Heritage Register
James Bay

20 Paddon Street (ex-19, 20 Dallas Av)
Dallas Cottage

Built 1902-03
Heritage-Registered

For: Charlotte Brown

ARCHITECTURE:

This 1½-storey, cross-gabled cottage has eaves brackets around the house and bracketed, pedimented gables on all four sides. It is asymmetrical only because of the location of the porch, enclosed in the 1990s, on the left front. The hipped roof of the porch was raised to align with the pent roofs of the gables. There are single windows in all the gables; the front windows have been widened and there is now a bank of windows on the left side of the old porch. Side facing stairs lead to the porch. The shingle siding is fish-scale in the gables and square-butt on the main floor, the basement is clad in V-joint T&G on a new concrete foundation, as the house was raised in the 1990s. The corbelled chimney has gone. It was originally built for $1,600.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

Charlotte Brown had a remarkable impact on Paddon Av, or Dallas Av as it was then known. She and her husband Robert, a retired miner, built their first Victoria house, Beacon Cottage (30 Douglas St, now part of Beacon Lodge), in 1887. Robert died in 1899 at 67; Widow Brown took in boarders in Beacon Cottage then moved to 16 Dallas Av in 1906. From 1902-06 she built six houses on the west side of this short street, in the shadow of Pinehurst (617 Battery St), most of them distinctive shingled bungalows, as revenue properties: 20 & 46 Paddon Av in 1902-5; in 1906 a matched set of three (26, 32, 38), and 16, which became a duplex, 14-16.

Charlotte was born in Wolverhampton, ENG, came to Victoria via Cape Horn c.1853, and married Robert H. Brown from Yorkshire, ENG, soon after her arrival. After wintering in Victoria, the couple moved to the Cariboo, where Charlotte was one of the first white women and Robert managed a gold mining company. After 10 years, they moved to Eagle Point, OR, and operated a store and farm. They retired to Victoria in the early 1880s, where Charlotte led an active life, despite a permanently disabling injury sustained when she was thrown from a sleigh in the Cariboo. Charlotte was a member of Metropolitan Methodist (1411 Quadra St, Harris Green, TOH3) and James Bay Methodist Churches (511 Michigan St, James Bay). During WWI, she knitted hundreds of pairs of socks for soldiers. She was presented with the Voluntary Workers’ Badge by the Canadian Field Comforts Commission at Shorncliffe, ENG. Charlotte, a gardener and a singer, died in 1923 aged 89.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

Thomas and Dr. Helen Ryan bought this property when it was subdivided in 1907. They lived here until moving around the corner to 651 Battery St in 1913.

From c.1920-60, Frederick and Annie (née Ridge) Fuggle lived in this house. Annie was born in England in 1880, Fred in Essex, ON, in 1879; she came here in 1894, he in 1889. By 1891 he was a farmhand in Esquimalt, then a bartender and hotel clerk. Fred married Annie in 1911. He was a piano technician for Fletcher Bros (110 Medana St, James Bay) c.1935, retiring in 1955. Annie died in 1964, Fred in 1971.


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• James Bay History

• James Bay Heritage Register



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