2221 18A Street SW
1912-2012
This monumental home was registered as far back to around April 1912 with the City of Calgary records. At that time, there were small cylindrical shaped street lamps but no sidewalks or paved roads. The roads were gravel sprayed with oil. Across the street, the park was an old field and a junk yard which housed scrap cards until a park was built around 1970. As records show the property at this location was part of the Nimmons Ranch borderline with the Ferguson property on 19 Street and 21 Avenue SW.
The garage on the left of 2221 18Astreet SW Calgary was the original house owned by Richard Sharples and they lived in the house until the large house was built and registered in 1915 when the City of Calgary stared to keep tax rolls. The brick work as you can see at the front of the house was constructed in 1915 and is the original brick work as for the large spruce tree. As far as records have indicated, the registered owners of the house were 1912-1915- James Sharples- a city gardener; 1918-1947-Richard Sharples-lab Worker; 1948-1949-James Davies- Canadian Armed Forced soldier; 1950-1957- Fred Wood – Carpenter Burns and Dutton; 1958- Present - William and Anna Enns.
The sidewalk on 18A Street SW in front of this house was formed and poured by Fred Wood in 1950. The south side sidewalk was also poured in 1952. Keep in mind that the roads were gravel and sprayed with hot oil every year. The roads were finally paved around 1961. Around 1965, the street lights were replaced with large green overhead lights but the power is still distributed through overhead lines.
Street Cleaning was a big chore back in those days…graders, conveyor belt machines, hydraulic sweepers (Austin Western) were used to collect the gravel as salt was very rarely used and the entire road would be covered with a minimum 2” of gravel. In the winter times, a gravel truck would drive by with a man in the box manually shoveling gravel unto the streets. A note as well was the old fire call box which was replaced around 1975 which was a red box with a pull down lever activating a bell and an electrical charged ignition switch which a signal was sent to the city of Calgary.
Below are pictures dating back to 1958 showing the original front porch. As you can see the spruce tree was quite tall and there were two trees in the front yard. Also attached are picture of this house today.
This house has many happy stories and hard work that went into this house. Continuous upgrading continues in order to preserve th integrity of this fine little prairie angel.
Copyright Calgary Public Library. 616 Macleod Trail SE, Calgary AB, T2G 2M2, 1+(403)260-2785 information@calgarylibrary.ca
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