Heritage Register
Fairfield

743 Vancouver Street (ex-57 Vancouver St)

Built 1892
Heritage-Designated 1977

For: Hedley Chapman

Architect: John Teague
Contractors: Bishop & Sherborne

ARCHITECTURE:

These six houses (725, 731, 737 & 743 Vancouver St, 1012 Richardson, 1011 McClure St) were part of a group of eight designed by John Teague for Hedley Chapman, a British investor. The BC Land and Investment Agency acted as agents for Chapman and arranged for the construction of the houses. P.R. Brown, who worked for the BCLIA, signed the original plumbing permit.

These houses are in Teague’s half-Italianate, half-Queen Anne style that typified much of his residential work in this period. All are 2-storey with jettied and pedimented front gables with shingles in varied patterns, and hipped roofs in the rear. There are brackets under the closed eaves. All have a full-height bay on one side of the front with a pedimented and jettied gable. The gables are shingled in varied patterns and have a segmental window in the peak. Each bay is square on the upper floor, over an angled, cutaway main floor. A pent roof with a frieze decorated with rectangular panels separates the two levels of the bay; a strip with larger rectangular panels is under the ground floor window. Two houses on corner lots have 2-storey square side bays on the same side as the front one, with features similar to it. A pent roof on the side joins those on the two bays. The other four houses have a single-storey square side bay in place of the 2-storey one. They are clad in drop siding.

All houses have a 1-storey entry porch on the opposite corner to the front bay. It has a pedimented, shingled gable supported by brackets, with spindled supports, balustrade, and decorative work under the roof. Most of the windows are 2-over-1 double-hung sashes with horns. Each house has a pair of sunburst brackets parallel to the front of the house in the upper corners of the cutaway window, and another pair perpendicular to the housefront in the corners under the eaves of the front gable; the houses differ in the details of these ornaments. Some of the houses have ornamental features on their bargeboards and entry porches.

This house has a front bay on the left side and a two-storey side bay. It has roundels and strapwork on its bargeboards. Its sunburst brackets have seven rounded-end beams.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

This house was not occupied until 1895, when P.T. Patton lived here. F.H. Worlock and H.A. Macaulay lived here in 1897. Macaulay was a clerk at Spratt & Macaulay, commission and insurance agents.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

James Jones (1856-1936) and Laurella (1866-1954) Sargison lived here from 1900-03. James was an accountant at Lenz & Leiser. Born in Montreal, QC, James came to Victoria c.1870. In 1894 he married Laurella Silverthorn, a native of Ohio, who came to Victoria in 1889. Laurella was living at the Caroline Macklem home for aged women at 1322 Rockland Av (Rockland) at the time of her death.

Following a period of vacancy, Ellen Testar, widow of Henry Testar, ran this house as a rooming house in 1908. By 1910-11, real estate broker Asa Bancroft (1868-1918) and Sarah Priscilla (Davidson, 1865-1965) Steele were living here. Asa was born in Cassburn, ON, and Sarah in Armagh, Northern Ireland. They came to Victoria in 1910.

Widow Lillian McDougall lived here in 1912, and Edward J. Tate, branch manager at Aldous & Murray real estate, lived here in 1914. Agnes Hamilton Kenway lived here in 1917 while her husband Douglas Maitland Kenway served overseas. Another widow, Mrs W.B. Parkyn lived here with her daughter Isabel in 1921. Miss Beatrice A. Finlayson lived here in 1926.

By 1929 this house was converted into two suites with various tenants over the years. Frank Mortimer (1875-1958) and Helen Aimee (Grogan) Kelley lived here for several years in the mid-1930s. Helen was a native of Calgary, AB. She and Frank married in Oak Bay in 1913. Born in Cape Breton, NS, to a seafaring family, Frank came to Victoria in 1889. His father Capt George Kelley was a master mariner and ship chandler. Frank first worked at R.T. Williams, a printing and bookbinding firm. He later worked with Munro Miller’s printing business and the CPR telegraph office. In 1891 he worked for the Daily Bulletin of San Francisco covering theatre news. He subsequently went on several sea voyages, and on his return to Victoria he entered the theatre, working with the Belmour-Grey Dramatic Co, and was later stage manager of the Victoria Theatre. For several years he was a freelance writer, specializing in Vancouver Island geology. In 1929 he joined the Daily Colonist as an editor.

John Stillman was here in the 1940s and was the owner by 1949.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• Statement of Significance (Canadian Register of Historic Places)

• GIS Map of Victoria's Heritage Register Properties

• Fairfield History

• Fairfield Heritage Register



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