I’ll apologize now if either of these photos show someone’s house that is on this forum - I took them to post and ask about this anomaly I’ve seen around Rupert where some house are incredibly close together. Does anyone know why? Some ideas I thought of were that maybe one house was redone and made bigger, but I still don’t quite get why you would want the house soooo close to the neighbour?
Thanks!
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I could see that being a weekly photo contest on some flickr group or something: “Subject: Houses that are too close together.”
its not gay if the ba… er houses dont touch?
Isn’t there some city ordinance against houses being too close together? They tore one down by Raffles Inn last year for that reason anyway.
I’ve actually seen this in a lot of towns, not just Rupert.
These houses were built before there were bylaws governing how close to your property line you could build. They wouldn’t be allowed to be built now, but have been grandfathered.
If one of these places burns down or needs major repairs, they’d have to be in compliance.
My sisters rented 2 of my Gramma’s adjacent old crackerjack houses in Vancouver once. They could pass things from window to window.
They sold the whole block for condos in the 90s.
You will find this also because these are on 25’ x 100’ lots. It didn’t leave you much room to build.
During WWII, there were about 100 000 people living on this tiny Island, and they needed places to live, so a whole bunch of tiny houses were slapped up side by side. Since then, people have made them bigger, but they were already super close together. They all should have been torn down after the war, but they weren’t, and they still stand.
That’s what I heard, anyway. (I’m in the process of buying one myself)
During WWII, there were about 100 000 people living on this tiny Island,
Na not that much it was During World War II, 150,000 troops bound for the Aleutians and the Pacific, passed through.
The population escalated to estimates of 21,000 and new buildings, homes and facilities were erected.
Not all these houses that are close together where built during WWII.
The ones with the name “war time house” where slaped up over night in the 40’s to accomadate workers comming to Prince Rupert to build ships for the War. Yes they where only built for temporary living and to be dismantled. I don’t think it was 100,000 people, more around 58,000 including troops but if someone can verify please do.
There is as in the picture a lot of "character homes that where built close to lot lines. I own one built in 1926 that is about 2 feet from the line.
I live in a war-time…
World war one…
Like I said above.
Activity peaked in 1943 as Prince Rupert’s population boomed from 6,500 to 23,000. When the Japanese were driven from Attu and Kiska later that year, activity in Rupert drastically decreased. Things returned more or less to normal and the number of trains to Rupert dropped from six a day to five each week. The population dropped back to approximately 8,000 after the war.
In 1947, the Celanese Corporation of America purchased an old US military site on Watson Island and began building the Columbia Celullose pulp mill. Along with similar mills north in Southeast Alaska, the timber industry helped stabilize the regional economy.
[quote=“katray”]
I don’t think it was 100,000 people, more around 58,000 including troops but if someone can verify please do.[/quote]
Not sure why this number gets exaggerated all the time even I get unsure 
I think even the 58000 number is a little high, found this from the Sit News that pegs the population as around 23000 at the time of the 2nd World War…
sitnews.us/Kiffer/PrinceRupe … upert.html
R G Large’s book on Prince Rupert (book of the same name pages 66-68 has a section on the war years where he suggests that some 73000 people passed through Prince Rupert on their way to war but that was over the course of a five year period and they weren’t all here at once.
He also adds that to house the large number of people attracted from the prairies for the various war affiliated jobs in the area housing was required, several hundred buildings in Rushbrook Heights that housed 4-6 each, so even guessing at the math 700x6 would only be a boom of around 4200 from the then current population of around 10,000 or so add on the troops housed up at Roosevelt and other areas and maybe we get 25000 I guess…
(The book also has some interesting facts about how the city has gone broke a number of times and how the building that currently holds CityWest was once a liquor store, but those are for another thread I guess…)
I’ll have to go and dig up one of Phylis Bowman’s books on Prince Rupert, somewhere I’m sure she has the actual head count of residents during those years. But 100 thousand seems rather high, as did 60 thousand…
I think there is a consensuses on the numbers during the war, 
geez
These houses in the pictures aren’t even war timers. They’re from the earlier development of Rupert.