Assembly Hall, Footscray

No doubt there is quite a history to this little deco Assembly Hall in the back streets of Footscray.

Who assembled here? Who uses it now and why have the windows been bricked up with such unsympathetic bricks?

I first glimpsed this building several years ago from Footscray Road, just before it takes a dog-leg and ducks under the Geelong Road overpass. Since then I have always looked for it when passing but never ventured down for a closer look and to take a few photos ... until now.

141-143 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

An Art Deco building at 141-143 Flinders Lane in Melbourne adapted for a variety of uses including a gallery and a restaurant.

Windows, Footscray Town Hall

Early this year I wrote about the former City of Footscray Town Hall designed by architect Joseph Plottel and opened in 1936. I'd never been inside and I got the chance to have a quick look the other day. Unfortunately I didn't get to see any of the grander rooms and I imagine there are some in this fine building. No I got to duck up some side stairs to have a look at an exhibition. On the way I snapped these leadlight windows.

Go Borough!

Port Melbourne won the VFL Grand Final today beating age-old rivals Williamstown 22.12.144 to 13.10.88. It's been 29 years since our last premiership and there are a lot of happy people in The Borough tonight. This is one of the banners that the local Council hung on the Port Melbourne Town Hall earlier in the week to celebrate the team reaching the Grand Final.

No doubt you are wondering what this has to do with Art Deco, especially since the Town Hall is very clearly a Victorian building, designed by J J Wild and constructed in 1882. However in the late 1930s, the then Port Melbourne City Engineer, Fred Cook, redesigned the auditorium and Council Chamber in Art Deco style.

courtesy Port Melbourne Historical & Preservation Society

Above is a photo of the Red Cross Ball held for the official opening of the remodelled auditorium on May 24th, 1938. The auditorium has been modified several times since then and sadly little or none of the 1938 hall remains. This ship plaque (below) was salvaged and is now part of the collection of the Port Melbourne Historical & Preservation Society.

courtesy Port Melbourne Historical & Preservation Society

I mentioned that at the same time Cook also designed the Council Chamber but around the 1960s a false ceiling was put in and the lovely deco ceiling he designed was covered up until several years ago after a severe storm when part of the ceiling collapsed. Here is some detail from Cook's ceiling which I was lucky enough to photograph before it was removed and replaced with a very, very plain, dare I say boring, barrel vaulted Victorian facsimile.

I know PMTH is a Victorian building so I can understand the desire to put in a Victorian ceiling but I think there was a very strong reason to retain at least some of the Art Deco. Cook also designed some furniture for the room and this is his original hand-drawn sketch.

courtesy Port Melbourne Historical & Preservation Society

And this furniture still sits in the Council Chamber somewhat at odds with its Victorianised surroundings.

A House on the Golf Links Estate

The Golf Links estate in the Melbourne suburb of Camberwell offers a wonderful variety of interwar house designs. I've written about several Golf Link houses previously and this is another example.

The main design feature are the crazy brick patterns arranged in large semi-circular panels above each of the ground floor windows but I think the most interesting aspect of the decoration is the arrangements of bricks on the gable end of the house.

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

A House in Camberwell

This house is on the Golf Links Estate in Camberwell, Melbourne. It has an interesting double porch and balcony arrangement at the front door.

Danger - High Tension - Melbourne

Just to prove that I do take photos of things other than buildings I present thi old sign on a telegraph pole warning of the danger of high tension wires.

When I first saw the sign I thought it was a futuristic 'S' shape but closer inspection revealed it was an impression created by sections of the red enamel having been chipped away over time.

In a way, I think that make it more interesting.

Fourteen Peterleigh Grove, Essendon

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.

Reference:
Art Deco in the Western Suburbs tour booklet, Art Deco and Modernism Society

Beaumont Estate, Ivanhoe

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

A House in Carlton North

I spotted this terrace house in Canning Street, Carlton North and I like the simplicity of the decoration with the brick pattern on facade repeated, in an enlongated version, on the wall inside the porch.

The front of the building sits closer to the footpath than its older neighbour so I wonder if it is a case of a moderne makeover of a Victorian era house.

553 Rathdowne Street, Carlton

Although the trees and bushes have become a bit too large for the garden and obscure a bit too much of the building but you can still see the beauty of these flats on the corner of Rathdowne and Princes Street, Carlton.

Citro Motors, Collingwood

I can't tell you how many times I have been to this workshop at 17 Smith St, Collingwood to have something or other fixed on my old 1976 Citroën Pallas. I don't have that car anymore but I still have a Citroën, albeit a newer model, a C4.

