The Barber House has been boarded up and surrounded by a chain-link fence for about 10 years. (Meaghan Ketcheson/CBC)

Winnipeg's oldest house was seriously damaged by fire Monday morning.

The Barber House, at 99 Euclid Ave. in the city's Point Douglas neighbourhood, was built of logs in 1862 by E.L. Barber, who had fled the American Civil War.

The two-storey loft house was continuously occupied for over a century, but has been vacant and boarded up for 10 years.

Fire crews were called to the house around 5:30 a.m. and found it engulfed in flames.

Last week, a community group purchased the house from the city and had plans to turn it into a seniors centre.

Firefighters extinguished the blaze and managed to save the frame and some of the exterior, but the home was gutted and there's little left of the roof.

Investigators are now picking through the burned-out shell looking for a cause of the fire.

Damage is estimated at $200,000.

The house, officially designated as a provincial heritage site in 1987, was also damaged by arson and vandalism in 1993.

It has since been surrounded by a chain-link fence.

House predates Winnipeg

Barber, who helped lay out many of the streets in Point Douglas, established prosperous mercantile and real estate ventures in the Red River Settlement, which was later to become Winnipeg, according to the Manitoba Historical Society.

He was also the owner of The Nor’Wester, the settlement's first newspaper.

Firefighters survey the damage to the 148-year-old Barber House. (Meaghan Ketcheson/CBC)

The Barber House is a rare urban example of Red River frame-style construction, using squared logs cut and hewn by its builders from local trees, according to Heritage Winnipeg.

"[It] was constructed with considerable skill for the horizontal logs were set in very straight and there was good attention to detail in the finishing," Heritage Winnipeg's website states.

The house also has connections to Louis Riel, who set up a provisional government in the Red River settlement in 1896.

Dr. John Schultz, leader of the pro-Canadian party in the settlement — and Barber's real estate partner — played a leading role in opposing Riel's government.

In 1870, Riel's provisional guardsmen arrested 48 armed men and their leader, Schultz, and imprisoned them at Upper Fort Garry.

Schultz escaped and hid out at Barber's house. Barber then smuggled him out of the settlement, enabling Schultz to flee to Ontario.