Stocks Residence

This Queen Anne style house is built of wood and brick with gable roofs, fancy gingerbread trim and a wraparound verandah. There is also a signature rounded turret with a conical roof. It is likely that it was designed and constructed by the home owner himself in 1906, and was based on this popular house style. Built near one of the favorable streets in Edmonton at the time, 100th Avenue, the Stocks Residence allowed for panoramic views across the river valley. This sophisticated and grand house fit in well with a neighbourhood that also included the McDougall mansion and fellow resident Frank Oliver, who founded the Edmonton Bulletin newspaper.

As a superintendent of construction for the CPR for eighteen years, John Stocks moved west with the railroad. After ending up in Edmonton, he purchased land for his family home on the slope of the North Saskatchewan River valley from the Hudson's Bay Company. He was recruited by Premier Rutherford to be Alberta's first deputy minister of public works. Overseeing the construction of a new road system for the province, he supervised the expenditure of millions of dollars as gravel roads and bridges were built to connect Cardston in the south to Athabasca in the north. In 1916, he became a lieutenant in the Edmonton Battalion of Reserve Militia, where he served his community and polished his marksmen's skills. He died from a heart attack in 1917 at the age of 58. His wife Ada lived in the house until 1938 when she died at the age of 72.