Description of Historic Place

The Stores Building is a two-storey brick industrial building with a gable roof located on Belleville Street in Victoria.

Heritage Value

The Stores Building is valued as one of only a few brick industrial heritage buildings remaining in the Inner Harbour Precinct. Built in 1912 and leased to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) company as a linen storage facility for their steamships that docked nearby, this building is a vestige of the heyday of the early twentieth century luxury tourist industry in Victoria. The proximity of this modest, and typical, industrial building to some of Victoria's grandest architecture (the BC Legislature, the Empress Hotel, and the CRP Steamship Terminal) is significant; the Stores Building adds dimension to the historic character of the Inner Harbour Precinct as a physical reminder of the industrial service structures which once predominated this area of the city.

Source: City of Victoria Planning & Development Department

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Stores Building include:
- the location and presence of the building in the Inner Harbour Precinct;
- the typical industrial form articulated by two-storey massing and gable-roof, and extant construction materials such as brick and wood, suited to its early twentieth century date of construction;
- understated architectural elements which suit its modest form: double hung windows and shallow segmented arched openings.