ARCHITECTURE:
This house was designed by Schallerer for Ward Investment Co (WIC), the same team that did 1069 Joan Cr. These two houses are very similar in overall aesthetics, both unusual and impressive 2-storey Craftsman houses with elaborate double-height verandahs and gable timberwork. The house on Moss has a gable on the left front, with the gabled 2-storey verandah projecting past it on the right. The gables are half-timbered, with triangular braces and diamond-tipped ornamental beams, and the roof-peaks are flared to give an oriental effect. The house is covered in unequal-coursed shingles with a double-board string course continuing the line of the first-floor porch roof, which is supported by tapered square columns in turn based on battered shingled piers. The open eaves have exposed rafter tails.
WIC was in Victoria by late 1911; John H. Moore was president and Guy S. Brown (1961 Fairfield Pl, Gonzales), secretary-treasurer. Schallerer may be the August Schallerer who was born in 1889 in Kansas City, Jackson, MI (his mother’s name was Barr, perhaps his middle initial). He is listed in 1912 & ’13 city directories in the same office as architect Elmer E. Green (1961 Fairfield Pl), but his plans of houses in Victoria and Oak Bay have been found for 1912-14. From plans by both Schallerer and E.E. Green, the unusual wavy lines of their printing look identical, which has lead to confusion in attribution of some houses.*
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
The first owner-residents of 352 Moss were Charles Paul and Josephine Higgins. Charles was a physician and surgeon with offices on Fort St. In the mid-1920s they sold the house to James William and Nora Mary Elizabeth (Gray) Hudson (335 Arnold Av, Fairfield).
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
By the early 1940s the house was owned by Richard Arthur and M. Eileen Bell, followed by Wilfred and Sarah Knapp and then the Johnsons. Robert and Mable Mildred (Comrie) Johnson were both born in 1918. Mable’s mother had contracted Spanish Influenza, and the family wasn’t sure that either mother or baby would survive, but she did. Robert and Mable went to school in Edmonton, married in 1940, and moved to Victoria c.1941-42. They had four children, the last born after they moved to this house in 1953. About 1964 the Johnsons moved to Oak Bay.
From c.1964-70, Willem Oudshoorn owned the house, and lived here with his parents Jan Johannes and Tjaltje Oudshoorn. Jan, who was a builder, restored some of the interior which had been altered over the years, and put a suite in the basement. It was triplexed in the 1970s.
* From research by Jennifer Barr for Building the West: The Early Architects of British Columbia, compiled & edited by Donald Luxton, Talonbooks, 2003
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:
• This Old House, Victoria’s Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume Four: Fairfield, Gonzales & Jubilee
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