Heritage Register
Fernwood
2008 Chambers Street
Built
1907
Heritage-Designated 2010
For: Herbert T. Knott & Horace J. Knott
Builder: Herbert T. Knott & Horace J. Knott
ARCHITECTURE:
This house is Edwardian Vernacular Arts & Crafts, a style that was just becoming popular in Victoria in 1907. The front gabled roof has two side gabled roof dormers; the right dormer is larger and has two windows. There is a cantilevered angled bay beneath the dormer on the left side. The front gable has heavy whalebone bargeboards, and features a slim box bay on small brackets with a pent roof. A tiny closet window with leaded panes breaks the gable symmetry. The beltcourse at the bottom of the gable overhangs a shallow inset angled bay on the left and a recessed porch on the right. The porch has two heavily chamfered square posts on a solid balustrade. The side-facing front steps have low stepped balustrades. Art glass decorates the centres of the bays and the porch window. The upper gable, the dormers and the basement are shingled. Asbestos shingles over the original siding are being removed.
The Knott family were prolific Victoria builders in the building boom leading up to WWI. Herbert Knott’s name appears on at least 50 residential Building Permits, from 1902-1913. In 1907 he acquired three adjacent lots on Chambers St, and built three very different houses, 2002, 2006 & 2008. The Knotts built other houses in the Edwardian genre, many of them speculatively. This house has particularly strong similarities to 1508 Fernwood Rd, Fernwood, and 59 & 87 South Turner St in James Bay, all built at about the same time.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
.
1908-29: Arthur Patrick Pike (b. Conception Bay, Nfld, 1870-1934) and Lucinda (née Coles, b. Harbor Grace, Nfld, 1879-1959) married in Victoria in 1896. They bought the house shortly after it was built. In July 1908 the funeral of their three-month-old son Allan Nelson was held at the residence. Arthur was a fireman, an engineer for the White Pass & Yukon Railroad and a marine engineer on the SS Tyee. He died while employed as a marine engineer for the Walker Lake Ice Plant near Ocean Falls. Lucinda was living in West Vancouver with their son Wolburn Edwin Pike when she died.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1930-37: Ernest “Victor” Roberts Grange (b. Brighton, ENG, 1885-1977) and Amelia Sarah (née Chinnery, b. Hornchurch, ENG, 1883-1973); living with them were Victor’s widowed mother Sarah Grange and his two grown daughters by his first wife, Beatrice Evelyn Murrell: Florence, a photographer, and Phyllis, a stenographer. The family had previously farmed near Raymore, SK. Victor was an ice cream maker at Northwestern Creamery and a dairyman. Victor and Amelia lived late in life in the Matson Lodge seniors’ home in Esquimalt. After Amelia’s death, Victor married Ida Hyde.
1938-44: Rachel Bunch (née Mellor, b. Glossop, ENG, 1887-1954), the widow of Frederick James Bunch, and their son, Clarence Gregor Bunch (b. Brandon, MB, 1917-1959), a labourer and an elevator operator at the Strathcona Hotel.
1945-46: Retired farmers Andrew and Annie Mary Schommer were both born in Minnesota of German parents. They came to Canada in 1906, when Andrew was farming with his brother Joseph Peter Schommer near Battleford, SK. Annie was Joseph’s wife and they had two children, Josephine and Henry. Joseph died, Annie married Andrew, and they had a daughter, Rose. All of them came to Victoria in 1944 and lived in this house.
1947-48: Commonwealth Construction Co carpenter Daniel and Clara Leidy.
1949-50: Sarah Anna Ward, widow of William Arthur Ward; they married in Nelson, BC, in 1906.
1951-80: Everett William Brasch (b. Spokane, WA, 1896-1980) and Alice May (née Ryan, b. ENG, 1903-1980) married in Nelson, BC, in 1930. Everett was a clerk at the Dockyard, Alice a stenographer with Victoria Coal & Heating Co.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:
• Statement of Significance (Canadian Register of Historic Places)
• Fernwood History
• Fernwood Heritage Register
• This Old House, Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume One: Fernwood & Victoria West
