15 Cook Street

ARCHITECTURE:

This 1½-storey side-gabled Craftsman Bungalow is dominated by its full-width front porch and front-gabled dormer. The porch has an angular arch set on two heavy square posts supported by tapering dressed granite piers. The entrance, which has a glazed door with sidelights, is slightly off centre, and it and the front facing steps are framed by lighter plain square supporting posts on each side. The porch balustrade is made up of plain square posts. The dormer has a recessed sleeping porch with an angular arch and posts which echo the main porch below. On each side of the sleeping porch is a diamond shaped leaded art glass window. The right front window is a three-part sash with leaded art glass transom, the left is a single pane, also with leaded art glass transom. Narrow bevelled siding is used throughout except for the upper part of the front dormer: it is half-timbered with pebble dash infill above a narrow dentil course. Craftsman details include exposed rafter tails and gable eaves supported by knee brackets. The south side has two box bays, the larger one gabled, the smaller and a large one on the north side shed-roofed. The matching garage has a hip roof.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

The first owners of this house were John Grant Miller (1881-1922) and his wife Elizabeth. John was a stone mason born in Scotland who came to Victoria c.1913. The Millers lived in Esquimalt for a number of years, and never actually lived in this house.

The first family to live in this house was the Johnston family from Manitoba. Widower and merchant William Johnston (1849-1931) lived here with his nephew William John Johnston (1886-1939). They came to Victoria from Winnipeg in 1915, and that year, William, a bank accountant, enrolled with the CEF. He served in Europe with the 4th Battalion Machine Gun Corps, and returned to Victoria as a Major. He continued to live with his uncle at this house, and worked as a clerk at the Bank of Montreal.

In 1926 William John married widow Esther Edge (1886-1979). She was born in Leicester, England, and graduated from nursing school before coming to Canada in 1911. She lived in Springside, SK, before coming to Victoria in 1926. She continued to live in this house after the deaths of William and William John until the mid-1940s.