Helmcken House

Helmcken House is a one-storey log house, with two distinctive two-storey wood-frame additions. The house faces Elliott Street Square beside the Royal BC Museum on a slight rise of land that looks north to downtown Victoria, BC. Helmcken House is significant because it was the home of Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken, first speaker of an elected assembly in British Columbia, one of the three negotiators of British Columbia's entry into Confederation, an early Vancouver Island doctor, and first president of the Canadian Medical Association. It is also an excellent example of the evolution of wooden, vernacular houses in nineteenth-century British Columbia. The original shingle-clad, squared-log structure is one of the few surviving intact examples of piece-sur-piece construction. Helmcken lived in the home from 1853 to 1920. For more information, please email Tourism Victoria's Visitor Centre at [email protected], or phone 250-953-2033 or toll-free 800-663-3883.