An old architectural detail that still feels right at home in Kelowna’s Heritage Conservation Area.
Once you start noticing them, they seem to be everywhere.
Look up at a gable. Peer through a hedge. Take a closer look at the upper storey of a house you’ve walked past a hundred times.
Shingles.
Not on the roof — on the walls.
Across Kelowna’s Heritage Conservation Area, shingle siding appears on houses old and new. Some cover entire walls. Others are tucked into gables or paired with stucco and horizontal siding. Some are remarkably neat and uniform; others have slightly irregular edges that give a house an almost whimsical, handcrafted appearance.
From neat, regular courses to more playful patterns, shingle siding adds texture and detail to HCA homes.
They’re a small detail, but they tell an interesting story about what gives a neighbourhood its character — and how that character can carry forward as a neighbourhood changes.
Shake or shingle?
First, a confession: “Shake, Shingle & Style” was simply too good a title to pass up.
But most of what we’re looking at here is more accurately described as shingle siding.
Traditionally, wood shakes are split rather than sawn, making them generally thicker, rougher and more irregular. Shingles are typically sawn thinner and more evenly. Both have a long history as exterior building materials, but the tidy overlapping courses we see on many HCA homes are generally described as shingles.
The City of Kelowna uses that language too.
At the T. Treadgold House at 1931 Abbott Street, built in 1907, the City specifically identifies the home’s wood shingle walls as one of its character-defining elements. The house combines shingles and stucco, and its additions over the decades tell another very HCA story: an old house that has changed as the people living in it changed, while retaining the elements that make it recognizable.
Why put shingles on a wall?
Besides protecting a building from the weather, shingles offered something designers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries increasingly valued: texture.
Rather than treating the exterior of a house as one flat surface, builders could combine shingles with clapboard, stucco, brick or other materials. The overlapping pieces created changing patterns of light and shadow and helped emphasize architectural features such as gables.
They were especially at home in the Arts & Crafts and Craftsman traditions, which favoured natural materials, visible craftsmanship and buildings that felt connected to their surroundings.
We have a wonderful local example in the W.R. Foster House, built in 1921 at Cadder Avenue and Pandosy Street. The City describes it as a wood-frame shingle Craftsman bungalow and notes that the Craftsman style, popular from roughly 1910 to 1930, drew from the Arts & Crafts movement and its emphasis on natural materials.
But shingles aren’t exclusive to Craftsman houses — and that’s part of their charm.
Throughout the HCA, they appear in different combinations, colours and architectural styles. Sometimes they’re the star. Sometimes they’re just a little patch of texture beneath a gable.
Shingles can cover large wall surfaces or simply add texture and emphasis to a gable or porch.
Look again — some of those shingles are new
This is where things get especially interesting.
Take a walk through the HCA today and you’ll see shingle siding on houses that are clearly historic.
You’ll also see it on houses that aren’t.
Newer homes throughout the neighbourhood use shingles alongside pitched roofs, gables, traditional window proportions, porches and landscaping. Some may be wood; others use contemporary products designed to create a similar scale, rhythm and texture.
That isn’t an accident.
Kelowna’s current Heritage Conservation Area guidelines specifically allow smooth-finished fibre-cement siding and shingles as primary facing materials for new buildings in the HCAs.
Why fibre cement rather than requiring everyone to use cedar?
Because good heritage conservation isn’t necessarily about pretending it’s 1910.
The guidelines recognize the heritage value of traditional materials while also acknowledging the need for newer, durable, sustainable and fire-resistant materials. For historic contributory houses, the priority is to preserve and repair original finishes wherever possible. For new construction, modern materials can be appropriate when they respect and complement the heritage context.
In other words, a shingle installed in 2026 doesn’t need to be a shingle from 1906 to contribute to the visual character of the street.
Old and new don’t have to look the same
This may be the most interesting lesson hiding in this very small architectural detail.
Kelowna’s HCA guidelines don’t actually ask new houses to masquerade as old ones.
Quite the opposite.
New construction is supposed to be distinguishable from historic buildings while also being compatible with them. The guidelines specifically explain that compatibility doesn’t mean uniformity or replication. Buildings can relate to one another through things such as height, roof form, window patterns and — importantly for our shingles — material finishes.
Walk through the neighbourhood and you can see what that looks like in practice.
A century-old cottage might have weathered wood shingles tucked beneath its gable. A much newer house down the street might use crisp modern shingles in a similar proportion. They aren’t copies of one another. They don’t need to be.
Old and new: different generations of HCA architecture can share materials, proportions and details without trying to look identical.
But there’s a visual conversation happening between them.
Same idea. Different generation.
And perhaps that’s a useful way to think about heritage conservation more broadly.
A living neighbourhood shouldn’t have to be frozen at one moment in history. Houses will change. Families will change. New buildings will appear.
The question is whether we understand the ingredients that make a place distinctive well enough to carry some of them forward.
Sometimes those ingredients are grand: the scale of a street, mature trees, historic houses and generous gardens.
And sometimes they’re remarkably small.
Like a row of shingles climbing up a gable.
Character Study
Character Study takes a closer look at the architectural details, landscapes and design choices that give Kelowna’s Heritage Conservation Area its distinctive sense of place — from historic originals to thoughtful new interpretations.
Next up: Braces. Those little pieces of wood tucked beneath so many HCA rooflines aren’t just there to look pretty… although they certainly help.