Baida

67 Nepean Highway, Seaford

History
In 1918, Francis Martorana, of Greville Street, Prahran, bought two lots, Lots 4a and 4b, in Seaford, situated between the bay and Kananook Creek.1 He had a holiday house built on Lot 4a in that year and called it Baida after his birthplace in Sicily.2 Adelaide and Francis Martorana owned the property until after 1945, and had a garage built on Lot 4b by 1940.3 By 1952 Mrs. Adelaide S. Martorana had become the owner –occupier of what had become a permanent residence and continued as such until after 1958.4

Description
Built of red brick with stucco trim, the house takes on an Indian Bungalow form with its tea-house hipped roof extending over a wide return verandah. Verandah posts are pressed cement in a Greek revival form and, in the Bungalow tradition, sit on brick piers. The roof has Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles. Unusual scrolled cement detailing over the openings facing the verandah distinguish this house from many others like it.

The house sits in mature and notable exotic and native landscape, indicating the age of the site and merging it with the creek side planting behind.

External Integrity
Generally original, with a possible gabled addition of the rear which has been closely matched to the original.

Context
Represents an era of First War housing development along Kananook Creek and the, then, less busy Nepean Road. Houses, from this period and up until the Second World War, survive along the strip. It is also a corner site.

Landscape
The garden is interesting but overgrown and hence difficult to assess. Mature planting includes Banksia integrifolia, Allocasuarina sp., Coprosma repens, Cupressus macrocarpa and various cacti and succulents including Agave Americana.

Significance – Study Grading C
Architecturally, this is a well-preserved house of a type unusual in Frankston (but better represented in Melbourne's middle suburbs), which is distinguished by unusual window ornament and its landscape setting: of local importance and regional interest.

Historically, valuable as an unusual example of middle-class suburban housing and it reflects the broader development of this area of Frankston: of local importance and regional interest.

The Landscape is of local importance.