Heritage Register
Hillside-Quadra

3107 Quadra Street

Built 1922
Heritage-Registered

For: Wiliam & Helen Drysdale

Designer/Contractor: William James Drysdale

ARCHITECTURE:

This 2-storey house is a late version of the Edwardian Foursquare, with its high belt course under the upper windows, and Arts & Crafts influence in the variety of surface textures, multi-paned leaded lights and stained glass windows, broad hipped roof and exposed rafter tails. Unusual features are the large front 1-storey, semi-circular bay with granite walls, and the porte cochère on the side entrance which leads through to the original garage at the back of the property. The high entrance stairs are flanked by stepped granite balustrades, and a granite wall and gate piers remain at the front of the property. The original cost was $4,800.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

Contractor William James “Billy” Drysdale (1886-1956) was born in Victoria to carpenter and later contractor William Francis Drysdale and his wife Christina (Robertson), who later had a daughter as well. Both his parents were born in Ontario. His mother died and his father married Mary Deighton in 1892, and they had another 12 children. Billy married Helen Frederick (1883-1962) in 1911 in Victoria; Helen had moved here from California in 1905. Her sister Elsie married another local contractor, Walter B. Revercomb (see 1537 Gladstone Av, Fernwood), and for some time Walter and Elsie lived next door at 3115 Quadra, built by Walter. In 1947 the Drysdales sold their house at auction, and then moved to an apartment. William died in 1956 at 70, Helen in 1962 at 78.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

By 1949, Alexander Olson, president of White Owl Taxi & U-Drive, and his wife Dorothy were the occupants. Reginald and Elizabeth Stewart lived here in the early 1950s. Reginald was an accountant at Mortimer’s Monumental Works.

Beside this house on the corner lot, 3103 Quadra, is a small service station which originally had a gas pump at the front. It is one of the last remaining neighbourhood garages left in Victoria. It is thought that the Drysdales built it about 1925 and it is still owned by the owners of the house. It was plumbed in 1925 for George Daniel Leadbetter (c.1865-1931), who lived in the back and ran the Twin Oaks Service Station. From 1930 into the 1960s, as the Quadra Service Station, it was operated by Wilbert Arthur Crust (c.1897-1981), who lived with his wife Margaret at 2912 Graham St.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• Map of Victoria Heritage Register Properties

• Hillside-Quadra History

• Hillside-Quadra Heritage Register

• This Old House, Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume Three: Rockland, Burnside, Harris Green,
Hillside-Quadra, North Park & Oaklands