Description of Historic Place

The esthetically pleasing house at 165 Cambridge Street is believed to have been built by Philip Callbeck around 1900. It is an elaborately detailed one-and-one-half storey vernacular Island Ell style house. Its Gothic Revival elements include heavily bracketed bay windows facing the street. Located on the north side of the street, it is beige with white trim and reddish brown details.

Heritage Value

The house is valued for its well preserved Gothic Revival architectural elements; for its association with the Callbeck family; and for its contribution to the streetscape.

Philip Callbeck, a carpenter by trade, bought the lot in January 1899 and may have constructed the house for himself later that year or the next. He would have been sixty years old in 1899, so the residence was probably intended to serve him for his retirement years. He was the son of James Callbeck and great-grandson of Phillips Callbeck, an early administrator of the colony when it was still known as St. John's Island. He married Margaret Jane Best of Crapaud in 1864 and the couple came to Summerside in the late 1880s. In 1889, they were living on Cambridge Street, known at that time as Barracks Street, with their family of two sons and four daughters. By 1901, only two of the children remained at home, Gertrude (b. 1883) and Herman (b. 1886). Two of the others, Mrs. Thomas Johnston (Lizzie) and Mrs. William Buchanan (Annie) were living on the same street.

Mr. Callbeck spent many years in the employment of the Hall Manufacturing Company and he and his wife were well known in the community. After her passing in 1914, he remained in the house and in 1926 deeded the property to his daughter Annie Buchanan and her husband who had moved into the residence. In the summer of 1928, he went to Tryon to live with his daughter Gertie, Mrs. Wilfred Inman. He died in April 1929 at the age of ninety.

William and Annie Buchanan had married in 1897, at which time she gave up her work as a tailoress at the establishment of W.A. Stewart. William Buchanan was born in Margate in 1874 and had come to Summerside in his teens to work as an apprentice with tailor Daniel Stewart. Sometime around 1905, he went into business with G. Edgar Clark, another tailor. The partnership of Clark and Buchanan lasted until Mr. Buchanan's retirement in 1929. Annie Buchanan passed away in September 1945 and her husband moved to Moncton to live with his son LeRoy. His other son, Eldred, also lived in that city, where Mr. Buchanan died in June 1946.

The property was sold on September 1, 1945 to the brother of Mrs. J. LeRoy (Maude) Buchanan. The lot was 140 feet deep and 60 feet wide, the frontage having increased by 20 feet during the ownership of the Buchanans. The new owners, Claude Hopgood and his wife Pearl, lived in the house until her death in 1971. She was the daughter of Charles and Bessie Wilson of Lakeville, New Brunswick, and had married Claude Hopgood in 1918. Mr. Hopgood had grown up in West Cape, PEI, and had lived in Moncton as a young man. The couple came to Summerside in 1927 and he took a job in the hardware department of R.T. Holman Limited where he worked for 32 years before retiring in 1959. The couple had one son and one daughter.

In 1982, Claude Hopgood deeded the properly to his daughter, Rheta Muhitch, who lived in Toronto. After his death in 1984, the house was used as a rental property until it was purchased by the current owners in 1992.

Source: City of Summerside, Heritage Property Profile

Character-Defining Elements

The heritage value of the house is shown in the following character-defining elements:

- the one-and-one-half storey massing
- the vernacular Island Ell style with Gothic Revival details
- the steeply pitched gable roof covered in black asphalt shingles
- the narrow clapboard cladding
- the wall dormer centred on west elevation
- the original arrangement of windows on all elevations including the matching mansard roofed bay windows on the south elevation
- the bracketed hood moulding above the windows
- the gable roofed dormer stacked over the mansard roofed bay on south elevation of the Ell section
- the decorative wooden cresting above the roof of the bays and the wooden bracketing under the bay windows and central doorway cap