Edificio Caxias, Copacabana

I was lucky to get a quick look inside the foyer of Edificio Caxias when I was wondering around Copacabana.

Water Trough, Yenda

It is perhaps fitting that Yenda, a small town in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA), has a concrete water trough just off the central park area. The inscription reads

Donated by
Annis & George Bills
Australia

~~~ UPDATE ~~~

Robin Grow has provided a link explaining who Annis & George Bills were. In part it reads ...

George Bills died 14 Dec 1927 and his wife, Annis died on the 20 Jun 1910. After providing some personal bequests, his will directed the income from the residue of his estate to be used to provide troughs for horses, and for the purpose of preventing cruelty, and alleviating the sufferings of animals in any country.

More then 500 troughs were erected in Australia mostly in New South Wales and Victoria, and some in overseas countries---England, Ireland, Switzerland [for donkeys] and Japan.

...

Later a standard design was adopted, and Rolca concrete products supplied many hundreds of the troughs in Victoria and New South Wales. Troughs were supplied on application to the Bills Trust by Councils, and truckloads of 10 would often leave the Rocla Factory for installation by a team of men in country towns.

Website: Bills Horse Troughs

Dreamland, Margate

The Dreamland cinema was opened on 22 March 1935. It was designed by architects, J R Leathart, W R Granger and J B Iles.

It survived as a single auditorium cinema until 1973 when the balcony was converted into twin cinemas and the stalls area converted into a bingo hall.

My photo dates from 2001 when the cinemas and bingo hall were still open. Both cinemas and the bingo closed in 2007.

References:
Art Deco Super-Cinemas of Margate, Margate Museum Fact Sheet No. 5
Lost Bingo Halls - Dreamland Bingo Margate, Playing Bingo UK website

Old Toronto Stock Exchange

Here are some cropped photos of Charles Comfort's frieze on the façade of the old Toronto Stock Exchange building (Samuel Maw, 1937). It is now used as the Design Exchange but whoever decided to put the ornamental lamp posts right in front of the frieze perhaps should go back to design school.

Reference:
Art Deco Architecture in Toronto, by Tim Morawetz

From New York to Fish Creek Exhibition

I received a call from the West Gippsland Arts Centre on Monday afternoon saying that they had had a cancellation and could I hang my From New York to Fish Creek exhibition any earlier ... like this week!

'Of course', I said. What an opportunity!

So after two very busy days (and nights) I now have an exhibition. The captions aren't done yet but they'll be up as soon as I can get them done.

I'm pleased with how it looks so far and I had quite a few interested viewers and favourable comments as the frames went up.

From New York to Fish Creek
West Gippsland Arts Centre, Warragul

Open Weekdays 9am - 5pm
Web 1 Feb to Fri 24 Feb, 2012

A peek inside the Manchester Unity Boardroom

Signs Publishing, Warburton

The Signs Publishing Company, the Australian publishing house of the Seventh-Day Adventists, moved to Warburton in 1906 having operated before that as the Echo Publishing Company in the Melbourne suburb of North Fitzroy.

Like the original factory of the nearby Sanitarium Health Food Company (SHF), the first Signs Publishing building was badly damaged when the River Yarra flooded in 1934.

And again like SHF a new building was designed by Edward F Billson and constructed in 1935.

Billson worked with Walter Burley Griffin so it is not unexpected that I can see Frank Lloyd Wright influences particularly in the arched brick decoration surrounding the main door.

I especially like the use Billson has made of blue bricks to divide the windows contrasting against the red window frames.

Reference:
Signs Publishing Company Factory, Warburton Adventists website

former Sanitarium Factory, Warburton

I used to spend quite a lot of time in Warburton and have loved this metal gate from the first time I saw it.

The gate is looking a bit worse for wear now as is the building that it leads to, the former Sanitarium Factory. They used to make Weet-Bix here which explains the stylised stalk of wheat worked into the design of the gate.

The Sanitarium Health Food Company, owned by the Seventh-Day Adventists, had built an earlier factory on the banks of the Yarra River in Warburton next to their Signs Publishing complex but it was damaged by flood in 1934 so architect Edward F Billson was commissioned to design a new factory on higher ground. It was completed in 1939 and won Billson the Street Architecture Medal from the Royal Victoria Institute of Architects (RVIA) in 1940.

The factory closed in 1997 but hopefully a new lease of life as a conference and reception centre awaits this handsome building with plans for refurbishment in the pipeline since around 2006.

The Warburton Adventists website includes an extensive photo gallery of their former factory.

Reference:
Sanitarium Health Food Company Factory, Warburton Adventists website