Address: 627 Manchester Road
Built: 1910
1912 householder: Alfred Sonley, streetcar motormanThis Edwardian Arts & Crafts-style was built in the autumn of 1910 at a cost of $2,500. It was designed by Victoria architect Robert McKinney, who also designed the house at 534 Dunedin Street. The house was built as an investment property by Albion Johns, a successful grocer who speculated in real estate. Johns also built a house at that stands almost directly behind this residence, at 646 Dunedin Street. Johns later established a real estate firm, City Land Company, to handle his property business during Victoria's real estate boom.
The house has a front gabled roof with a shed roof extension on one side and a gable over the front porch. It has a half-width verandah with front facing steps and a side facing front door. Now covered with stucco and shorn of any ornamentation, it is difficult to imagine how this house looked a century ago. But building plans, on file at city hall, indicate that this was a spacious and attractive residence. It still has a half-width front verandah with front facing steps, but the decorative porch columns and multi-paned windows are gone. McKinney's plans show a large entrance hall with a stairway to the second floor, and doorways (with pocket doors) to a parlour and a dining room. A pantry connected to the kitchen at the back of the house.
In 1912 this was the home of twenty-five year old Alfred Sonley and his twenty-year old wife, Lillian. He was born in Ontario, she was born in BC. They were Methodists, according to the 1911 census. He worked as a streetcar motorman (i.e. driver) for the BC Electric street railway company. He held a prestigious and well-paid job and so the young couple could afford to maintain a large house like this one at 627 Manchester Road. Interestingly, this part of the Burnside Gorge neighbourhood was favoured by “motorneers;” several of Sonley's colleagues lived nearby on Dunedin Street and Washington Avenue.