ARCHITECTURE:
This front-gabled Craftsman Bungalow has a recessed side-facing entrance under the front-gabled porch. The porch has square supports on tall tapered granite piers, and a simple but substantial spindled balustrade. The wall cladding is shingle with roughcast and half-timbered gables. The gabled extension to the right is balanced by a similar one on the left. There is a cantilevered box bay on the left with an art glass piano window. Most windows are double-hung and in groupings with multi-panes over single panes. This Craftsman has the typical bracketed eaves and exposed raftertails, but the boxy smoothly stuccoed main chimney suggests a later re-building.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
The house was built for the Dunn family, who owned 102 South Turner St (James Bay) in the 1890s, lived at 1215 Pembroke St (Fernwood) from 1900-02, and 1627 Fort from 1903-12, up until this house was built.
Robert Broadfoot Dunn (1857-1938) was born in Wigtownshire, Scotland, and came to Canada c.1870. He lived in St. Thomas, ON, where he farmed. He later worked for a number of Ontario newspapers. He married Mary Isabel Sanderson (1862-1937), a native of Whitby, ON, and they came to BC in 1891. Robert managed the printing department of The World in Vancouver. The following year the Hon. William Templeman, owner of the Victoria Daily Times, offered Robert a position as composing room foreman. He worked his way up to editor and maintained this position until Templeman’s death in 1914. From WWI up until shortly before his death, he wrote the daily Note and Comment column for the Daily Colonist. Robert and Mary lived here the rest of their lives.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
The next owners were Matthew Thomas and Bertha Laurel (Montague) Little, who lived here until about 1942. Matthew worked at Little & Taylor, jewellers. Daniel and Mary Wilkinson lived here in the mid-1940s up to the early 1950s.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:
• This Old House, Victoria’s Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume Four: Fairfield, Gonzales & Jubilee
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