Historic Enoch Sales house goes up in flames

The historic Enoch Sales House in Calgary’s Victoria Park neighbourhood went up in flames early Saturday.

Fire crews were called in at about 7 a.m. as flames and heavy smoke billowed from the building.

“They declared a working fire on arrival and shortly after that a second alarm was struck,” said Capt. Paul Frederick. “Due to the extreme temperatures extra apparatus were called to make sure we had enough to rotate the crews.”

Firefighters didn’t enter the building because of its derelict condition, said Frederick.

No injuries were reported.

Built in 1904 by Enoch Samuel Sales, the house is now owned by the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation and has been boarded up for several years.

The big yellow house on 12th Avenue near Macleod Trail S.E. is one of the last pre-First World War homes in the area. 

Sales was the owner of the Sales Clothing Company and lived in the house until he passed away in 1930 at age 71.

“It is a two-storey, square plan, wood-frame building faced in bevelled wood siding. It has a prominent two-tier, central front porch, and a steep hip roof with cap and with lower cross gables,” reads a statement from the Calgary Heritage Authority.

“The Sales Residence is a singular surviving example of the substantial and stylish homes built in the earliest years of Victoria Park for managerial and merchant classes.

“It represents a period when Victoria Park developed as an upscale and desirable residential neighbourhood at the end of the nineteenth century and earliest years of the twentieth century, prior to the area’s transition to a working class community.”

The home is an early, rare, and intact example of the ‘Free Classic’ Queen Anne Revival style in Calgary.

There is no word yet on the cause of the fire.

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