She sees potential in these unassuming, one-level homes that used to be dotted all over this city, and has loved living in her Uplands version for more than 28 years.
It has everything going for it — especially the fact it is a no-step, ground-level home, ideal for retirement and aging in place.
“These bungalows are being torn down all over Oak Bay and elsewhere, and I don’t get it,” Hubbard said. “There are four or five new monster houses going up on Lansdowne alone.”
Hubbard decries the massive scale on which homes are being torn down and replaced, especially in Oak Bay.
“I hardly know what’s going on in this area.”
Her partner, geotechnical engineer Geoff Buck, agrees these homes are “being eliminated at a fairly good clip; it’s unrelenting. Just last month another was knocked down on our block.” So many, in fact, he’s tempted to do a study of the number remaining in Uplands.
The word bungalow comes from India and initially referred to a house in the Bengal style, featuring only one storey and a wide veranda. The term later came to be used for the spacious single-level homes and large cottages occupied by officials of the British Raj. They were a convenient choice, as they had no stairs and didn’t need tall trees beside them to ensure shade or privacy, as higher buildings required.
When Hubbard first bought the 1955 house, it was little more than a long rectangle: “It was small and ordinary, but we decided to make more of it.”
Over the years it has become ever more comfortable, with the subtraction of several walls and addition of two new rooms opening onto the lush back garden. Rather than a rectangle, the house is now a shallow U-shape.
Hubbard turned the long central hall into a linear gallery, filled with family photos and historical artworks, and the foyer into an airy and appealing contemporary space.
“When you live in a bungalow, it’s all about the art,” she explained with a chuckle.
The two rooms added onto the back of the house give greater access to the large and luscious garden — “I do the inside and Geoff does the outside” — and between the two additions they created a sun-trapping patio.
Almost immediately after moving in, they added the first extension onto the master bedroom, “a box on the back,” which gave them a small sitting area, studio for Buck and a transition into the garden.
Later, a great room was added onto the kitchen, reusing the original windows.
“We were able to use our imagination and extend the whole house out the back.”
By removing several interior walls, the owners expanded sight lines and emphasized the horizontal planes, then added shelves for books and well-placed paintings, prints, etchings, pottery — and sculpture.
In one of the two living rooms stands a life-sized, carved wooden figurehead taken from the prow of a ship that used to ply the waters of Latin America. She found it lying in a gutter on a Caribbean island many years ago.
“It was pouring with rain and water was rushing over it, but we went into a nearby shop and asked if it was for sale,” she recalled.
“We called her Dolly and got her to New York where we had a coffin made to bring her home to the Kootenays where we lived then. But one day a huge spider crawled out, so we lashed Dolly to a tree outside,” where she remained for many years.
Hubbard has had an eye for art and loves collecting when travelling.
“The sad thing about getting old and having a house full of things is I can’t collect anymore.”
She is an impulsive and eclectic shopper, mixing Haitian art with old Quebec pine, hangings from markets in Turkey, sculpture and pieces by Myfanwy Pavelic, Andy Wooldridge, Tony Onley and more.
One of her favourites is an engraving from her hometown of Bielefeld, a 13th-century city in northeastern Germany famous for spinning mills and linen production, where a town bank once issued money made of linen, silk and velvet.
Hubbard, who emigrated from Germany in 1965, has continued the textile tradition through her women’s-wear stores, Barbara’s Boutique and Baden-Baden Boutique, in Sidney.
Besides fashion and art, Hubbard loves opera and has decorated her office with framed posters of Pacific Opera productions she has sponsored.
“I first saw an opera at age 12 when my grandmother took me to see Nabucco. I was totally transfixed by the music, but remember distinctly wishing they would just stop singing.”
The second-term POV board member marvels at how the company is consistently improving, and stores her opera discs on a bookcase custom-designed by Buck.
Buck was working in Bangladesh during early stages of their reno, when they were pulling down walls and opening up the interiors, but sketched the plans while flying on airplanes and faxed them home.
“We have fashioned it around what we like to do and upgraded the outdoor-living component so we can sit and look at the garden.
“It was very overgrown at first and I discovered rhododendrons and other plants completely hidden in the bush.”
He also discovered he was “more of a bushwhacker than a gardener,” but was quick to add after growing up in Grande Prairie and Slave Lake, “where you had trouble growing apples, it has been wonderful having figs, pears, plums and apple trees.”
He understands the desire some people have to tear down old homes, “but this house works very well for us, and so does the garden and patio. It’s nice to have a variety of places where you can sit in different moods and this area is one of the sunniest spots in Victoria,” near the Royal Victoria Yacht Club.
SIDEBAR
“When Uplands was built out in the mid-1950s, during its big expansion phase, there was a fair amount of speculative bungalow-building, and some of that is being replaced now, along with some heritage homes,” says former University of Victoria professor and urban historical geographer Larry McCann.
“It’s inevitable.
“What I lament most is the loss of viewscapes. The older houses were often built without using all of their grounds, whereas some of the new builders are maxing out,” when it comes to allowable site coverage.
He said demolition of the older bungalows is “a balancing act,” as some are attractive and architecturally interesting, while others are less important and in poor shape.
On the whole, he said, Uplands has remained true to the original vision of John Charles Olmsted.
The Hudson’s Bay Company owned the Uplands acreage before it was purchased in 1907 by the three Winnipeg businessmen who chose Olmsted to design the park-like subdivision. He was North America’s leading landscape architect at the time, and had laid out Central Park in New York and Mount Royal Park in Montreal.
Uplands “residential park” was aimed at well-heeled homeowners, and an ad in the Daily Colonist in 1912 listed lot prices ranging from $3,000 to $55,000, said McCann, who sat on the Uplands advisory design panel for many years and is writing a book about the prestigious neighbourhood.
Oak Bay planner Deborah Jensen said the replacement of older bungalows is a trend she is seeing all over the municipality. Demolition permits for homes of all sizes amounted to 16 in 2012, but have doubled since then. In 2013 there were 20, and in 2014 there were 32.
Oak Bay building inspector Renee Buser said bungalows especially “are coming down pretty fast and furious.”
Many contractors call homes of that vintage “older stock,” although in his opinion “bungalows are the future of the construction industry — with less stairs, level entry. Mobility issues are becoming more and more of a consideration, and elevators and platform lifts are more common in larger homes.”
But he noted many of these older homes have issues with poor foundations and poor foundation drainage, and smaller houses often have less value in the building than in the lot.
“It all boils down to the value of the land, the footprint, the zoning, and it’s being driven by private enterprise.”
