SHOPS
444-446 MT ALEXANDER ROAD, ASCOT VALE, MOONEE VALLEY CITY
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Statement of Significance
What is significant?
The shops at 444-446 Mt Alexander Road, Ascot Vale, are significant. The pair of shop-residences were built in 1925 by real estate agents and designer-builders Knight & Harwood for the owner.
The two-storey shops are in the Free Classical style with arched parapets between raised piers. The parapets alternate between wide (with a segmental arch) and narrow (with a round arch). The shops are finished with red and clinker faced brick as well as roughcast and smooth render. Both shops retain their original shopfronts, though the leadlight highlight windows have been removed from No. 446.
Later alterations and additions are not significant.
How is it significant?
The shops are of local architectural/aesthetic significance to the City of Moonee Valley.
Why is it significant?
The shops are architecturally significant as an intact and well detailed representative example of the Free Classical style, characterised by its undulating curved parapets framed by piers, and the use of banding and accents in a range of finishes, here clinker and red brick as well as roughcast and smooth cement render. The striking picturesque roofline of the shops and their highly visible corner location make them a local landmark. They are also of aesthetic significance for the retention of original shopfronts with details including leadlight highlight windows to No. 444, metal-framed shop windows, tiles to the stallboards and piers (overpainted), red and cream tiles to the ingo floors, and timber-framed glazed doors. (Criteria D & E)
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SHOPS - Physical Description 1
The shops at 444-446 Mt Alexander Road are a pair of two-storey brick shops on the south-east corner of Mt Alexander Road and Mascoma Street. The shops are distinctive for their picturesque roofline comprising curved parapets framed by piers, typical design motifs of the Free Classical style which was popular from the Edwardian period to the mid-1920s. The shops present an asymmetrical facade, with a double bays to Mt Alexander Road and Mascoma Street, with a narrow bay and blind splay corner bay between them. The wide bays have a segmental arched pediment and the narrow bays have a round arched pediment, in both cases defined by banded red brick and roughcast render engaged piers that rise above the parapets. At their tops they have a rectangular brick panel, and at the base they have protruding headers (like modillions) above a band of clinker brick. The two end bays contain a pair of one-over-one double-hung timber windows. A single window is centred in the narrower second bay to Mt Alexander Road. The walls between the piers are roughcast rendered except for a band of smooth render above the lintel line. A square ventilator is centred in this band above each window which matches the square brick detail in the top of each pier.
A single cantilevered verandah runs across the combined width of the shop's frontage and corner return. The shopfronts have profiled metal framed windows above tiled stallboards (overpainted). Both have a recessed entry with red and cream tiles to the floors and timber-framed glazed doors. The return shopfront addressing Mascoma Street retains original highlights of leaded glass around the broad corner entry with splayed sides.
A two-storey red brick residential wing is located behind the shops with an elevation fronting Mascoma Street and matching windows.
Unsympathetic alterations include the overpainting to the tiling, and the removal of leaded glass and some tiles from the stallboard of No. 446, and the rendering of the clinker brick band below the first-floor windows of No. 446.
Heritage Study and Grading
Moonee Valley - Moonee Valley Heritage Study
Author: Context Pty Ltd, 2015
Year: 2015
Grading: LocalMoonee Valley - City of Moonee Valley Stage 1 Heritage Gap Study
Author: Context PL
Year: 2013
Grading:
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