Heritage Register
Fairfield

644 Linden Avenue

Built 1911
Heritage-Designated 1995

For: Delbert & Mary Hankin

Architect: Samuel Maclure

ARCHITECTURE:

Although many of Maclure’s houses have been typified as “Tudor Revival,” only Hatley Park is a close approximation of that historically derived style, reportedly at the insistence of the owner. Maclure instead created his own hallmark Elizabethanesque style with eye-catching use of half-timbering, but seldom teamed it with other Tudor Revival features, and frequently added a prominent and uncharacteristic single-storey porte-cochère. However, this Maclure house cleaves more closely to the historical model than most. It is a 2½ -storey front-gabled and cross-gabled building with a multitude of gabled dormer and cantilevered bay windows, all with wide bargeboards and dropped finials. The ground floor is faced in front and on two sides with Maclure’s signature stonework of uncoursed, tightly jointed, cut granite polygons, while the upper storeys (and the entire rear façade) are half-timbered. The front façade, half again as tall as wide, with projecting second, third, and attic levels, towers over the narrow lot. There is a porte-cochère on the right side, but, rather than Maclure’s usual single-storied, flat-roofed structure, in medieval mode this one has a second-storey jettied gabled bay with a gabled dormer and a gabled cantilevered square bay window above it, supported by four granite posts. Except for the rear façade, most of the windows are double-hung sashes, with the upper sash composed of a complex diamond-pane pattern half the height of the lower plain glass sash, many in strings of two, three, or four. The interior features a 2-storey balconied hall in rich golden oak.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

The original owners of this house were Delbert and Mary Hankin, who came to Canada from the US in 1909 and lived here 1913-14. Delbert was general manager of New Ladysmith Lumber Co, having previously managed Canadian Puget Sound Lumber Co. The Hankins moved to Nanaimo in 1915. By the mid-1920s he was living in Washington State and was general manager of Royse-Hankin Lumber Co, which burned down in 1926.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

Edwyn Brenton (1851-1942) and Elsie Lindsay (Monro, 1869-1927) Andros owned and occupied this house from 1917-28. Edwyn was a bank manager born in Pune (formerly Poona), India, who retired to BC in 1915. In 1928 he bought the Harrogate Apartments on Beach Dr and managed the apartments until his death.

Lumberman Robert W. Stenton lived here in 1929. After a period of vacancy in 1930-32, retired couple John and Mima Arnold took up residence here 1933-37. Dr. Bernard R. and Elizabeth Mooney lived here in 1938.

Anson Dodge (1871-1945) and Ellah (French) Mann lived here 1939-46. They previously lived in Winnipeg, MB, where Anson was a member of the Grain Exchange. From 1947 until the early 1950s, Miss Viva Bengston lived here and ran it as a guest house, the Swedish Villa.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• Fairfield History

• Fairfield Heritage Register



• This Old House, Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume Four: Fairfield, Gonzales & Jubilee