House

15 Violet Street, Frankston

History
Built: 1945
Lot 41 Violet Street on the Liddesdale Estate was purchased in 1943-44 by F.R. & T.D. Wood, of the Ridge, Frankston, from Albert Vanslow of Point Nepean Road, Frankston, who owned lots 41, 42 and 43.1 The Woods had a dwelling built on the property in 1945.2 Alexander McPetrie, and engineer, owned and occupied the property with Dulcie McPetrie by 1950.3 However, he must have died around this time as ownership passed to Alex McPetrie Executors, care of I.F. Craft, Queen Street, Melbourne, by 1952, and Dulcie McPetrie was the occupant in 1951.4 Dulcie McPetrie still occupied the property in 1961.5

Description
Late stylistically for its construction date, the house is nevertheless large and well preserved, with part of its original landscape setting intact. The style follows from Edna Walling's simple English vernacular house designs of the 1920s (Sonning).

Combining clinker brickwork, smooth and half-timbered textured stucco wall finishes, the design is Old English or Tudor revival in style. The main gabled bay is set against a gabled and tiled main roof, and protrudes far enough forward to encompass a Tudor-arched entry porch to one side. A three-light box window with six-pane sashes provides the main element in this bay, being repeated in a lesser form elsewhere in the elevation. To one side is a gabled roof garage with double doors clad with herringbone-pattern boarding. The external colours relate to the house construction period.

Today the house has four bedrooms, separate living and dining rooms, utility areas and a kitchen/family room opens onto the back garden through French doors.

External Integrity
Generally original or sympathetically extended.

Context/Landscape
The front garden contains recent but sympathetic planting, but includes mature Liquidamber styraciflua, Pittosporum undulatum and Camellias variegatum. The rear garden has a terraced paved area, pergola and original Camellias, Magnolias, and apple trees. Added planting includes Camellia, Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Pittosporum, Silver Birch and Alder trees.

The house is one of the street's earlier houses.

Significance – Study Grading C
Architecturally, the house is a typical design among medium-to-large scale suburban villas of the 1930s, judged on a metropolitan basis, but in Frankton only a small number of houses are of this scale and style combination, hence the house stands out among other more typical villa designs in the street: of local importance and metropolitan interest.

Historically, identified over a long period with the McPetrie family, but little is known of the family's significance to Frankston. Landscape: of Regional importance.6