William W. Bishop House
DESCRIPTION OF HISTORIC PLACE
The William W. Bishop House is a two-and-a-half-storey Edwardian Foursquare residence located in an urban residential neighbourhood on Nicola Street, south of downtown Kamloops. Situated on a gently-terraced site among mature trees, the house is distinguished by its broad hipped roof, inset corner porch and leaded coloured glass windows.
HERITAGE VALUE
Built in 1913, the William W. Bishop House is valued as an illustration of the strong economy in Kamloops at the end of the boom years of the early 1900s. Spurred by the natural resource and economic boom in British Columbia, and linked to the Canadian Pacific Railway, Kamloops was a fertile location for the establishment of agricultural, mining, lumber and ranching industries. At this time the town experienced unprecedented growth, speculative real estate deals and rapidly increasing population.
The William W. Bishop House is also valued for its association, through its original owner, with Kamloops' colourful and politically charged newspaper industry. The house was built for William Wills Bishop (1874-1940), a printer for The Standard newspaper. Started in 1897 by future mayor of Kamloops John T. Robinson and C. Wentworth Sarel, both Conservatives, the Standard ran in political opposition to the rival Inland Sentinel, which it bought out in 1914. Bishop lived here and worked at The Standard until 1921. Other notable owners associated with the house included Sarah and Louise Holt, whose niece, Kay Bingham, lived in the house and inherited it after her aunts died. Kay Bingham was a well-known and beloved teacher for whom a Kamloops school was named in 1967.
The William W. Bishop House is further valued as an elegant, finely-crafted and notably intact example of Edwardian-era architecture, designed as a rational expression of modern needs and conveniences. Typical of the housing stock built for the burgeoning middle class, it imparts an overall sense of formality. The pervasive influence of the Arts and Crafts movement, evident in the original design and detailing, signaled loyalty to Britain and traditional values.
CHARACTER-DEFINING ELEMENTS
Key elements that define the heritage character of the William W. Bishop House include its:
- location in a residential neighbourhood of contemporaneous houses, south of downtown Kamloops on Nicola Street
- minimal set-back from the street, on a terraced lot
- residential form, scale and cubic massing as expressed by its two-and-a-half-storey height with a broad hipped roof, wide closed eaves, central hipped roof dormer and inset corner porch
- Foursquare style as reflected in its stringent symmetry, and corner inset front door
- wood-frame construction with narrow lapped wooden siding on the body of the house and the porch column
- additional external elements, such as its red-brick foundation and external corbelled red-brick chimney
- regular fenestration, including one-over-one double-hung wooden-sash windows in single and triple assembly, with diamond-paned leaded coloured glass in the upper sash
- associated landscape features, such as mature deciduous trees at the front and side of property
From Historic Places Canada