Location: Hamilton, ON
Client: Indwell & Wentworth Baptist Church
Construction Budget: $10,000,000
Architect of Record: Invizij Architects Inc.
Project Team: Emma Cubitt, Nidhi Nanda
Indwell has partnered with Wentworth Baptist Church for the development of new affordable housing at the corner of Wentworth & Cannon in Hamilton. The site is currently home to the building in which the Wentworth Baptist congregation has worshipped for the past 100 years. The site has a unique history, with the original, elegant, limestone house built for a grain merchant and his family in the late 1800s. Wentworth Baptist originally had a smaller church at the corner of Wentworth & King. In 1922 a fire destroyed the church, and in the rebuilding the congregation purchased the large lot with the stone house at Wentworth & Cannon for their new church building.
The new sanctuary was built next to the stone house, then a Sunday school wing was built to the east, and finally in the 1990s there was a new addition at the front to improve accessibility, but the stone house has always remained. Indwell took ownership of the site in May 2021 with a long-term agreement that will allow the church to continue worshipping there.
Plans for the affordable housing community involve retaining the original house and redeveloping the east portion of the site with roughly 40 newly constructed apartments for one- and two-person households. The existing sanctuary, built in 1923, will also be restored. The congregation will continue to worship there before and after construction of the housing occurs. Like all other Indwell projects, the new housing addition will be built to the Passive House standard.
