Heritage Register
Gonzales

162 Robertson Street

Built 1912-13
Heritage-Designated 2008

For: Walter & Marguerite Harlock

Architect: Elmer Ellsworth Green

ARCHITECTURE:

:This imposing 1½-storey house, which cost $6,000 to build, is a textbook example of the work of the respected architect E.E. Green, who designed more than 20 houses in his short career in Victoria (1912-1915). Many of these were done for the Bungalow Construction Co, which swept through the new Fairfield subdivision during that period. (Eight Green/BCC homes have been identified on Carnsew/Durban Sts, alone. But this one cost twice as much as those.)

The style is pure Craftsman / California Bungalow: A deep, full-width front verandah; heavy brackets; exposed rafter-tails; birds mouth bargeboards; wide eaves; generous central front steps with low banisters with cheeks; tapered stone bases under fat columns…. Many of these elements also serve as Green’s signature; Colin Barr* notes that Green regularly designed deep front porches, side gables, deeply notched bargeboards and large front dormers. He also notes Green’s liking for faux beam-ends –the pyramidal blocks attached to the barge-boards. (The Green house at 1442 Rockland Av in Rockland is very similar, though that cost $10,000.)

The upper dormer was originally a generous open sleeping-porch, enclosed sometime before the 1970s Hallmark photo. This diminishes the clusters of three columns on each corner. Other notable features include a curved bay on the porch, the multi-pane-over-1 windows, some art glass, a mix of sash and casement windows, and the front door with triangular beveled glass panes which echo decorative woodwork in the low railing. The side façades also contain interesting elements: A curved bay on the left and a box bay on the right both share the roof of the front gable.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

Original owners Walter Henry Harlock (1880-1962) and his wife Marguerite (1881-1957) lived here until their deaths. Born in San Francisco, Walter came to BC with his family in 1883. His father Henry established a salmon cannery business in Ladner. After Henry died in 1886, the cannery was sold to R.P. Rithet & Co, and Walter came to Victoria with his mother Annie and sister May. Walter was educated at St. Louis College and Boys Central School. In 1905 he married Marguerite Hitchcock, a native of Liverpool, England, who came to Victoria in 1900. Walter first worked at Albion Iron Works for four years, then joined the CPR and became a marine engineer. He was later employed with the HBC, and served on boats on the Skeena and Stikine Rivers in NW British Columbia until he retired in 1954. Walter joined the Victoria Lawn Bowling Club in 1930, and remained an active member until his death.

The Harlocks’ daughter Valentine and her husband Capt Walter J. Furlong were living with her widowed father by 1961, and were still here in 1963. However, they had moved to Cadboro Bay Rd by at least the mid-1970s
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* Colin Barr, essay on EE Green in Building the West: The Early Architects of British Columbia, ed Donald Luxton, 2003, revised 2007.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• Gonzales History

• Gonzales Heritage Register


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