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

Wade Building, Hastings

Wade Building, Hastings, NZ

115 Cressy Street, Deniliquin

As you can see this a simple clean stylish deco shopfront. It has a nice use of contrasting tiles and very simple design elements such as the two horizontal bands of cream tiles to the right of the doorway.

What I find interesting is that the rest of the building is older at least by a decade or three.

Commercial pressures probably lead to the redesign of the building at street level and here again in April 2011 when I took this picture the commercial forces are looking for a new owner for this fine building.

Caister Road Bus Depot, Great Yarmouth

I was looking through some old photos today and came across the Caister Road Bus Depot in Great Yarmouth.

According to the memories of Patrick Burnside it was the garage for the blue & cream buses of Great Yarmouth Corporation Transport. By the time these photos were taken in around 2001 the buses were still blue and cream (although more cream than blue) but 'The Corporation' was long gone.

The red brick bulk of the building is broken up by vertical fins running either side of the garage openings and there are three panels showing different forms of transport.

There's ...

a carriage ...

a very early steam train ...

but my favourite is the blue Routemaster style bus.

Reference:
Great Yarmouth Corporation Transport by Patrick Burnside, Our Great Yarmouth website

House, Frinton-on-Sea

A modernist house in Frinton-on-Sea.

Travellers Rest Hotel, Thorpedale

It says 1937 on the pediment of the Travellers Rest Hotel in Thorpedale. The lettering spelling out the pub name and that whole central section of the pub are so typical of mid to late 1930s Streamline design.

And closer inspection revealed that many of the windows still bear the original etched glass some, like the that shown in the photograph below have the stylised TRH initials.