Description of Historic Place

The house at 365 Beaver is located on the north side of Beaver at the corner of Cedar Streets. The two storey Colonial Revival style home is on a square footprint, with a single storey sunporch and hipped roof dormer above facing Beaver Street. The house also features an asphalt shingled hipped roof and wide white siding covering the exterior walls. The registration includes the parcel and the building.

Heritage Value

The two-storey residence at 365 Beaver Street has historical significance as the home of Herbert R. Crockett who founded Crockett Jewellers, which has been operated by four generations on Water Street, Summerside. The Crockett family lived in the house for forty-five years.

The dwelling was originally built for fox rancher Frank Hall in 1914. He apparently had made a profitable start in the fox breeding business and was able to afford a substantial residence on the new street opened up by Harry T. Holman in 1910. Mr. Hall had grown up in Sherbrooke and in 1913 married Helen Marion Howatt, daughter of Hubert Howatt, a prominent farmer and fox rancher in St. Eleanors. A year after the house was built, Mr. and Mrs. Hall departed for Alberta.

Herbert R. Crockett moved into the house and rented it until 1920 when he bought it for $7500. Mr. Crockett was well known in the community as the owner of Crockett Jewellers. A native of Little York, PEI, he had started in business in Summerside in 1889 and was well established as a jeweller and optician. When he bought the house he had four children from his first marriage to Annie Huestis and a son Carl (b. 1902) from his second marriage to Maud Arbing.

Mr. Crockett's success as a businessman became evident when he and J. Edward Gallant, a local druggist, jointly constructed the Crockett-Gallant building in 1919. Situated on the northwest corner of Water and Summer Streets, the two-storey edifice was divided into two retail sections, one for Crockett Jewellers and the other for Gallant's Drugstore. After Mr. Crockett's sudden death in 1927, the business was taken over by his sons Harold and Carl, who both retired in the 1960s, leaving the business to Carl's son, Parker Crockett.

The property on Beaver Street was retained by Herbert Crockett's widow, who resided there until her death in 1959. Her son, Carl, had moved into the house with his wife, the former Laura Campbell, where they raised two sons. The couple sold the family home in 1961.

The new owner of the large residence was Summerside businessman and entrepreneur Milton Dyment. Born in Victoria West, he was the son of James and Ada Dyment and along with his wife Rita resided in the house for 45 years, until his death in 2006. He was perhaps best known as the owner of the large brick edifice on Water Street known locally as the Holman building, which during Mr. Dyment's tenure was transformed into a retail and office complex called Dominion Square. The house at 365 Beaver is still owned by the family.

Source: City of Summerside, Heritage Property Profile

Character-Defining Elements

The following character-defining elements illustrate the Colonial Revival architectural style of the house:

- the massing and form of the building exhibiting typical features of the Colonial Revival (Foursquare), such as its basic square footprint, two storey height, large hipped roof with overhang, hipped roofed dormers, and symmetrical arrangement of elements
- the two large chimneys of brick symmetrically placed
- the single storey sunroom extending across the south elevation and a shallow central stacked projection with palladian windows extending over the hip roofed pedimented portico of the main entrance
- the central hipped roof dormer on the south elevation
- the palladian windows repeat on the ground floor west elevation, but with transom lights, and are balanced by an oriel window behind
- the original location and dimensions (and in some cases materials) of many windows retained, and most are one-over-one
- the wide white exterior siding
- the wide overhang of the roof with large modillions under the eaves
- the continuing contribution of the house to the historic Beaver and Cedar Street streetscapes