HOUGHTALING, Chester Arthur (1882-1940), an American architect from Washington State who was active in Saskatoon, Sask in 1903-06, and in British Columbia from 1911 to 1913. He may have been living and working in the Grand Forks area of the B.C. Interior; in 1912 he was recorded as the architect of two large commercial blocks on Bridge Street at First Street, and it is likely that he was responsible for other structures in the Grand Forks region near the American border with Washington.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio on 24 October 1882, he studied engineering and building construction at the Lewis Institute in Chicago, then worked in the engineering office of Purdy & Henderson in Chicago. In 1903 he moved to Saskatoon and joined the office of John S. Metcalf, a leading architect and engineer of large concrete grain elevator buildings in Canada and the United States, and in late 1906 he moved to Spokane to work for Kirtland K. Cutter, architect, for a period of two years. In 1908 he relocated in Twin Falls, Idaho in 1908-10. For unknown reasons, he moved back across the border to the B.C. Interior in 1911 and was active in the Grand Forks area until 1913 when he moved again, this time permanently to Portland, Oregon, and formed a successful partnership with Luther Lee Dougan, as Houghtaling & Dougan, Architects, active until 1926. Houghtaling later died in Portland on 31 March 1940 (biog. H. Withey, Biographical Dictionary of American Architects, 1956, 301-02; biography and port. Richard Ritz, Architects of Oregon, 2002, 193-94).
GRAND FORKS, B.C., a one storey commercial block for Boundary Trust & Investment Co., Bridge Street at First Street, 1912 (The Sun [Vancouver], 2 Aug. 1912, 11, descrip.)
GRAND FORKS, B.C., a one storey commercial block for W.C.K. Manly Hardware Co., Bridge Street at First Street, 1912 (The Sun [Vancouver], 2 Aug. 1912, 11, descrip.)