His brother Douglas James designed some of the best older homes in the Cowichan Valley.
It’s the end of the line for a downtown Victoria landmark, the Canada Customs Building, which is making way for 57 “high end” condos. Also known as the Federal Building, the three-storey grey granite with black trim at 816 Government St. dated to the 1950s when utility design was the flavour of the day.
This was no work of art, at least to my eye, just a rectangular block so sombre in appearance that, in another location, it would have suited a penitentiary cell block.
Again, that is — was — my opinion, as it’s no more.
Which makes it a mystery to me why P. Leonard James, one of Victoria’s foremost architects, considered it to be his crowning jewel.
This, from a man who’d designed the CPR marine terminal in the Inner Harbour and Crystal Garden, among others.
But that’s what his daughter the late Rosemary James Cross told us 35 years after his death in his biography, the work of many years and an award-winning labour of love.
Percy also had strong ties to the Cowichan Valley, his brother Douglas James having practised architecture for many years in Duncan and designed some of our best older homes.
Born in London, England in 1878, Percy and Douglas followed in the footsteps of their father Samuel James who had a successful London practice. After a comfortable and well-rounded childhood spent on the Dorset coast, 14-year-old Percy left school to serve as an office boy with a surveying firm.
Within two years he was articled to his uncle, an architect, surveyor and engineer for the Borough of Poole, Dorset. Family connections aside, he obviously worked hard as he won first place in his final examination and joined a prestigious London firm that specialized in hospitals and swimming baths. As a junior assistant architect, he laboured on several large commissions and is thought to have assisted in designing Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital.
He made the Canadian connection official in 1906 by following younger brother Harold and sister Mabel to Canada after Mabel, who’d settled with her husband in Edmonton, wrote home of the need for trained architects. While visiting the newlyweds, Percy, who’d risen to the top position in his firm short of partnership, was commissioned to design the New Edmonton Opera House. Also known as The Lyceum, the opera house made history as being “probably the quickest constructed place of its kind in civilization”. James had been given just 15 days to complete his drawings.
By the time he’d worked on the Strathcona and Royal Alexandra hospitals in Alberta, the senior Jameses had retired to Victoria. Percy, fed up with prairie winters, joined them on the coast, arriving in time to help the eminent Samuel Maclure design Hatley Park Castle for James Dunsmuir. Twice a week, Percy visited the future Colwood landmark, naval college and university to supervise its construction, for which he completed no fewer than 248 drawings before working with architect J.C.M. Keith on a design for a new mental hospital at Essondale. James remembered Keith for his mid-morning routine, what the older architect called “time for a smile” — a drink at a nearby hostelry.
In 1909 the young architect hung his own shingle as P. Leonard James. His first solo design was the J.W. Lyle residence, the two-storey Stonehenge Park in Esquimalt. Public buildings and rich people’s houses in the Tudor Revival, English Arts and Crafts and, to a lesser degree, Art Moderne styles, became the James trademarks. Most of Percy’s commissions over the next 60 years, interrupted by a London hospital commission, army service during the First World War and a subsequent bout with rheumatic fever, survive. Many were designed while in partnership with brother Douglas. A listing at the back of daughter Rosemary’s book runs all of 20 pages.
Among the brothers’ more prominent buildings (designed solely by Percy or with Douglas) are downtown Victoria’s A.W. Bridgman Building; St. Mary’s Church hall, Oak Bay; Royal Jubilee Hospital; the CPR marine terminal in the Inner Harbour; Crystal Garden; Four Mile House (alterations); Norfolk House School-Gymnasium; Christ Church Cathedral Deanery; Oak Bay Fire Hall; much of Esquimalt’s and Victoria’s wartime housing (which were serviceable, not fancy); the Cadet Block, Royal Roads; Henry Birks & Sons Building; Victoria’s Federal Building and Post Office, which, as noted, he considered to be his crowning jewel and which bore his name; and too many mansions to list here.
