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CALGARY - When some Calgary developers bought the 98-year-old brick rooming house at 1723 9th St. S.W. as a fixer-upper, they had no idea about the prominence it had in Calgary's musical lore.
Then the neighbours, fans and tourists filled them in about the life -- and death three years ago in the home --of Billy Cowsill, the 1960s pop star who ripened into a country-rock troubadour in Calgary.
"We would be working on the house and in a day, 10 people come by and ask, 'Do you know who lived here?' " Natasha Borosh recalled. "And they would give us the whole life and death of Billy, and . . . even what kind of drugs he did."
As Borosh and her Richmond Park Developments continues its careful restoration of what had languished since 2006 in a boarded-up shambles, a council committee today will likely declare the Lower Mount Royal house a municipal historic resource.
Its heritage designation comes primarily because it remains a great example of the colonial-style, four-square house design in the early 20th century, but also because of its recent celebrated resident.
"The fact that he lived there adds to the heritage value of the site," said Darryl Cariou, a senior heritage planner with the city.
Some American fans of Cowsill had also been expressing hopes the house wouldn't be torn down for townhouses--a plan under a past owner--and wouldn't be left to decay.
"What a lovely end to a lovely house and a lovely man, and I feel Bill Cowsill would be so proud as he so loved your city and its people," Patsy Farghaly of Fall River, Mass., wrote recently on the Calgary Heritage Initiative website.
Billy Cowsill was the lead singer and guitarist for his Rhode Island family's band, The Cowsills, which scored late-'60s chart hits with The Rain, The Park and Other Things and the title track to the musical Hair. The band inspired The Partridge Family television series.
After the band's breakup, Billy Cowsill moved to Vancouver in the 1980s, where he fronted the Everly Brothersstyled group The Blue Shadows.
In the late 1990s, he settled in Calgary, where his country-rock band The Co-Dependents became fixtures of the music scene and Cowsill became a greying legend.
After spending years living on the third floor of the house that boasted 13 bedrooms and two bathrooms, he died of complications from various ailments in 2006.
Richmond Park will redevelop the house's main floor as its office, and convert the upstairs floor into a show suite for its residential projects.
Cowsill's former bandmates will provide some framed records of his to grace one of the front rooms, along with some old classic-rock LPs Borosh discovered along with other belongings left as junk in the house's garage.
The new heritage designation will allow the developer to qualify for a city heritage restoration grant worth up to $300,000.
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