The Misses Stamper

One of my favourite buildings in Charlottetown, I can see The Stamper Block from my office window. Or at least a slice of it.

From the Historic Places website:

The Stamper Family owned and resided at the property in a wooden house for many years, before the present building was constructed. When Henry Stamper and Catherine Pippy married in 1841, the property was part of Catherine’s inheritance. The Stampers sold stationary and books from their store at this location. Their children, Sarah and Eva Stamper, eventually inherited the property and had the building that we see today constructed in 1892. The wooden home that formerly stood on the property was moved north to Grafton Street.

The Misses Stamper hired well-known architects, Chappell and Phillips to design the new Stamper Block. Contractors, McDonald and Harper, were in charge of constructing the large building. Because of the Fire of 1884, that had destroyed most of the buildings along Victoria Row, with the exception of Stamper’s previous wooden home, there had been a great deal of construction of new brick and stone buildings in this section of Richmond Street. The new Stamper Block was in keeping with Italianate Commercial influenced style of the new buildings.

There’s a house at 29 Fitzroy Street, The Stamper Residence, associated with the same Misses Stamper:

The Misses Stamper were two of five people who left money in their wills to found homes for retired ladies. The Wright-Peake-Leigh house was bought from the owner Mrs. Jack Webster in 1949 to become one of those homes. It was renamed the Stamper Residence in honour of the benefactors.

How we’ve come this far without there being a band called The Misses Stamper is beyond me.