P. Leonard James died in 1972. His two Cowichan Valley commissions are St. John’s Anglican Church, Cobble Hill, and the Gerry Wellburn house on Indian Road, Deerholme. Today’s Capernwray Harbour Bible School on Thetis Island and St. Peter’s Anglican Church, Comox, are two other up-Island designs.
Douglas ‘Birdie’ James left a much greater ‘footprint’ on the Cowichan Valley scene. The London-born (1887) Douglas James moved here in 1917 after sharing a busy practice in Victoria for almost 10 years with Percy. He seems to have opted, according to the research of niece Rosemary James Cross, for a more “laid-back architectural practice in Duncan”. This decision, at the age of 29, likely had been influenced by his having been wounded and medically discharged from the army.
Rosemary wondered if Douglas was also searching for the perfect two-bedroom house as he seems to have specialized in them. He designed several in the Valley for himself and wife Johnny, including Maple Bay’s Stagstones, 1033 Herd Rd., 811 Wharncliffe Rd., and a third house at 6392 Lakes Rd. This cottage, destroyed by fire, was replaced with a fourth James design that survives and his niece was pleased to report that a later enlargement was done in a sympathetic manner.
An ardent proponent of the English Arts & Crafts tradition, many of James’s homes had their interior wooden trim finished in black. Not just any black, mind you, but a special paint formula that had to be specially ordered. Somewhat surprisingly, considering today’s styles, much of this dark trim in his surviving homes has also withstood the test of time and taste. He’s also known for his meticulous attention to storage, perhaps a by-product of his interest in boat building, where space is at a premium.
As an architect, Douglas James generally worked with well-heeled clients. But he was no elitist. In 1944 he published a small book of 12 house plans which could be purchased for $15-$25 per set. “He felt [this was] a good way to get well-planned, simple-to-build, attractive small designs out to the public, who had only to order the working drawings from him,” wrote Rosemary Cross. Unfortunately, his stuffier fellow members of the Architectural Institute of British Columbia did not share his belief that the working class should have access to professionally designed homes and forced him to discontinue sales of his book to retain his AIBC membership.
Besides Claude Green, James often worked with well-known Cowichan Valley contractors E.W. Lee and Oscar Brown. Green tells an illuminating anecdote concerning the working relationship between James and Lee in connection with construction of the King’s Daughters Hospital.
A member of the hospital board, Lee found himself in the awkward position of not being able to bid on the work. So it was agreed between them that James, architect, would submit a bid as D. James, Contractor. Upon winning the contract, he commissioned Lee’s workmen to do the job.
The name Douglas James has been attached to the design of the second Shawnigan Lake Boys School, after the first was destroyed by fire in 1926, and Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm. Mrs. Cross determined that her uncle supervised construction of some of the buildings at Fairbridge but credit for their design actually belongs to another architect, Maj. K.B. Spurgin.
Her years-long research uncovered more than 40 homes and buildings designed by Douglas James in the Cowichan Valley. She was able to add 6899 Norcross Rd. to her list simply by its trademark styling. She has listed 21 Valley homes and 15 buildings that he designed or with which he was involved that are still with us. Among the latter (some have been extensively modified over the years) are the Mains Building at 70 Government St.; the Cowichan Guide Hall (now a registered heritage building) and the old High School Gymnasium on Cairnsmore; the Capitol Theatre, 123 Station St.; Shawnigan Lake Boys’ School Central Block and Chapel; Cowichan Merchants Building (interior alterations); St. Edwards Catholic Church (now a funeral home); J.C. Wragg Building, Craig and Kenneth streets; the second Knights of Pythias Hall (Mercury Theatre), Brae Road; Fairbridge Farm.
Upon completion of his 40-foot cruiser Tang O’Sea, the childless Jameses lived on board at Maple Bay, then moored in Victoria, thus ending their tenure in the Valley.
Although many Douglas James homes survive locally, few of their plans exist, it not having been local civic practice (unlike that of larger jurisdictions) to keep them on file. So, we may have other Douglas James creations amongst us.
