ARCHITECTURE:
Constructed for $2,800, this house shows most of the basic features of the cubical Italianate style that was so popular near the end of the 19th Century. It is a two-storey, hip-roofed house with a wide, shallow, two-storey, hip-roofed wing on the left side at the rear, and a one-storey, hip-roofed angled bay on the right side. A pent roof separates the two storeys of the angled bay on the front façade; the main floor, hip-roofed entry porch sits to its left. A small hip-roofed hood covers a door to suites on the left side. There is also a kitchen addition at the rear of the house. A distinctive feature of this house is the coved frieze below the eaves, rather than the usual Italianate bracketed frieze. The house is clad in drop siding and has a brick chimney with three chimney pots.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
Henry Rutland was proprietor of Rutland & Co, gentlemen’s furnishers and dry goods on Johnson St. Born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, England, he came here in 1885. In 1886 he married Lucy Anderson, and in 1891, two of Henry’s employees were lodging with them, Frank Page and Mary Jessop. The Rutlands moved their residence to their shop about 1898, but owned this house and rented it to Ernest Welsh of the BC Market until 1900. Henry died in 1922 at 81, six years after retiring. Lucy, who was born in Birmingham, England, died in 1932 at 75.
The Rutlands sold the property in 1901 to lumber merchant Joseph A. Sayward, who sold it to J.H. Ross in 1902. This appears to be seven-year-old James H. Ross, who was born in the North West Territories. His grandparents John and Mary McKay, from Prince Edward Island, raised James and his two sisters in this house. The assessments were paid by Mary McKay from 1908 on. John McKay, a retired hotelkeeper, died at a son’s in Athelmar, BC, in 1914 at 90. Mary died at 86 in 1915 at 676 Battery. James appears to have left the province.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
By 1917 Hubert and Ann White lived here. Hubert came from England c.1908 and was a brewer for 35 years; he died in Victoria in 1938 at 71. In the late 1920s, the owner was widow Vera Bearpark. Teacher Vera Levermore married engineer Frank Bearpark in Vancouver in 1920. They were living in Port Alice when Frank died in 1928 at 41. Vera died in Vancouver in 1957 at 73.
About 1930 the house was duplexed and there were a variety of residents, including a writer, Mrs. Annie Riddell, in 674 in 1931. During the late 1930s, Mary and Norman Scott lived in 676. Norman, born in Glasgow, Scotland, was secretary of the Victoria Longshoreman’s Association and a shipping dispatcher, and the Scotts’ two sons became sea captains. Norman died in Victoria in 1976 at 83.
By 1946 the residents of 676 were Bessie and Arthur Brazil, a retired Bank of Commerce clerk. Arthur, born in Kent, England, came to Calgary in 1905 and enlisted with the 12th CMRs in 1915. He was wounded in 1916 at the Battle of Sanctuary Wood near Ypres, a prelude to the Battle of the Somme. Arthur died in 1952 at 66; Bessie moved out between 1976 and 1982.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:
• This Old House, Victoria’s Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume Two: James Bay
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