ARCHITECTURE:
This is a symmetrical, two-storey, hip-roofed Georgian Revival house. However, the horizontal lines of the wide enclosed eaves, the belt course and the water table reference Frank Lloyd Wright and the early Prairie School style. Its densely half-timbered upper floor is separated from the stuccoed lower floor by the belt course. The half-timbering and the sets of tall, narrow, paired windows provide a vertical counterpoint to the horizontal elements. On the left and right sides are hip-roofed box bays. The centrally located entrance porch has a bracketed, hipped canopy. The entry walls, balustrade and step balustrades are of granite. Leaded casement windows are on either side of the offset entry door. There are two broad chimneys clad in roughcast stucco with brick corbels. The foundation is of granite.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
1912-53: George Alfred Richardson, Jr (b. Victoria 1866-1922) and Josephine Lillian (née Burkholder, b. Bethesda, ON 1876-1953) married in 1897. She came here in 1882. [His parents Mary Anne and George Alfred Richardson, Sr came here on SS Norman Morison in 1850. In 1858 they built Victoria’s first brick hotel, called the Victoria, later the Windsor Hotel (901-905 Government St, Downtown). It survived an explosion in 1876 caused by accidental ignition of gas near an open candle flame. George Sr. kept the hotel until 1903. Mary Anne ran the Gordon House boarding house on Gordon St.] George Jr. prospered as a dry goods merchant, first with Victoria House on Douglas St. In 1898 he opened G.A. Richardson & Co at 636 Yates St (Downtown).
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1924-53: Daughter Edith Lillian Richardson (1897-1983) married Ainslie James Helmcken (1900-1987) from 1015 Moss St in 1924. He was educated at University School and was a member of the local Royal Flying Cadet Corps, but was too young to serve overseas in WWI. He trained as a lawyer, and by 1924 was a solicitor; he then worked in a variety of fields. In 1965 he began work on what became City of Victoria Archives. Ainslie retired in 1983 and in 1984 was made a Freeman of the City, “for outstanding contribution to the City’s historical wealth as one of its leading historians.”
1954-c.60: Victoria Pile Driving Co supt Frank Hammond (b. Manchester, ENG, 1896-1968) and Elizabeth (née Cleemoff, b. Victoria 1914-1994); they lived at 934 Foul Bay Rd when Frank died.
1970-present: Surgeon Capt. (Ret’d) Derek John “Piet” Kidd, RCN, DSC, OMM, OSJ, CD (b. London, Eng.1922-2016) and Vera Florrie (née Hoofer, b. Lewisham, Kent, ENG 1913-1981) bought the house for $50,000. Dr. Kidd served as Principal Medical Officer aboard HMCS Labrador, first RCN ship to negotiate the Northwest Passage and circumnavigate North America, from Halifax to Esquimalt and back to Halifax through the Panama Canal in 1954. He retired in 1979 as Chief Medical Officer, Maritime Command Pacific. He then designed and built a rhododendron garden around his home. In 1985 he married Patricia Constance Smedley, a cultural historian and Curator of Decorative Arts at AGGV (1040 Moss St).