Description of Historic Place

The Stevens Hotel is a two and one-half-storey gable-roofed building in a vernacular Queen Anne Revival style located on a landscaped lot in the Rural Saanich area of Saanich.

Heritage Value

The Stevens Hotel is valued as a representation of the evolution of rural Saanich and its associated history. Having housed a farm, hotels and other businesses, the site demonstrates the changing and complex nature of the area from the time of its pioneer origins. It also illustrates the significance of West Saanich Road as an early transportation route between Victoria and Tod Inlet.

This site is valuable for its association with Saanich pioneer John Stevens, who established an early farm here. Stevens built the first hotel in the area, known as the 'Half-Way House', on this location some time prior to 1861. The present structure replaced the earlier hotel in 1898. Stevens is also remembered as the donor of the land, almost opposite his property, on which St. Michael and All Angels' Church was built in 1883.

The Stevens Hotel is also significant as a local example of the vernacular use of the residential Queen Anne style, still fashionable at the end of the nineteenth century.

The site is also associated with the Reverend Walter T. Currie, who purchased it in 1912, and who is commemorated by a cairn that stands to the left of the front gate. Currie and his wife Amy were the first missionaries to enter Angola, where they founded the Currie Institute, and served for twenty-five years. In 1937 the United Church of Canada purchased a portion of the land at the edge of the Stevens Hotel property and erected a memorial in Reverend Currie's honour.

Source: Saanich Municipal Archives, file 4794 West Saanich Road

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements of the heritage character of the Stevens Hotel include its:
- location half way between Victoria and Tod Inlet, on a prominent corner lot on West Saanich Road
- form, scale and massing as expressed by its two-and-one-half storey height and gabled roof
- gabled projection at the front, with a balcony on the second storey and a ground floor verandah
- elements of the vernacular Queen Anne style, such as the lathe-turned verandah columns and surviving interior elements
- siding: horizontal wooden siding on the first storey and drop siding on the second storey
- double-hung 1-over-1 wooden-sash windows
- associated landscape elements including its semi-rural setting and numerous mature trees and shrubs
- memorial to Reverend Currie, with a bronze plaque mounted on a cairn on the eastern edge of the property along West Saanich Road