ARCHITECTURE:
Rappahannock is a substantial, 2½-storey Tudor Revival, British Arts & Crafts house. It is hip-roofed with front and rear gabled extensions separated by wide flat-roofed dormers. The upper gables have bracketed bargeboards, finials and half-timbering. A denticulated, corbelled string course separates the upper gable from the second floor. The flat-roofed entrance porch on the right supports a balcony. Both the balcony and the porch have heavy, paired square posts; those of the porch sit on a granite balustrade. There is a verandah and balcony on the right rear. The main floor and foundation are granite, the second floor is shingled. There are three ribbed and corbelled brick chimneys, one of which is an exterior wall chimney. There is a modern one storey shingled addition at the rear of the right wing.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
1910-14: Herbert Bowen (1866-1940) was a prominent realtor, then a clerk at the Strathcona Hotel for several years. Born in Virginia, he came to Canada in 1905 and Victoria in 1910 with his wife Mary Jane (b. 1870) and three children. He was a widower at the time of his death.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1915-17: Col. William H. Coy.
Tenant: 1917: Miss M. Cowell, a clerk at Royal Jubilee Hospital.
1917-22: A. Ernest Cross (1861-1932) of Calgary bought the house as a second home for his wife Helen “Nell” Rothney (née MacLeod, 1878-1959) and children for extended periods of time. They had been coming to stay in Oak Bay since 1910. Ernest Cross, son of a wealthy Montreal family, moved to Alberta in 1884, and founded the A7 Ranche near Nanton, AB, in 1886; now owned by John Cross, it is still one of the oldest and largest family- owned ranches in Canada. In 1892 Ernest established Calgary Brewing & Malting Co, the first brewery in the Northwest Territories. In 1899 he married Nell, daughter of famed NWMP Lt.-Col. James Farquharson MacLeod, who led a contingent west in 1874 over what became the MacLeod Trail, to establish Fort MacLeod. Ernest was also was a politician, an early oilman, film maker, and, as one of the Big Four cattlemen, founded the Calgary Stampede in 1912.*
1923-50: Arthur Charlton Burdick (b. Dorchester, ON 1874-1951) and Vina (née Dixie, b. Petrolia, ON 1873-1949) married in 1901. They moved to the BC interior in 1903 and ran a small country store, then in 1907 came to Victoria where Arthur started a financial business. In 1921 he took over Pacific Salvage Co. In 1925 he designed the Salvage King and had it built in Britain. He gained fame along the Pacific Coast for the Salvage King’s ability to rescue ships. Arthur also founded Island Tug & Barge Co, and during the 1940s he was president of North Vancouver Ship Repairs Ltd. After Vina’s death, Arthur sold the house and moved to the Union Club.
In 1954 the house was converted to nine suites by Maurice G. Troup for his parents James and Edith Troup (1337 Rockland Av).
* See Sherrill MacLaren, Braehead: Three Founding Families in Nineteenth Century Canada.
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