ARCHITECTURE:
This 2½-storey, front-gable-on-hip Queen Anne house has an asymmetrical front, and two side-gabled extensions, both 2½ storeys. An offset, two-storey, hip-roofed extension is at the rear. The gabled rear of the front gable perches on the ridge of the two side-gabled extensions. The left and right side extensions are identical: two casement windows in the decorated, pedimented gables above three one-over-one sash windows on the second floor over an angled bay on the main floor. The gable on the front hip has a highly-decorative, jettied, pedimented gable at its apex above a pair of casement windows. The decorated, pedimented gable on the front extension, which is offset to the right, has three casement windows above a two-storey angled bay. Abutted to the left of the extension is a pediment-gabled portico, with a design of scrolls and flowers in the gable which complements the design in the uppermost gable. The portico has brackets in the frieze above pairs of turned posts separated by small round arches. The entrance has glazed, panelled double doors with a transom windoiw window and its original hardware.
The upper floor is clad in bellcast cedar shingles, the main floor in drop siding above a band of vertical V-joint T&G. Red brick is used for the foundation and the chimneys. The house originally had a wrap-around verandah on its right side.
Contractor Thomas H. Matthew moved here in early 1891 and first built his own house 1460 Gladstone Av with sons Alfred and Sydney.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
Owners: 1891-92: Alexander Grant Black (b. Dornach, ON 1859-1895) married Sadie/Sada St. Clair (née Watkins, b. Bellingham, WA, USA 1872-1948) in Nanaimo in 1890. He was an E&NR conductor, then for just five or six months in early 1892, ran the Mirror Saloon at Yates and Broad with James Munger. In Octoober 1892 Alex auctioned their furniture in the house and sold the house. They moved to Whatcom Co, WA, where his ill fortune continued. He eventually became a brakeman with Northern Pacifc Rwy, but died at Meeker Junction: in uncoupling cars, he fell between them and was crushed. Sada remarried in 1905 to Charles Cissna.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1894-1901:Confectioner John Alfred Lawrence (b. ENG 1861) andAnnie (b. ENG 1860) lived in the house until 1898 and left Victoria by 1903. John was proprietor of Steam Candy Works and Chicago Candy Factory on Government St, then sold real estate.
Tenants: 1899-1901: Accountant Walter Gilbert Sparrow (b. Colbourne, ON.1856-1913) and Maude (née Lancaster, b. Ohio, USA 1868-1953); Walter lived and worked at the Dallas Hotel when ed at 225 Quebec St, James Bay, c.1900-02. Walter came west to BC as a boy.
Owners: 1902-21: John Andrew Anderson (b. Glasgow, SCT 1844-1919) and Jane (b. ENG 1855-1925) owned this property. Their Dve eldest children were born in New Zealand in the 1870s before they came to Victoria in 1885. John was BC’s Auditor-General from 1900 until retiring in 1913. Jane moved in 1924 to live with her eldest daughter in Portland, OR, USA where she died a year later. Their third son Ernest Melville Anderson (b. NZ 1881-1941) was the assistant curator of the BC Provincial Museum when he married in 1904; he divorced, and when he remarried in 1914, he was a taxidermist.
1922-29: John Fry (b. Bayford, Somerset, ENG 1871-1946) and Rose May “Rosie” (née Neal, b. Victoria 1894-1971) wed in Christ Church Cathedral (911 Quadra St) in 1912. She was a senior member of St. John Ambulance Brigade, Victoria Corps. John came to Victoria in 1901 with the Royal Marine Artillery, which he joined at age 18 and remained for 5½ years. Here he helped mount the 6” coastal defense guns at Macaulay Point in Esquimalt. Shortly afterwards, John volunteered for South Africa with the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles, where he won the King’s Medal. He joined the Victoria police when he returned in 1903. From 1921 until retiring in 1931, John was City of Victoria Police Chief. During WWII he was a watchman. Rose’s parents were William Neal, a chimney builder and sweep, and Mary Louise Pike, who was born in Victoria in 1870. (Mary’s parents were Caleb Pike and Elizabeth Waldy Lidgate. Caleb came to Fort Victoria in 1850 with two brothers with the HBC; Elizabeth came with her father Duncan Lidgate and family in 1852. They all came on the Norman Morison. Caleb Pike’s later 1883 square-log homestead house is the centrepiece of the Caleb Pike Heritage Park in the High‐ lands District NW of Victoria.)
1929: The BC Government purchased the house from the Frys.
Users: 1931: BC Dept of Industries.
1932-43: BC Dept of Agriculture and BC Forestry Branch.
1936-42: also Fed Govt Entomologist.
1944-55: BC Dept of Agriculture and Fed Dept of Agriculture.
Owners: 2014-18: See 580 Michigan St.