Coolattie
29 Canterbury Road CAMBERWELL, Boroondara City
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Statement of Significance
Coolattie, at 29 Canterbury Road Camberwell, is of local historical and architectural significance. It is a handsome and relatively intact example of a substantial late Victorian residence in Camberwell combining a distinctive transversely proportioned and centralized plan form with a complex elevational treatment. The design is impressive in its control of scale and encompasses a broad range of detail spanning Italianate, Queen Anne and more distinctly Federation approaches. Coolattie's combination of late Victorian Italianate and early Federation elements is found in numerous other villa residences in the immediate area, however, it is one of a smaller number of examples in Camberwell to bring this transitional approach to a more substantial house.
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Coolattie - Physical Description 1
Coolattie (also spelt Collattie), the house at 29 Canterbury Road, Camberwell, is a large villa in red brick dressed with stucco. The footprint of the house appears to have remained virtually identical to that shown on the early MMBW Detail Plan No. 70 (of 1905) until the construction of rear additions in 1986-7. These additions included a sun room at the north-west corner, and the construction of a first floor addition over the original bedroom.[i] Additions and alterations are thought to have been undertaken in the 1990s, however the exact nature of these has not been established.[ii] The two verandahs were rebuilt in 2001; it is not clear whether these were constructed to match the original.[iii]
Notwithstanding the fact that the house has undergone a series of alterations and additions, it remains broadly intact in terms of its original presentation to the south and west. The original house presents a large-dimensioned, but domestically scaled, exterior to the Canterbury Road - Stanley Grove corner. This is dominated by a return verandah on a three- course bluestone base with tiled surfacing, cast iron columns and lace valance, and a bull-nosed roof clad in corrugated galvanized steel. The roof, hipped and clad in its original slate, is separated from the verandah roof and supported with an emphatic set of timber brackets. The south elevation terminates at the south-west with a corner emphasized by a canted bay near the corner and by vermiculated quoins at the corner itself. In a characteristic Federation composition, the return verandah is framed by two projecting wings, one to the west housing the living room, and one to the south which houses the dining room. The dining room divides the main verandah from a smaller bedroom verandah to the south-east. The dining and living room wings each have a brick and stucco bay treated as a breakfront, housing two full- height windows with stilted segmental arches that spring from a molded string course. These arches are built up with dichromatic brick and surrounded with plaster molding. Dichromatic brick is also used to form quoin patterns at the corners of these bays.
The keystones in each wing are given a mannerist treatment of a type usually seen at much larger scale in city commercial buildings of the period: each is a concave, stylized triglyph supporting a studded entablature that in turn carries a miniature rounded pediment.[iv] This detail is part of several other similarly mannerist Queen Anne elements in this design, including the high tympanum of the west and south wing pediments which hint at the Queen Anne movement's favored equilateral triangle, and the finely grained chimney cornices.
The slate-roofed timber bay facing east, with Art Nouveau lead lighting, is an addition, but its pediment and vertical proportions sit sympathetically with the rest of the original exterior. The west-facing sunroom, added in 1986, now a living room, has a set of newer plate glass casements with shallow segmental top frames that tentatively pick up the line of the original living room windows [v] The 1986-7 extension is quite tight, which makes it fairly unobtrusive from the south and southwest sides. Its concession to the historical character of the earlier house is in a tall, arched stair window, and in a turned wooden stair frame.
The garden has some mature trees but has generally been renewed in its smaller scale plantings. A high red brick fence was constructed around two sides of the site in c.1984.[vi] This screens Coolattie from Canterbury Road, though it refers to the house in its combination of diamond-patterned red brick and grey cement cornice moldings.
[i] Details sourced from the City of Camberwell Building Index, #78117, dated 18 June 1986, and accompanying drawings by J&R Drafting; #81488, dated 27 October 1986.
[ii] City of Camberwell Building Index, # 98137, dated 17 September 1993 and # 2600, dated 13 September 1994.
[iii] Building Permit no. 01/01730, dated 12 September 2001, City of Boroondara Building File 40/408/04887. See letter to Ms FF Sadler, 26 November 2002, and 'key plan' showing reconstructed verandas, June 2001.
[iv] This nineteenth-century mannerism- or 'montage classicism'- was first discussed by Peter Kohane in 'Classicisism transformed: a study of facade composition in Victoria', Transition, July 1983, revising cumulative arguments advanced by George Tibbits in 'The classical tradition in Victoria: represented structure and style', in David Saunders, ed., Architectural papers 1976, Sydney: Art Association of Australia, 1977.
[v] Details sourced from the City of Camberwell Building Index, #78117, dated 18 June 1986 and accompanying drawings by J&R Drafting.
[vi] Details sourced from the City of Camberwell Building Index, #76159, dated 24 August 1984; #98147, dated 20 September 1993.
Heritage Study and Grading
Boroondara - Review of B Graded Buildings in Kew, Camberwell and Hawthorn
Author: Lovell Chen Architects & Heritage Consultants
Year: 2006
Grading: BBoroondara - Camberwell Conservation Study
Author: Graeme Butler
Year: 1991
Grading:
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