One of the area’s last grand mansions, the Gabriola House, still stands proudly at the corner of Davie and Nicola. Built in the early 1900s for Benjamin Tingley Rogers, the founder of BC Sugar, the Gabriola House is an official heritage site, meaning the mansion is not allowed to be torn down. Its Victorian-style design was created by Samuel Maclure, the best BC residential architect of the time, and its stunning stained glass windows were done by renowned stained-glass artist, James Bloomfield. The mansion was the most impressive home for many years. The building’s beautiful exterior is made of greenish grey sandstones from Gabriola Island, the namesake of the mansion. The Gabriola House is known for its iconic gigantic staircase and the entrance fireplace made of “heavily ornamented Arizona sandstone” that shows in the upper panel, “the monogram of the owner, amidst foliage of Byzantine acanthus”. Rogers clearly spared no expense on his extravagant home with its eighteen large stone fireplaces, a dining room with tall wall panels made from red bean and Australian tallow wood, a library, a drawing room, a conservatory, a porte-cochère, and a billiard room. He even had his initials BTR put on all the doorknobs.
After Rogers died, the house turned into Angus Apartments in 1924, before later becoming Hy’s Mansion, an upscale restaurant, in 1978. Next to occupy the mansion was the Macaroni Grill in 1994. In recent years, the Gabriola has been under the Keg’s ownership but remained empty. It was only until 2015 that the mansion’s ownership was passed on to Nevin Sangha, who has plans to convert the house into rental apartments. Sangha plans to adjust the Gabriola so that its original state can remain the same but also allow for numerous rental units inside the house.
Nowadays, the Gabriola House is often just referred to as “The Mansion”. Written by Emily L.