Naturally while I was out walking last weekend I looked across the road at Citro Motors and was taken aback by how good it looked when you aren't driving a crippled car up the driveway. The beautiful blue sky and glorious morning sun helped too.

Clearly the building was built in 1924 and certainly couldn't be described as high Art Deco but it does have some simple charm about it.

I like the simple windows. Those set back into the facade on the upper storey but, also, the one with the diagonal cross above the front door.

It is interesting to note that the only decoration is the two rondels, one either side of the year.

Merri Park Sports Ground, Northcote

This gateway was erected in 1937 to commemorate the opening of the Merri Park Sports Ground. The curving stepped metal railings are pure Art Deco.

Drinking Fountain, Carlton North

Unlike yesterday's sad example, this drinking fountain is in much better condition. Perhaps because it is in Curtain Square, a park just off busy Rathdowne St in Carlton North, it has avoided the worst of any vandalous attacks.

The inscription on this fountain reads

PRESENTED TO THE
CITIZENS OF MELBOURNE
BY
ALDERMAN
SIR WM. BRUNTON KB
(LORD MAYOR OF MELBOURNE 1923-26)
1930

Disused Drinking Fountain, Northcote.

A deco drinking fountain, non-operating, near the corner of St Georges Road and Merri Parade in Northcote.

Once it held a place of honour in the community and provided a function of drinking water for walkers and cyclists using the nearby Merri Creek Trail. Now it is unloved and unused.

A plaque on the other side reads

Erected by Citizens of Northcote
In Memory of
Cr Joseph Henry Green JP
Elected 27.6.1927 Mayor Year 1930-31
Died 22.9.1939

I wonder what those citizens and the late Cr Green's family would think of it now.

Maller's Flats, Carlton North

These flats at the corner of Sutton St and Fenwick St, Carlton North were built in 1942 for Leba Maller.

As with flats and houses from this period in other parts of Melbourne different colour bricks are used as highlights. There is a line of dark bricks on the low wall and columns surrounding the property. Also on the facade of almost at the bottom of the upper and lower storey windows, at the top of the windows and on the chimney.

You may also have noticed the curved wall around the entrance and the stairwell constructed completely of dark manganese bricks that make this building unique in Carlton North, possibly all of Carlton, Melbourne or perhaps even the whole world.

Reference:
City of Yarra Review of Heritage Precincts 2007, Graeme Butler and Associates, p291

Swallows of Port Melbourne

For most of its life this Port Melbourne pub was known as the Southern Cross Hotel. From 1873 to around 1990 this was certainly the case. After that time it became Swallows Hotel or as their sign reads, Swallows of Port Melb.

At some time in the 1930s this Victorian building got a makeover to become Port's most deco of pubs.

From a distance the corner parapret with its three speedlines and flagpole are the most noticable features but standing on the footpath in front of the hotel, these dark green panels are clearly the best Art Deco elements on the facade.

Reference:
Chartered Scoundrels - A Brief History of Port Melbourne Hotels, by Pat Grainger, Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society, April 2007.

former Rootes Motors, Port Melbourne

This building on Fishermens Bend, the largely industrial part of Port Melbourne developed around the outbreak of WWII, is the former Australian factory for the British motor manufacturer Rootes. I remember it as a storage facility for KMart and now the western end of the building is home to Melbourne Indoor Paintball.

The building was built around the end of WWII and the national Archive of Australia holds two excellent photos of the building from 1945. Search for Image Number L1647 for a view of the building from ground level while L1849 is an aerial view showing the extent of the factory at that time.

You will have noticed the flagpole, an Art Deco steadfast, but if you look closely at the face of the other wall in the first photo you'll also find another Art Deco steadfast, a clock.

Unfortuately everything is painted in a two-tone Mission Brown selection which does the building no favours at all. It looks like it may have been white or cream or perhaps even grey in 1945.

I was pleased to see the original gates, or at least one of them, still in place. Rusted in place actually, but it does show the Art Deco design and I can only image how good they looked 60 years ago.

Mona Court, South Yarra

This article in The Argus from 16 August 1940 reports that Williams and Co sold both corners of Mona Place and Punt Road for 'subdivision in seven blocks suitable for sale'. Presumably, one of those blocks on the southern corner became Mona Court, a 'U' shaped block of flats.

Each of the flats on the Punt Road arm of the 'U' have small brick balconies but interestingly there are no balconies on the other side.

The Punt Road side also have staircases between the front flats and the back flats which is mirrored on the other side.

The centre court formed by the arms of the 'U' has shrubs and small trees providing a lot of privacy to the ground floor flats and no doubt dampening the noise from the traffic on Punt Road. It also has this wonderful decorative brick section.

Reference:
Flats Sites are Selling, The Argus, Friday 16 August 1940