Mission East – Rockery Frontage
Area description
Immediately east of downtown Mission is the residential area between Murray Street and Stave Lake Street that fronts on to Lougheed Highway. It is one of the town’s most scenic features with its beautifully crafted rock wall, its lavish rhododendron gardens and its background of period-piece houses. These homes were built largely in the 1920s and 1930s, and their owners were well-known leading citizens – merchants and professionals among them ̶ intrinsic to the history of Mission.
For two decades and more, this was perhaps regarded as the most desirable piece of real estate in Mission, and is still a much-admired feature of the drive along Lougheed Highway. Many of the homes are in the cottage style of the ‘thirties’ with the typical rounded arches and balustrades of that period; others favour a touch of Tudor half-timbering; while yet others have variations on the more clean-cut gabled look of the early 1940s. Among these character homes, two pre-WW1 heritage houses still survive, and one of them is now the Mission Art Centre.
The south side of Lougheed opposite these homes was chiefly an area of light business or industrial use, such as a match factory and a cheese creamery, and later a freezing plant.