Back in early 1900s Victoria, the women who worked in a Cook Street brothel dressed in conservative outfits suited to an office in order to keep their business under the radar.
These days, 59 Cook St.’s history is remembered as a 1912-built stately house, with distinctive two-storey-tall columns as it receives heritage designation.
Recognition of the building’s heritage value was twinned with Victoria council’s decision this month to grant the Nyren family’s application to subdivide the lot to build a new house.
Conrad Nyren, who lives at 59 Cook St., said Monday that his family will move into the new flat-roofed house, which mimics the design of a flat-roofed building nearby.
Plans call for the new house, on a smaller lot, to go up in place of an existing two-car garage, and will face Woodstock Avenue. The new house will maintain the same distance from its neighbours. Reclaimed cedar, freshly cut, will be used on the exterior, Nyren said. “It is really a good infill development.”
The original house was recently listed for sale with Nyren, a real estate agent. It sold in one week and the sale closes at the end of April.
Containing five fireplaces, the house has
10-foot ceilings, hardwood floors, original stained glass and panelled rooms.
The property is described as “one of the most interesting homes in Fairfield,” by Helen Edwards, a member of the Hallmark Heritage Society.
Designed by Thomas Hooper, the 14-room house is “best known for its semicircular front porch with double-storey classical columns,” she said.
Christina Haas, who moved to Victoria from San Francisco had it purpose-built as a brothel, Edwards said. Haas ran another brothel downtown. A building permit value of $15,000 was taken out in June 1912.
Because the women working there always wore business attire, nearby residents did not realize it was a brothel, Edwards said.
In the 1920s, the house was sold to businessman John Edward Day, who also owned the Esquimalt Hotel and was a partner in Silver Spring brewery in Esquimalt.
Day was active in the community, taking part in organizations such as the Navy League, the Oddfellows Order and the Victoria Rotary Club, Edwards said.
Day moved to Cook Street with his wife Eliza, living there until he died in 1944, when he was found slumped over a card table by his nephew, Edwards said.
The house operated as a rooming house after 1946.
Hooper was a prolific architect who designed some of Victoria’s most well-known buildings, including many downtown landmarks. One example is the Munro’s Books building at 1108 Government St.
To view buildings Hooper designed in Victoria, go to: victoriahistory.ca/property.php
