Teatro Opera, Buenos Aires

Is's a bit cold in Buenos Aires at the moment, only 7C, but sights like this certainly warm me up.

A House in Albury

I'm sure you remember another house in Albury that I posted earlier this month. A wonderful two storey Art Deco confection in a white and green colour scheme.

That post drew a comment about the next-door house with a great entrance.

This is it! Another beauty, you'll agree.

3632 Fillmore, Marina

The apartment block is at 3632 Fillmore in the Marina area of San Francisco.

What do you think about the paint job?

I think it is a bit gaudy. Deco doesn't need to be this garish. A simple scheme using one or two colours at most is often enough to let Art Deco patterns come alive with light and shadow as the sun passes across their surface.

Troy House of Music, Footscray

Troy House of Music, Footscray

Hangar 85, Essendon Airport

Sydney architect, Arthur Baldwin, designed two hangars at Essendon Airport which were built by the Department of Air Production in 1944 for the production of Beaufort bombers.

Hangar 85 includes a two storey red brick section for offices alongside the large open work space.

The windows run in two hoizontal bands across the face of the building shaded by a simple concrete ledge. Three storey sections at both ends of the office building providing a softer transition to the taller work space.

A flagpole and clock face at the freeway end of the building make a nice grouping of features linked by horizontal bands in the brickwork.

After the second world war both hangars were taken over by Trans Australian Airlines (TAA).

References:
Essendon Airport Tour Booklet, Art Deco & Modernism Society, June 2011

Accommodation Block, Laverton

A week or so ago, when I wrote about an Art Deco accommodation block in Laverton dating from 1935, I mentioned there was a row of three such accommodation blocks.

This is one of the other blocks and, although all three are similar in bulk and layout, the ones on either end do not have the same level of decoration as the middle one.

Still, their simple decoration is quite stylish and the courses of bricks stepping back towards the doorway make a very handsome entrance.

A Shop in Port Melbourne

I wrote about this former shop at 9a Raglan Street, Port Melbourne almost three years ago but today I was prompted to do some research into its history.

My source of information was the archives of the Port Melbourne Historical & Preservation Society (PMHPS) where I was able to view information from the Sands & McDougall directories and a database of Port People compiled from local church records and some family details provided by researchers and people looking into their family trees.

A man called John Byrne set up a grocers, certainly not in this exact shop front but in this location on the corner of Raglan Street and Easplanade East in 1891. He was married to Margaret Cecilia (Torris) and they had seven children over the the next fourteen years.

Joseph Vincent Byrne was born in 1895 and by 1924 he had joined his father in the grocery business. Joseph was married to Bridget Agnes (Stenson) by the early to mid 1920s because, as we will see later, they had a daughter, Imelda Joan, born around this time.

John & Joseph continued to work together for around the next decade afterwhich the business is listed solely under Joseph's name.

Joseph & Bridget's daughter Imelda was a school teacher when she married a clerk from Bentleigh called Francis Wellesley Walker at St Joseph's Church, Rouse Street in Feburary 1954. At that time Joseph gave his occupation as a grocer.

That's where my research trail goes cold but for over 60 years, John & Joseph Byrne, father and son, together and separately ran a grocers shop here and, in all probability, added this handsome modern shop front during the Art Deco period.

So why was I prompted to re-visit this particular former shop. You may have already guessed that, in a good sense, it is a former shop no longer. It is the temple of art ... where art meets design, an exciting addition to the Port artistic landscape.

It is so good to see these older building used again and I wish them much success over the next 60 years or so.

A House in Albury

I think this is the best Art Deco house in Albury and would be in a lot of other places as well.

I love the sweep of the front steps and the overall curvaceousness of the house. The matching lights either side of the front door, at the door leading to the upper storey terrace and also above the garage door.

And look at those continuous shade eyebrows encircling the house above the windows.