For more than a century, the award-winning Nairne House has been a landmark in James Bay, Victoria’s oldest residential neighbourhood.  Nairne House, a heritage designated home,  offers a beautiful private suite in a neighbourhood which is well served by shops, restaurants, services and transit.

“If you had to choose a single house to epitomize old-fashioned, garden city, seaside Victoria, it might be the 1893 Nairne House at 642 Battery Street in James Bay, designed by the architect A. Maxwell Muir. Today, as it approaches its second century, this “classical cottage” is sheltered by mature trees and protected by a magnificent fence. The house has an extended, octagonal breakfast balcony providing an oasis from the hot midday sun.

“Battery Street is a block from the ocean promenade along Dallas Road, and conjures up images of tea planters, “old China hand” and members of the colonial Indian civil service retiring with their tiny pensions to tiny houses graced by rose arbours and honeysuckle, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “home is a sailor, home from the sea…,” and long walks in the stiff breeze along the ocean front.”

Painting and writing from: British Columbia in Watercolour by Michael Kluckner, 1993

 

Style at Home

Old House Interiors

 Nairne House has been the subject of magazine articles and television programs