MITCHELL, Henry (1815- c. 1890), born in England in 1815 and active in Victoria, B.C. as an architect and landscape gardener. He arrived in the colony of British Columbia in July 1862 and sustained a living as a supplier of flowers and seeds. In 1868, he was recorded as a partner in the firm of Mitchell & Johnston, Seedsmen & Florists with a store on Yates Street in Victoria (Victoria Directory & B.C. Guide, 1868, 38). Beginning in 1876, his name appears consistently in the provincial Voter’s Lists for the City of Victoria as an “architect” for every year until 1886 (British Columbia, Sessional Papers, 1876, Voters List, Victoria City, 8), yet the 1881 Census of Canada records his name only as “nurseryman”, age 66 years, and it can be assumed that he styled himself as an architect and a landscape designer. His architectural projects include private houses, a freestanding Sunday School building adjacent to Christ Church Cathedral in Victoria, and a distinctive Gothic Revival design for St. Michael’s Anglican Church in Saanich, built in 1883, and still standing as of 2017 (and now a listed Heritage property).
In 1888, at the age of 73 years, Mitchell and his ailing wife returned to England, and no information on his work there has been found (biog. Donald Luxton, Building The West: The Early Architects of British Columbia, 2003, 477, 512).
(works in Victoria unless noted)
ROSS BAY CEMETERY, design of fencing and landscape layout for roads and paths, 1872 (Daily Colonist [Victoria], 20 Sept. 1872, 2, t.c.)
DOUGLAS STREET, residence for Henry Heisterman, 1875; demol. (D. Luxton, list of works)
YATES STREET, residence for Henry Moss, 1882; demol. (D. Luxton, list of works)
CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL [Anglican], a Sunday School and Lecture Hall, Rae Street at Quadra Street, 1882; demol. (D. Luxton, Building the West, 2003, 477, 512, list of works)
SAANICH, B.C., St. Michael’s Anglican Church, West Saanich Road, 1883 (Donald Luxton & Jennifer Barr, Saanich Heritage Structures, 2008, 136-7, illus. & descrip.)