Address: 741 Princess Avenue
Built: 1901
1912 householder: Richard Wood, automobile chauffeurThis modest Edwardian vernacular residence is nearly identical to the one beside it at 737 Princess Avenue. It was probably built at the same time in 1910 by J. P. Burgess, a Victoria building contractor. Burgess erected several houses in this part of the city and a plumbing permit for 737 Princess Avenue was issued to him on 28 November 1910.
The building that stands at 741 Princess Avenue has front facing steps and a small inset porch on the left corner. There is a small box bay in the front and another on the side. The base of the front gable is accented in a decorative dentil course, and another dentil course runs above a double-hung sash window. The gable is covered with shingles while the main level is clad in double-drop board siding.
In 1912 this was the home of Richard and Annie Wood. Richard Charles Wood was born in Ontario in 1881 into an English-American family. His father was from Manchester, England and his mother from Michigan, USA. He arrived in British Columba at the turn of the twentieth century and found work as a labourer in Vancouver. In 1906, he married 25 year old Annie Louise St. Onge. They were married in a Presbyterian Church in Vancouver. She was born in Victoria and must have been pleased when they moved here a few years later. The house at 741 Princess Street may have been their first home in Victoria.
Richard Wood must have been familiar with a new contraption, the automobile, because in 1912 he was employed as a chauffeur by City Auto Garage at 614 Courtenay Street. He worked there for about five years; he then became a truck driver for the Silver Spring Brewery in Vic West. Wood was later employed as a driver by Phoenix Brewery. He spent the rest of his working life with the brewery, before retiring in 1945.
Richard and Annie Wood lived at 741 Princess Avenue for about fifteen years, before relocating to Jessie Street in Vic West. He died in Victoria, at the age of 66 years, in 1948 and is interred in the Royal Oak Burial Park.