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
It is of interest to us to see here, and in your previous posts, the wide range of Art Deco buildings which clearly survive in Australia. Too often, as is the case in Britain, so much of the integrity of the original design has been lost with 'improvements'. We see this in the many rows of 1930s houses to which have been added porches, replacement windows and doors, and other, even more ghastly, modern effects.
ReplyDeleteIn Budapest, where we live for the greater part of our time, there is, in the suburbs, a complete road of, say, some thirty houses all of which are in the Bauhaus style and which remain largely as built. A plaque commemorates the individual architects.
Of interest to us at the moment is to collect ephemera of 1930s to include 30s ceramics, some bakelite and, a decade later, 'Utility' furniture.
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Thanks for your comments. 'Improvments' to older buildings is a problem here as well. I have to smile when proud owners explain how they updated the old bathroom, no doubt removing some deco tiles and fittings.
ReplyDeleteThat street in Budapest sounds amazing. I'm sure there are lots examples in Eastern Europe that aren't that well known. I really enjoy Valentin Mandache's Historic Houses of Romania blog (http://historo.wordpress.com/) which features some wonderful deco buildings in Bucharest.
And thanks for following my blog. I hope you continue to enjoy it.
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