in the lower reaches of Uphill, and the presence of schools and hospitals, are evidence of the change in population from single men to family units and of the early cultural maturation of the growing population.

The Uphill neighbourhood is important for its aesthetic values, including mature boulevard trees, and plantings on private property, reflecting an early society with high cultural aspirations through wellmade residential streets. Remnants of groves of fruit trees, found in the higher reaches of Uphill, give an agricultural order and quality to the residential yards not typical of present day residential development. Unpaved lanes with informal gardens and accessory buildings such as garages, sheds provide picturesque house settings. Often constructed by individual property owners, the stone and concrete retaining walls and battered-wall slopes are a built response to the natural topography, the overlaid survey grid, and as a means to enhance the character of residential properties. These walls bring a unique historical and aesthetic character to the neighbourhood.

Uphill has many good examples of residential design from different historical periods and in differing styles. The neighbourhood provides a rich, varied backdrop to the commercial core with its stepped facades set in mature trees, as well as variety in its atypical building forms of mixed-use, cultural and industrial buildings.

The area is important for the considerable amount of building conservation undertaken, which reflects popular support of the built heritage in the Uphill neighbourhood.
From the City of Nelson Heritage Register, Page 7