Address: 3065 Albany Street
Built: 1907
1912 householder: Clarence W. Bradshaw, lawyerThis handsome, well-maintained residence was built in 1907 by the firm of McCarter & Drysdale for Clarence Bradshaw, a lawyer. It was the first house on Albany Street and for nearly thirty years was the Bradshaw family home. This is a fine example of the Edwardian Vernacular Arts & Crafts architectural style. It has a prominent, half-timbered front gable and a two-storey gabled box bay on the side. Dentils accent the wide barge boards and belt courses. It has side facing front steps enclosed in a solid balustrade and an inset corner front porch that has been enclosed. The exterior of the main level is covered in double-bevel siding, while the gables and the foundation are covered with cedar shingles. The front windows are tripartite with double-hung sashes. Decorative finials originally graced the top of the gables. The house is painted in colours that were fashionable in the Edwardian years.
Clarence Wilton Bradshaw was born in Bedeque, Prince Edward Island and graduated from Acadia University in Nova Scotia; his wife, Ruth Priscilla McLaren, was born in Carleton Place, Ontario. He was called to the Manitoba Bar in 1896 and practiced law in Winnipeg. The Bradshaw's eldest daughter was born there. They moved to Victoria in 1907 and settled into this house. When they were enumerated here in June 1911, Mr. Bradshaw was 51 years old and Mrs. Bradshaw was 38 years old. Kathryn Read Bradshaw was 13 and her sister, Alexandra Victoria, who was born in BC, was 3 years old. The family were Baptists. The Bradshaw household included a male Chinese servant, 24 year old Sam Mar.
Bradshaw was called to the British Columbia Bar in 1908 and established a law practice with a long-time associate from Manitoba, Frank W. Stacpoole. The offices of Bradshaw & Stacpoole, barristers and solicitors, were located in Bastion Square. Bradshaw engaged actively in Victoria's real estate boom and purchased several building lots on Vista Heights and Topaz Avenue near Cook Street. Interviewed by the Victoria Daily Colonist (3 October 1907), he extolled the advantages of Victoria.
Convinced that Victoria will in the next few years make great progress, C. W. Bradshaw, for years one of the leaders of the Manitoba bar, has come west and will take up his residence in this city. Mr. Bradshaw is accompanied by his wife and daughter. In conversation with a reporter of the Colonist last night, Mr. Bradshaw expressed his belief that the province of British Columbia was the finest portion of the Dominion; that it was here, west of the Rockies, where the greatest development was to take place in the next decade…From the standpoint of climate this province, he believed, is the garden spot of the Dominion and the fact that many former residents of the eastern provinces are settling here is eloquent testimony to the salubrious climate here.
The Pacific coast, so Mr. Bradshaw declares, is the Mecca towards which the attention of the dwellers in the prairie province is directed. He predicts that this winter there will be a large influx of people from the east who will make their homes here, being firmly convinced that Victoria affords the greatest advantages of any city in the Dominion.
We see glimpses of the Bradshaw family in the Daily Colonist on other occasions. On 23 December 1917, during World War I, the newspaper printed a photograph of Miss Alex Bradshaw, age 10, who had knitted eleven pairs of socks for soldiers overseas. A photograph of her older sister, Kathryn, appeared on 30 March 1922, when she qualified as a lawyer and was admitted to the bar in Victoria. She was among the very first women in the province to attain that distinction.
Kathryn Bradshaw married Percy Munson Barr, a forester, on 22 September 1925 at St. John's Anglican Church in Victoria. Alexandra Bradshaw married James Maurice Green in Victoria on 7 September 1933. Alexandra's husband worked in a family-run business, the R. A. Green Lumber Company. Interestingly, his family home was at 3030 Albany Street.
Clarence Bradshaw died in Victoria on 31 December 1933 and is interred in the Royal Oak Burial Park. His widow sold 3065 Albany Street in 1934 and moved to a smaller residence on Palo Alto Drive, near Cedar Hill Cross Road, in Saanich. She died, at the age of 94 years, on 10 August 1963.