The Cross House
This Was the Home of Mr. & Mrs. A.E. Cross from 1899 and was given to the City of Calgary in 1973 by the five children in Memory of Their Parents.
Mrs. Cross (born Helen Rothney MacLeod), daughter of Colonel James MacLeod of the North West Mounted Police was the first white child born in what is now southern Alberta. Alfred E. Cross came west from Montreal in 1884 to become a prominent rancher, brewer and citizen of Calgary.
Plague found in The Rouge Gardens
The Rouge Restaurant formerly The Cross House - Inglewood, Calgary, Alberta
The first area to be settle in calgary was Inglewood, along the Bow River east of the Elbow River. Because it was believed the Canadian Pacific Railway would build its station here, speculators bought lots in Inglewood. The CPR surprise them - anxious to profit itself from the future land sales the company chose land it controlled immediately beyond Fort Calgary on the West Bank of the Elbow.
Once the railway arrived in 1883 and the CPR laid out its townsite, an exodus occurred. By the time of Calgary’s incorporation as a town in 1884, its hub was located at today’s 9th Avenue and 1st Street East.
A number of prominent Calgary citizens remained in Inglewood: A.E. Cross, John Stewart and Colonel James Walker among them.
The A.E. Cross home at 1240-8th Avenue SE is a well-kept building of the 1890s. One of the largest individual ranchers in Alberta, Cross and several partners founded the Calgary Brewing and Malting Company in 1892. Later he was one of the original backers of the first Calgary Stampede. Mary Dover, his daughter, became a well-known Calgarian whose honours include the Order of the British Empire (1946) and the Canada Medal (1976). The granddaughter of Colonel James Macleod, she served three terms as a Calgary Alderman in the 1950’s.
The land occupied by the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary 4km east of here was originally settled by Colonel James Walker. He was one of the original members of the North West Mounted Police. His red brick house still stands in the Sanctuary.
Plague from along the Bow River Pathway
