This house is associated with Alvo von Alvensleben, who owned substantial amounts of property in Pitt Meadows prior to the First World War. Born in Neu Gatterleben, Germany in 1879, he was the son of Count Werner Alvo von Alvensleben, a former ambassador to the Court of the Czar, and Anna, Baroness von Veltheim. In 1904 he left Prussia for Vancouver and became involved in numerous promotional business deals, mainly speculative real estate ventures. He was one of Vancouver’s most colourful promoters, taking out full pages of advertising in German newspapers and bringing millions of dollars of investment capital into the province. Through his efforts, developments such as the Dominion Trust Building was built in downtown Vancouver, docks and fish processing plants were constructed, and the Wigwam Inn was built on Indian Arm. Extremely successful for a few years, von Alvensleben made a fortune, but along with most of Vancouver’s business elite went bankrupt in the economic crash of 1913. He returned to Germany to seek new financial backing, but the Canadian government refused him re-entry after the outbreak of the war in 1914. As the United States had not yet entered the war, he returned instead to Seattle where he continued his successful ventures, and remained until his death in 1963. This house was built on a huge rural property that von Alvensleben acquired in north Pitt Meadows, which was subdivided in 1915 and offered for sale. Prior to his exile, he resided in North Vancouver, and never occupied this house; likely it was built as a caretaker’s residence. Demonstrating the rampant xenophobia of the wartime era, after von Alvensleben’s departure rumours abounded about spying activities, and secret signals that passed by mirror between this house, the Baron von Mackensen Residence in Port Kells and von Alvensleben’s residence in North Vancouver, which at the time – when the trees were not as high, were all in direct line of sight.
This house retains a number of Edwardian-era features, including a wraparound verandah, and Craftsman style details such as the exposed rafters. Notably, the house where von Alvensleben’s lived in North Vancouver, built in 1913, though much more grand, features similar wall dormers with jerkinheaded roofs, linking von Alvensleben to the design of this house in Pitt Meadows. The raised basement is a concession to the high water table of the area. The house was later occupied by the Kinchler and Ashley families, and by 1931 the Veltin family.