1033 Queens Avenue

ARCHITECTURE:

This 1½-storey, Arts & Crafts house has a jerkinheaded front gable, and three hip-roofed dormers, two on the left and one on the right. On the right side are a piano window and a cantilevered box bay. In the front gable is a shallow, denticulated oriel bay, and a small closet window. A full-width, recessed verandah below the denticulated string course has four square posts with stubby brackets and a solid balustrade. The long staircase has a square, spindled balustrade. There is a wide, shallow, octagonal bay with leaded lights to the right of the front doors, and a piano window to the left. The gables, body of the house, and verandah balustrade are clad in bevelled siding, the basement below the water table is shingled. In 2008 the house was raised and suited.

ORIGINAL OWNERS:

1911-27: Henry Burns Ball (1866-1944) and Mary Elizabeth (née Smith, 1867-1925) came to Victoria from St. Catharines, ON, in 1889. They lived with Elizabeth’s widowed mother Alvena Smith in her boarding house in 1893 (1243 Rudlin St, Fernwood). Henry, a barber, left this house after his wife died in 1925. Harold Foster married their daughter, Alvena Georganna Ball (b. Victoria 1900), in 1925; they lived in the house until 1927. Harold was employed at the St. James Hotel and the Variety Theatre.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

1928-31: William Henry Currie (b. Stirling, SCT 1883- 1969) and Annie Sheddan (née MacMillan, b. Greenock, SCT 1884-1947) came here in 1909. William married Gertrude Estella Luscombe (1884-1982) after Annie died. A BC civil servant for 20 years, he was then a Travel Bureau Commissioner until 1947.

1933-35: BC government clerk William W. and Ethel M. Moore.

1936-52: Carpenter Reginald Taylor (1884-1984) and Minnie Maud (née Webber, 1885-1972) were born in Cornwall, ENG. Reginald came to BC in 1912, Minnie in 1914; they married in Vancouver in 1914. They were members of Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church from 1926 until their deaths.