ARCHITECTURE:
Pinehurst, one of Victoria’s nest Queen Anne resid‐ences, is 2½ storeys with a front-gabled, back-hipped roof. It has a 2½-storey gabled wing on the left side, with a one-storey, hip-roofed box bay attached to the front of the wing. There is a large gabled dormer on the right side; the details in the apices of the left wing gable and the right dormer are the same. Smaller gabled dormers are adjacent to the wing and the right dormer.All the gables are pedi‐ mented. There is a round, witch’s cap/conical-roofed tower on the left front corner. A second floor balcony sits above a box bay on the front; upper and lower verandahs extend from the balcony and the bay around the tower to the wing on the left. There are three bays on the right side, an angled bay on the second floor, and an angled bay on the rst oor to the rear of a long, round-ended, one-storey bay. The main entry porch on the front right is hip-roofed with bracketed square posts and pilasters, and turned balusters. Later images indicate that the second owners added several Queen Anne features: Queen Anne glass in a few upper windows, ornate gable decoration, numerous quarter-round brackets in all the friezes, and the verandahs with their turned balusters and finials on the newel posts. There is a hip-roofed extension on the right rear. The body of the house is clad in drop siding: the boards were steamed to t the curved surface of the tower and the bay on the right. All the gables and the third level of the tower are shingled. The foundation is brick.
The VDT 31st December1888 stated:“Another Palatial Residence:W.J. Macaulay, Esq., today awarded the contract for erecting a fine family residence on Dallas Rd, near Beacon Hill, to Mr. G.C. Mesher, contractor of this city …One of the great features of this fine building will be the tower on the southwest corner, which will be fourteen feet in diameter and eighty-four feet high.” VDC, 1stAugust 1889: “Mr. W.J. Macaulay moves to his new residence, Beacon Hill, today.” VDC, 1st January 1890, report on buildings constructed in 1889: “J.A.(sic) Macaulay on Dallas – 2 storey residence and stable, $25,000.”The 1891 image of the house as first built shows an austere building with Queen Anne form and massing but no surface decoration. It is suggestive of the Shingle Style popular at the time for eastern American seaside mansions. This was in keeping with the house’s original isolated siting on Dallas Rd, on the cliffs overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The interior featured nine fireplaces with superb tilework, intricate panelling and woodwork, and interconnecting reception rooms. The major rooms had hand painted ceilings and friezes.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
1889-92: William James Macaulay (b.Sidney, Hastings Co, ON 1828-1902) and Harriet (née Keenan, b. ON 1847-1906) were married in Niles, MI, in 1868. William was involved with his father and uncle in a large lumber mill. He then spent time in the US and central Canada in real estate, lumber and banking, making a considerable fortune. He retired to Victoria in 1888, but missed the business world, so he purchased the Chemainus Mills from Robert Dunsmuir and formed the Victoria Lumber and Manufacturing Co. About 1892, the Macaulays moved away from the water to a house above Rockland Av called Highlands (1630 Rockland Av). After William’s death, Harriet moved to Seattle to be near her daughters. It is possible that William’s brother Alexander’s (d.1877) widow Adelaide (d.1892), who was Harriet’s sister, and her son Henry also lived in Pinehurst, but only William and Harriet, and their children Norman, Lily and Mary are listed here in the 1891 census. Norman and Henry bought the Victoria, Coal, Wood and Lumber Yard in 1889. From Irish Catholic stock, the Macaulays were prominent members of the St. Andrew’s Cathedral.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1892-1937: Dr. George and Ellen “Nellie” Milne bought Pinehurst in 1892. George was born in Garmouth, Scotland; his family came to Canada when he was six. He trained in medicine at the University of Toronto, followed two elder brothers to Victoria in 1880, and married Victoria-born Nellie Kinsman in 1882 (her sister Louise married Richard Hall, 906 Linden Av). A promoter of the first BC Medical Act which enabled the founding of the BC Medical Council in 1886, he served as the Council’s Registrar and Secretary, and was made its first honorary member. He promoted the founding of Royal Jubilee Hospital (1900 Fort St) in 1888. Milne was appointed superintendent of the French Hospital on McClure St, then City of Victoria Health Officer from 1884 until the smallpox epidemic in 1892, when he disagreed with Provincial Health Officer Dr. J.C. Davie (368 Rockland Pl) and resigned his position. From 1904-24, Milne was medical officer and immigration agent for the Dominion Government at the Immigration building on Dallas Rd. As Chinese immigration controller he collected the head tax.
Milne made a fortune in real estate development, as a partner in the Vancouver Investment Co. He was president of the Electric Tramway Co (later the BCER), director of BC Fire Insurance Co, and president of BC Liberal Association. He served as a Victoria School Trustee and was elected an MPP for Victoria in 1890. He was a member of the St. Andrews and Caledonian societies, and the Royal Arch and Scottish Rite branches of the Masonic Lodge. He and Nellie were supporters of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church and after the union in 1925, of the United Church of Canada. The Milnes had a summer house, Speyside, at Beecher Bay in Metchosin (extant). Dr. Milne died in 1933 at 82 at Pinehurst, and Nellie in 1941 at 77, at 576 Dallas where she had lived since 1938.
1939-42: Robert Henry Percival (b.Stratford, ON 1868-1945) and Lora Carmelita (née Laurin, b.Winnipeg, MB 1882-1973) divided 618 Dallas Rd into the Pinehurst Apts. Robert worked on the railroad for over 50 years, retiring in 1959. Lora managed the apartments. Their daughter Carmen Erla, a stenographer at Active Fuel Co, lived here in 1939 and married her boss William Alexander “Alex” Schade that year. [Note: Alex was renting at 1249 Rockland Av, and their witnesses lived at Pinehurst Apts and 1715 Rockland Av.] The Percivals and then the Reinhards began subdividing the large property and selling off lots. By 1944 the house stood on a pan-handle lot at 629 Battery St, in the centre of the block and no longer visible from Dallas Rd after 1947.
1943-53: Walter Reinhard (b.Berne, Switzerland 1894-1959) and Mary Anne (née Scatterly, b.Aberdeenshire, SCT 1906-1991) came to Victoria from Calgary at the beginning of WWII. Mary managed the Pinehurst Apts. Walter was a waiter at the Liberty Cafe and then a restaurant proprietor until retiring six months before his death.
1954-56: Frank Jr. and Cecily B. Williams.
1956-83: Larry and Irene Lee ran it as Westpark Apartments with 13 rental units. Gradually the rest of the property was sold off and the house fell into disrepair; the conservatory, the massive two-storey verandah and balcony, and the porte cochere were demolished.
1983-present: Capital Regional Housing Corporation renovated Pinehurst as part of a CRD townhouse development on the remaining surrounding property. Some exterior rehabilitation was done, including the replacement of the two verandahs, with the aid of a grant from Victoria Heritage Foundation. There are now nine suites in the building.