Historic Henderson home up for sale

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/05/2021 (1617 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hamilton House is up for sale. Its listing indicates that the building at 185 Henderson Hwy. is zoned for C2 mixed-use commercial activity and also includes the words “redevelopment opportunity.” 

Its asking price is $410,000 but its history is priceless.

Hamilton House is one of the most historically and culturally important sites in North America. Its story has made it into a few news articles over the years as well as some books, historical records and presentations.

The building looks well maintained; I have noticed some decking boards and porch pillars have been replaced.

In November, Herald community correspondent Susan Huebert wrote about Hamilton House. Its story is poignant and spectacular, including the stories of the various charitable organizations that have used it.

Hamilton House played a prominent role in the international Spiritualist movement that swept across a changing society around the mid-19th century. Based on beliefs that the dead exist in an afterlife, spiritualism often featured highly social activities that sought to make contact with spirits who, many believed, also sought connection with those left behind.

It was also a time when society was left reeling from, among other things, the disastrous events of the First World War, the decimation of the Spanish Flu epidemic, and the upheaval posed by Darwinist evolutionary theory. Increasing use of the scientific method brought seemingly miraculous changes.

Dr. T. G Hamilton, Elmwood’s first physician, had his office and a surgery in the house while the family lived upstairs.

A highly reputable doctor, Hamilton was like many who believed in personal survival after death, historian and psychologist James B. Nickels wrote in 2007.

Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King visited Hamilton House to witness the psychic investigations undertaken there, as did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the famous author of the Sherlock Holmes books.

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Interestingly, the house and its activities connect to the creative development of the 1984 blockbuster Hollywood movie Ghostbusters (The third Ghostbusters movie called Ghostbusters:Afterlife is due out this year).

Dan Aykroyd, one of its stars and screenplay co-writer, drew upon his family’s inter-generational interest in spiritualism and the personal papers of Aykroyd father and great-grandfathernow reside at the University of Manitoba, contained within a special archival collection started by the Hamilton family when it donated its large trove of recorded experiments and materials shortly before the family sold the home in 1980.

Some view this unique history, as embodied in Hamilton House itself, as a cultural asset and historical resource that should be safeguarded and developed as a heritage project of great potential in many ways.

For me, the house tells the story, ultimately, of the capacity of love’s ever-presence which, in this case, prompted many hopeful searches for a connection into the “hereafter” – a quest that, according to some, also works the other way around.

Shirley Kowalchuk is a Winnipeg writer who loves her childhood home of East Kildonan where she still resides. She can be reached at sakowalchuk1@gmail.com

Shirley Kowalchuk
East Kildonan community correspondent

Shirley Kowalchuk is a Winnipeg writer who loves her childhood home of East Kildonan, where she still resides. She can be reached at sakowalchuk1@gmail.com

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