conserving field stone buildings A 1920s example of split-face fieldstone as a building material is the Keillor Farmstead. An early Edmonton doctor and a captain in World War I, Frederick Anson Keillor returned to Edmonton in 1918 and private practice as a doctor and surgeon, purchasing from the City a 61 acre parcel of farmland in the North Saskatchewan River valley for a working farm. By 1920 he had constructed a large log cabin, and in 1929 built a separate stone house and a stone summer kitchen attached to the cabin. For Dr. Keillor, an advocate of the health benefits of outdoor activities, the use of log and stone was purposely rustic, a look used for national and provincial parks throughout Canada. The log cabin had already been restored in 2017; in 202 I I was engaged as the conservation architect for the restoration of the Stone House and Summer Kitchen, both significantly deteriorated. Work started in 2022. The project was primarily to restore a fine example of fieldstone masonry; my goal, in association with Spectacle Architecture, was to complete the restoration with the expertise it would take to accomplish this. In both buildings the foundations had failed causing severe deterioration of the solid stone walls. The foundations of both needed to be replaced before the stone walls could be repaired. The Stone House was lifted in situ and a new concrete basement constructed underneath. Unlike the Stone House, the Summer Kitchen was in worse shape and had to be completely dismantled in order to lay a new supporting concrete slab on grade. To faithfully reconstruct and restore the fieldstone walls of these buildings, they were carefully documented by both the architects and eventually the stonemasons. These documentation photos, along with careful sorting and storage of the stones, allowed the masons to accurately replicate the locations and orientation of the original stones. The Dr Keillor Farmstead Stone House and Summer Kitchen were designated as a municipal historic resource by the City of Edmonton in October 2022.
Lynn Leenheer
The farmstead in the North Saskatchewan River parkland circa 1950.
The Keillor family in front of the summer kitchen attached to the cabin. Whitemud Equine Learning Centre Association, Edmonton
David Murray
David Murray
The scope of this project is seen in the completed restoration in 2024. The Stone House is on the left, the Summer Kitchen, attached to the log cabin, seen behind it, is on the right.
The failure of of the Summer Kitchen 1929 foundation meant that the stone walls had started to collapse. Complete re-building was necessary.
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on site review 48 :: building materials
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