I really like the porthole window near the door. It is framed in the same bricks that have been used in the two lines that run around the entire front of the house.
The Town Hall in Numurkah was designed by Melbourne architects A C Leith & Bartlett. It was constructed in 1938 by builder L L Bode of Seymour.
An article in The Argus at the time specifically mentions the arrangment of the windows for the main hall. ' ... two rows of square glass panels, separated by dark-toned bricks running the full length of the hall.'
The artical also talks of a planned projection room with 'the equipment mounted on special swivel gear' to allow screenings in the auditorium or an open-air theatre at the rear of the building.
I wonder if the projection room was installed. It isn't mentioned in the Argus article when the Town Hall was offically opened on 16th November 1938 by then neither is the brick decoration spelling out the words 'TOWN HALL' above the door.
The railway came to Hamilton in the 1870s long before the Art Deco period but obviously something happened in that interwar period and they built a new entrance to the station.
Perhaps they built a whole new facade. When I explored around the corner of the building, the side was constructed from weatherboard so perhaps a new concrete or rendered front was put onto the old wooden station.
The trains no longer stop at Hamilton but the large station building is used for buses and coaches.
LEST WE FORGET
This impressive metal lettering spelling out the word IMPORTERS belongs to, what is now, the Target Country store in Gray Street, Hamilton. It possibly dates from the time when the building was owned by David Laidlow & Co (who also owned Millers Department Store which was next door in Gray Street).
Early this century, the building was extensively damaged by fire and the subsequent rebuilding brought the unexpected benefit of exposing some the original facade that had been covered by cladding. To their credit, the owners Coles Myer, restored the facade to its original appearence.
A couple of recent posts on Andrew's excellent High Riser blog (I see deco #1 & I see deco #2) prompted me to revisit my photos of Peterleigh Grove in Essendon. And while Andrew does refer to me and this blog in those posts, I have been a follower for some and often find myself lingering there jumping from item to item on his wide-ranging topics. But Art Deco is my thing so back to the topic in hand.
Peterleigh Grove is a magnificent residential street with most of the houses dating from 1939 and through the early years of WWII.
I've featured some of the houses in the street already and you can find all the posts here and today I'm giving you a glimpse of No. Fourteen.
The Beaumont Estate in Ivanhoe was developed by A V Jennings from the 1930s. It includes a range of interwar housing styles by architect Edgar Gurney including English Domestic Revival, French Provincial and Modernist.
These flats are in Melcombe Road, near the entrance to the estate. I believe they were used as the sales office when the estate was being developed. I didn't see anything else like them in the surrounding streets which have almost exclusively family homes.
What about those amazing bushes (!!!) either side of the driveway. Eighty years ago they probably were small bushes but now they are fully sculptured trees although the one on the left, as we look at the driveway, seems a bit woolly at the top. Perhaps the extension lead on the electric trimmer doesn't quite reach that far.
And I do like a low wall where the beauty of the building is still there for all to see after all these years.
Reference:
Beaumont Estate Heritage Guidelines, Banyule City Council, Prepared by Andrew Ward Architectural Historian with Ian Wight Planning and Heritage Strategies, Adopted: 16 May 2005
This series of shops in the main street of Leeton are the result of a 1930s makeover of an earlier building. You can see the dark brick wall of the 1918 building down the lane running alongside the nearest shop, Dee's.
A high parapet has been added decorated with a stepped deco element in the centre and a series of three speedlines running the length of the building, turning the corner and following the curve at the end.
A glimpse of a certain shade of cream coloured bricks and a flat roofline always has me wanting to stop the car for a bit of further investigation.
On Yanco Avenue, on the way into Leeton, I caught sight of that certain shade of brick colour and was greeted with this substantial brick sign when the car pulled into the first available side road.
It was a Saturday morning so I was able to duck into the grounds for a better look and was reward with this magnificent school.
Two simple rectangular blocks perpendicular to each other joined by a curved section with a open balcony. The entrances are identified by towers climbing just above the roofline. The main entrance tower taller and more elaborate than the side entrance tower. Both are topped, not quite by flagpoles, but by crosses befitting the nature of the college.
The lower floor windows on this side wing are shaded by a concrete ledge, an eyebrow and I find it a bit perplexing that the upper windows have not been given similar protection. Perhaps the trajectory of the sun in this part of New South Wales makes it unnecessary yet the design of the building includes a concrete strip above the windows where the eyebrow would sit.
St Francis College proved to be a great welcome to Leeton and far from the only stunning building in town.
Taken by the combination of the jagged sawtooth roofline and the curved corner, I wrote about Ranfurly Auto in New Zealand's rural deco town of Ranfurly in November 2008.
On 8 March 2010, the building was badly damaged by fire leaving just the facade.
The owners, Dick and Janet Parker, had an apartment in the property also running Ranfurly Auto and Ranfurly Bike Hire from the site. They decided not to rebuild but gave the Rural Art Deco Maniototo committee undertake a project to investigate the feasibility of restoring the building.
In July this looked a real possibility when the majority of people attending a public meeting supported the restoration as some sort of community-owned commercial venture.
Yesterday, however, the Otago Daily Times reported that this distinctive Art Deco building had been razed.
With higher than usual rainfall over the past year, what remained of the building had deteriorated significantly and there were concerns over safety of the structure in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake. Raising the funds to restore the building also seemed to have run out of options.
It is sad to see Ranfurly Auto go but there are still plenty of deco reasons to include Ranfurly on your South Island tour.
References:
Otago Daily Times, Hopes for Facade by Lynda Van Kempen, 27 May 2010
Otago Daily Times, Art Deco Building to be Restored by Lynda Van Kempen, 17 July 2010
Otago Daily Times, Distinctive Art Deco Building Razed by Lynda Van Kempen, 14 April 2011
Yesterday I posted some photos of the swimming pool at the former Berkeley Women's City Club, now the Berkeley City Club, so today I decided to show you some of the other internal features of Julia Morgan's 1929 building.
Julia Morgan designed the Berkeley Women's City Club in 1929. It remains a private club today however having been made avilable to both women and men since 1962, it is simply called the Berkeley City Club.
One of the best feature of Morgan's building is the indoor swimming pool with its pointed arches and colourful diamond pattern tiles.
Griffith owes its existence to irrigation. Like nearby, Leeton, the city was established as part of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA) in the early part of the 20th Century.
Driving down the main street my eyes were drawn to this stepped roofline. Simple, perhaps even rustic, it didn't prepare me for the view at street level. 
Three gorgeous shopfronts tiled in cream and burgany. Shop names standing out against a black backing and larged panes of curved glass drawing you into the doorway.
As in so many Australian shopping strips, the underneath the verandah is finished with decorated pressed tin. In this case, a simple deco pattern of lines and circles.
MELBOURNE ART DECO
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