1040 Princess Avenue

ARCHITECTURE:

This 1½-storey, Edwardian Colonial Bungalow has Arts & Crafts detailing. The bellcast hipped roof over a wide frieze has a large, bellcast, hip-roofed dormer with sleeping porch on its front façade. There are smaller, hip-roofed dormers on the sides, the left dormer above a cantilevered box bay. The recessed half-width front porch ends at an angled bay to the right. The water table around the house is at the same height as the porch rail. The house is clad in shingles, including the square posts and the balustrade of the porch. Some art-glass remains. The house was built for $1,800.

Carpenter Samuel Verge built this house for his wife Kate Jane (Brewster) and five daughters, who lived in it until 1912. Samuel was born in Twillingate, NF in 1864 to a sealing family, and Katie in Grey County, ON, in 1874. They married in Victoria in 1892. They had one son who died several months after birth in 1899. The family appears to have left the country after 1912.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

By 1914 Alice Susan Brown (1887-1946) was living here. Born in Australia, she came to Canada in 1891. She lived here until her death in 1946. William Henry Bailey (1865-1948) was a long-time resident. He emigrated from England to Victoria in 1898. William was a veteran of the Egyptian War, and also served with the 5th Regiment in the Boer War. He was a janitor at the Legislative Buildings and resided here until he died in 1948. Alice’s sister, Sarah Howe Austen (1886-1953) was also born in Australia and came to Victoria with her sister. She married John Charles Potter (1883-1981), and they owned this property until 1957. John, born in Hamilton, ON, was a truck driver, and later a stationary engineer.