Former Comer Dairy
5 High Street PRAHRAN, STONNINGTON CITY
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Statement of Significance
What is Significant?
The former Comer Dairy, located at 5 High Street, Prahran, was established in 1926. It consists of a c1872 villa facing High Street with a 1926 dairy at the rear. The villa is a largely intact single-storey Victorian Italianate style building with bichrome brick walls. The dairy is a modest red-brick building with the name 'Comer Dairy' set in a rendered sign on the side elevation.
How is it Significant?
The former Comer Dairy is of local historical and architectural significance to the City of Stonnington.
Why is it Significant?
The former Comer Dairy is historically significance as a rare surviving example of the small diaries that were once widespread in suburban areas, but become obsolete with refrigerated transport and industrial scale diary production. The Victorian villa at the front of the site helps to explain how small suburban dairies were operated as independent, family-run enterprises with the dairyman residing on site. This tradition was discontinued in the post war era with the move towards large centralised dairies.
Architecturally, the former Comer Dairy is a good representative example of a small interwar suburban dairy. The villa is architecturally significant in its own right as an elegantly designed pre-boom Victorian Italianate style residence.
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Former Comer Dairy - Physical Description 1
The former Comer Dairy is located on the north-west corner of High and Alfred streets in Prahran. The site is occupied by a single-storey nineteenth century brick villa fronting High Street, and a former dairy building and garage at the rear.
The villa is handsome Victorian Italianate style building with a symmetrical facade and a hipped roof. It has an elegantly detailed front verandah with a projecting gable ended portico supported by slender Tuscan order columns. The external walls are constructed of tuck-pointed Hawthorn bricks with painted over brick quoins.
The villa facade remains substantially intact aside from the roof having been re-clad in glazed terracotta tiles (the roof was presumably originally clad in slate or corrugated iron). The original front door and fanlight window have also been replaced. At the rear of the villa there is a modest 1980 addition with a north facing window wall.
The former dairy is a modestly scaled, single-storey building with a late Edwardian architectural character. It has red brick walls and gabled terracotta tiled roof that is partly concealed by a parapet on the Alfred Street side elevation. The parapet contains a signage panel with the words 'Comer Dairy' in raised rendered lettering. A door opening on the Alfred Street elevation has been infilled with brick, and there are modern timber-framed windows and doors on the rear and internal courtyard elevations. The dairy exterior otherwise appears to be substantially intact. The interior has been stripped of all dairy equipment and converted into a meeting room.
The garage is located in north-west corner of the site. It is simple utilitarian, red-brick structure with a skillion roof and a modern steel roller door. The garage is presumably a c1926 outbuilding associated with the dairy, but retains little early fabric of note.
Former Comer Dairy - Local Historical Themes
The former Comer Dairy illustrates the following theme as explained in the Stonnington Thematic Environmental History (Context Pty Ltd, Addendum, March 2009):
6.1.3 Dairying
Heritage Study and Grading
Stonnington - Stables and Dairies in the City of Stonnington - Heritage Citations Project
Author: Bryce Raworth Pty Ltd
Year: 2011
Grading: A2
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PRAHRAN TOWN HALLVictorian Heritage Register H0203
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FORMER POLICE STATION AND COURT HOUSEVictorian Heritage Register H0542
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FORMER RECHABITE HALLVictorian Heritage Register H0575
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