427 Arnold Avenue

ARCHITECTURE:

This is a relatively unusual example of a front gabled Craftsman Bungalow with a gabled entrance porch on the side, which, many years ago, was enclosed. Unlike the plans, the small shed-roofed dormer was constructed on the S side, over the porch gable. The roof has the typical exposed rafter tails and the gables end in bargeboards supported on knee brackets. The siding was originally cedar shingles, broken by a high belt course at the base of the main floor windows, and a string course which met the top of the wall at the base of the gable. In the 1940s or ‘50s, the house was covered in asbestos shingles and the horizontal belt course line was dropped. Most of the original windows remain, some of the double hung sash, with an art glass piano window above the stairs on the south side.

The plans for this house are signed by a carpenter who called himself an architect. He is known to have designed several houses in the City, but nothing is known of his life as yet. In the 1912 city directory this was shown as the only house on the street.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

Francis Tristram Pengelley (1877-1968) married Norah (Nora) Denny (1876-1961) in 1907. Frank was born in Ontario, and was living in the Roccabella boarding house in 1901. Nora was born in Victoria. Frank sold real estate, then furniture until his retirement in 1960.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

During WWI Frank Willard Young (Quebec, 1881-1921) and his wife Edith Harriet (Hodgson, born England, 1885-1976) lived here. Part-owner of Empress Taxi & Sightseeing Co, Frank died of a gunshot wound in 1921 when out hunting in the HBC lands near the Uplands. In the 1920s Harry Ross, a hotelkeeper from Prince Rupert was followed by Stanley E. Wallis, manager of Consol Motors.

From c.1928-43, Edith Margaret Rachel Dawn Deena Nixon (Roberts, 1878-1950), the widow of Arthur Parry Wood Nixon (1871-1914), lived here. Born in Simcoe County, ON, she came to Victoria in 1916. Arthur was a farmer on Thetis Island, BC, and Deena lived on Kuper Island when they married in 1902. They were still farming on Thetis when Arthur died.

In 1946, Louise and Duncan MacBride, a BC government sheriff, lived here. But the owner was Rebecca Jane Stillman when she sold it to Olen Wesley Lewis and Frank Leslie Pickell in 1947. Olen and his wife Louise Barbara (Mustie) bought it outright in 1949, and members of their family have owned since then.

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