Heritage Register
James Bay

570-72 Niagara Street

Built 1908
Heritage-Registered

For: Herbert Knott

Contractor: Herbert Knott

ARCHITECTURE:

This is a two-storey, bellcast-hip-roofed Edwardian Arts & Crafts house with widely spaced modillions in the eaves. The symmetrical upper front façade has a shallow, bracketed box bay with four double-hung windows; the lower is asymmetrical with a hip-roofed, cantilevered, angled bay on the left and side-facing steps leading to an inset open porch on the right with three chamferred square posts. The solid stepped balustrade of the stairs and the porch balustrade are covered in double-bevelled siding. There are shallow box bays above cantilevered angled bays on each side of the house. The windows are all six-over-one with two diamond panes in the centre of each upper sash; the muntins are wooden. The claddings are shingle on the upper floor and basement, with double-bevelled siding on the main floor. The foundation is concrete and there are two handsome corbelled brick chimneys. The house is now duplexed.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

Herbert T. Knott (1466 Gladstone Av, Fernwood; 516, 616 & 621 Trutch St, Fairfield) was a building contractor. He sold the house to Claude and Maude Broadbent, who owned it until c.1921, and lived here 1909-11 and 1917-21. Claude was a machinist born in Switzerland in 1880. Maude was born in Victoria to merchant Thomas and Elizabeth Carrington. Maude married Claude in BC’s Nicola District in 1903. Claude served in the CEF during WWI. Maude died at 56 in London, England, in 1936 and was buried in the family plot at Ross Bay Cemetery.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

John and May Stewart lived here from 1923-26. John came to Victoria from Greenock, Scotland in 1909. He bought a shoe business in 1914, and married May in 1915. John was proprietor of Stewart’s Shoes until retiring in 1970. He and May were long-time members of the Victoria Gospel Chapel on Pandora Av. John was a president of the Victoria Camp of Gideons and a life member of Gideons International. He died in 1972 at 82.

May was born in Helensburgh, Scotland, in 1888 to Margaret and Andrew Davidson. Her family moved to Peru, where her father was a journeyman moulder, and then to Victoria in 1889. From 1892 to 1900, they had a sheep farm on North Pender Island. In 1910 May graduated as a registered nurse (RN) from St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing. She was soon in charge of the hospital’s maternity ward, then worked in the contagious disease area. Marriage and child bearing ended her professional career. May attended the 75th Anniversary of the School of Nursing in 1975, and died in 1979 aged 91.

From 1933-39, Jessie Isabell Wilson lived here. She was born in Victoria in 1889 to early pioneers Alexander and Mary (Cleaver) Wilson (1432 Gladstone Av, Fernwood). Jessie, who remained single, was a member of First United Church. She died in 1982.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• James Bay History

• James Bay Heritage Register

• This Old House, Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume Two: James Bay