ARCHITECTURE:
This is a front-gabled, 1½-storey Craftsman Bungalow. Like Edwardian Vernacular Arts & Crafts (EVA&C) houses, it has an asymmetrical main floor front façade with an inset corner front porch on the right balanced by a cantilevered box bay on the left. The upper façade is symmetrical. The balustrade of the deeply inset sleeping porch sits on a pent roof which is above the entry porch. However, unlike EVA&C houses, this has a low, wide roofline and no dormers, similar to a California Bungalow. There are two box bays on the left side of the house, one with a small, high, stained glass piano window. In 2004-06 a large addition was constructed to the rear, but separated from the original portion physically and stylistically.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
Although this house was built by and for Robert and Esther Tait, they did not live in it for several years. The earliest known resident was Henry Samuelson, a machinist at Lemon Gonnason & Co. The Taits occupied this house until the early 1920s. Robert (1885-1953) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and came to Canada with his family in 1889. In 1909 he married Esther Dougan, of Dublin, Ireland, who died four years later of appendicitis aged 30. In 1915 Robert married Phyllis Madge Carter (1895-1977) of Sheffield, England. Robert was a carpenter, and later worked for the BCER until retiring in 1951. His parents, Robert Sr and Mary Tait, lived at 86-88 Dallas Rd (James Bay) for many years.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
Frederick Boot Hall, a millworker, purchased the house in April 1926 and married Vera Margaret Raven in July. Fred was born in Sheffield, England, in 1903 and Vera in Rossland, BC, in 1900. The Halls sold the house in 1935. Vera died in 1973.
William Henry and Viola Alice (Harmston) Wain lived here until c.1940. Both born on Vancouver Island, they married in Cumberland in 1912. William was a garage proprietor, later a mechanic with Vancouver Island Coach Lines. He died in 1975 at 80, Viola in 1983 at 85.