132 South Turner Street

132 South Turner Street is unique in a streetscape of largely intact turn-of-the-century homes running though James Bay, a peninsula on the southern edge of downtown Victoria. This one-and-a-half-storey wood frame house is particularly notable for its ornate Queen Anne elements.

132 South Turner is valued as a largely intact, highly decorative example of the Queen Anne style, and as evidence of the aspirations of middle class entrepreneurs in the late nineteenth century. The house was built in 1890, for a prominent firm of commercial photographers, Hall & Lowe.

The house demonstrates the confidence of Victoria's boom years of the early 1890s, being apparently built as revenue property and yet exhibiting unusually ornate and decorative detailing. The house is set well back from the street, with a large garden and front fence.

Sources: City of Victoria Planning & Development Department; Victoria Heritage Foundation

The character-defining elements of 132 South Turner include:

- its position set well back on the lot but highly visible from the street

- complex rooflines, with steep pitch and side-facing gables

- steep front-facing gabled dormer containing balcony with turned supports matching verandah below

- decorative verge-board ends with segmental arch, and gable top filled with curved extension of bargeboards and half-timbering

- Palladian window with rectangular central panel on front dormer balcony, with two sash windows

- full-width front verandah wrapping around one side, with slim, turned supports

- decorative brackets with triangular cutouts on porch columns, echoing applied blocks on top window and bargeboards

- large octagonal bay on south side, within verandah

- tiny shed roof with fish-scale shingles over north window

- corbelled brick chimneys with chamfered corners and stepped bases

- drop siding, and decorative shingles

- front garden and fence