Address: 3069 Washington Avenue
Built: 1914
Householder: William C. Holt, contractor and property developer

This house is outside our chronological focus of 1912, but it is a handsome building and a good example of a Craftsman-style design, with its wide porch supported by broad piers and tapered pillars. There is a pent roof under a gently sloping front gable, with scrolled barge board and exposed rafter tails. There is a shed gable on the right side. The nearly full-width verandah has front facing steps. The front piers on the verandah are clad in cedar shingle shakes, and the main structure is covered with Donnacona wood fibreboard shingles.

The house was built by William C. Holt, a building contractor who speculated in residential property during the late Edwardian real estate boom in this neighbourhood. He built his first house, a family home, at 408 Alpha Terrace in the early 1890s. This house appears to be the last one that he built before he retired from the industry. This house was vacant for a couple of years, a mute symbol of the collapse of the real estate market. But the house is also shows the versatility of a house carpenter and builder like William Holt. He started building late 19th century Italianate houses and finished by building early 20th century California Craftsman bungalows.

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