Cottage Life

Question: Is it true that Brantford has wartime homes called Brantford cottages and that you find them only in Brantford?

Answer: MYTH (mostly due to confusion)

The style of home known locally as the Brantford cottage is entirely different from Brantford’s wartime-era homes.

Brantford cottages generally date from 1870 to 1900, although some were built after the turn of the 20th century, with minor feature variations to a standard style. Brantford’s wartime homes date from the years immediately following the end of the Second World War.

Both styles were built in response to surges in the city’s population.

The Brantford cottage architectural style is a variation on an older Ontario cottage style that was popular throughout the province.
Both the Brantford cottage and Ontario cottage style reflect a respect for simplicity and symmetry. Brantford cottages are one-storey or 1 1/2-storey residences with a centre-set front door flanked by windows on either side. A low hipped roof is fronted by a centre peaked gable often adorned with gingerbread or containing a vent or ornamental window.

The exterior is usually locally made cream-coloured or pale sandstone brick.

Brantford boasts many surviving examples of this quaint, sturdy and compact architectural style but similar styles exist in towns and cities across the province.

Locally, these homes were built in response to the needs of a growing workforce as the town and, later, the city became more industrialized.

It was a noteworthy accomplishment for a skilled tradesman or workingman to own his own home or to rent a fully detached home and employers took heed of the stability and self-esteem such living conditions promoted among the city’s workforce.

When F.M. Keeton, the president of the Keeton Motor Co., was asked in 1912 why he chose Brantford as the site of a Canadian factory, he said: “Brantford is a city of homes. A city of homes is steady, the people are not here today and off tomorrow.”

Most of Brantford’s wartime housing was erected after the end of the Second World War, when hordes of veterans returned home to start life anew and raise families. The term wartime housing is misleading because the majority of homes were built after the war was over.

baby boom

The population boom created sudden and intense housing shortages in communities across Canada. Along with returning veterans, cities such as Brantford also had attracted many workers who were employed in industrial sectors during the war and who decided to stay here after the war was over.

In response, large tracts of small and inexpensive houses were rapidly constructed in many towns and cities and were paid for by a combination of federal, provincial and municipal funds.

Wartime housing took the form of large subdivisions of virtually identical one-storey or 1 1/2-storey wood frame single family homes, most often without basements.

The erection of these subdivisions was not without controversy. Some argued the instant and inexpensive neighbourhoods would become slums.

Hundreds of these homes were built in Eagle Place, Holmedale and other areas of Brantford from 1945 through the early 1950s.

– By Heather Ibbotson of the Brantford Expositor.