ARCHITECTURE:
This 1½-storey, front-gabled house is a variation on the Edwardian Vernacular Arts & Crafts style. It has the symmetrical upper floor over the asymmetrical lower floor, but the right side of the house has two large gabled dormers over a hip-roofed extension. There is also a gabled dormer on the left side of the house with an enclosed sleeping porch and a shed-roofed extension. A full-width shed roof between the floors on the front façade shelters a wide angled bay on the right and a recessed entry porch on the left with side-facing steps. The porch posts are supported on capped fieldstone piers. A denticulated string course in the front gable separates shinges in the apex from roughcast stucco and half-timbering below. The rest of the house is clad in double-bevelled siding.
D.H. Bale (1402 Stadacona Av, Fernwood) was a prolific Victoria designer-builder; good examples of this house plan are found at 1017 Catherine St, Vic West, and 1127 Fort St, Fairfield. Bale also designed 1077-79 Verrinder Av with the small tower and witch’s cap, which, before recent alterations, closely resembled the house at 1125 Fort St. The Verrinders built the houses as rental properties in Victoria’s pre-WWI boom. They lived from 1896-1930 at 1032 McGregor Av, up the hill behind these houses.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
1909-12: William James Hanna (1854-1941) and Ida Preston (1861-1943) (28 Douglas St, James Bay).William, a graduate of the US College of Embalming of NY was a funeral director and house builder.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1913-15: Pauline (née Eckle, b. New York 1870-1948) married Dr. Ludwig Rissmuller in Philadelphia in 1897, but they separated in 1912. Ludwig was a chemist brought to Victoria by Pacific Whaling Co. Failing health forced him to go to California in 1916, where he died. Pauline remained in Victoria, and lived in a suite here in 1929.
1917: Jane Finlayson (nee Hamilton, b. AUST 1869-1943) widow of William Henry Finlayson (b. Victoria 1872-1908) son of Roderick and Sarah Work Finlayson.
1918: Heintzman & Co salesman Charles Noble Maywood.
1921: Real estate agent Claude Hamilton.
1925-26: George B. Mitchell, manager of P. Lyall & Sons Construction Co of Montréal and Victoria, general contractors for the new Federal Graving Dock in Esquimalt.
1929: The house was converted to three suites, called Twin Oaks. 1930: Brig. Frederick Norman Cabeldu, CBE, DSO & Bar, ED, Legion of Honor and Croix de Guerre. (1015 Gillespie Pl).
1930-48: Edith Matilda Treherne (née Burpee, b. NB 1884-?) widow of Reginald Charles Treherne (b. Aldershot, ENG 1886-1924), Dominion Entomologist for BC, son of Surgeon-Gen. Sir Francis Treherne, KCMG. Edith worked at Combetree Gift Shop on Fort St in the early 1930s for widow Edith Combe and daughter Vivien, who lived at 1079 Verrinder.
1931-36: Lionel Albert Hansard (b. London, ENG 1890-1966) and Winifred White (née Clements, b. Co Antrim, IRL 1890-1964) came to Canada in 1914. Lionel was a steward at Union Club until 1938, then a clerk at Dockyard until his retirement in 1949. They were both members of British Public Schools Tennis Club.
1937-48: Minnie Katherine Parry (née Dickson, b. ENG 1864-1949) wife of Arthur Norman Parry (b. NZ c.1867-1945) who was never listed at this address; he was in Vancouver in 1945. They came to Cowichan from Miniota, MB and again took up farming. Minnie moved here in 1937. She was living in St. Mary’s Priory Guest
House, now the Glenshiel (606 Douglas St), when she died.
1939-51: Adelaide Beatrice Marshall (née Oliver, b. Perth, SCT 1884-1970) (1916 Belmont Av, 1449 Grant St) wife of CPR locomotive engineer Edward Caleb Marshall (b. Texas, USA 1878-1958) who was never listed here. Daughter Hilda Adelaide Jane (b. Eholt, BC 1909-1997), teacher and correspondence instructor, lived with her. The Marshalls came to BC in 1907 and spent many years in Ladysmith, BC, where Adelaide was one of BC’s first female aldermen in 1924-25. She was an inveterate letter writer on a great variety of subjects, particularly to VDTimes, no matter where she was living. She moved to Nanaimo in 1967, where her daughter Kathleen Bamberton Modin (née Marshall, b. Bamberton, BC 1913-1997) lived. Adelaide is buried in Ross Bay Cemetery.
1949-51: BCCSS timekeeper Arthur J. Davey.
1949-51: PO clerk J. Rowland and Joan Inglis