Fairmount Park Estate Precinct
Elm Street and Oak Street and Barkers Road and Myrtle Street and Findon Street HAWTHORN, BOROONDARA CITY
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Statement of Significance
What is Significant?
Fairmount Park Precinct, comprising 18-32 Barkers Road, 3-35 &2-26Elm Street, 3-7 Findon Street, 3-6 Myrtle Street, and 1-33 &2-32Oak Street, Hawthorn, is significant. The precinct contains predominantly brick dwellings from thelateVictorian and Edwardian eras, with some later interwar houses and flats. Original front fences are contributory (at 25 Barkers Road; 7, 9&10 Elm Street; 2, 18-20 & 26A Oak Street), as is the early lamp standard on Barkers Road (behind 5 Elm Street) and the bluestone laneways and kerbing.
The following properties are Significant to the precinct: HO436 -32Barkers Road, 15 Elm Street, HO41 - 22 Elm Street, 3 FindonStreet,HO467 - 19 Oak Street, HO468 - 25 Oak Street, 29 Oak Street, and30-32Oak Street.
How is it significant?
Fairmount Park Precinct is of local historical, architectural and aesthetic significance to the City of Boroondara.
Why is it significant?
Historically, Fairmount Park Precinct is a tangible illustration of Hawthorn's transition from an early rural settlement to Victorian garden suburb, sparked here by the subdivision in 1880 of Crown Allotments 27and 28 into 112 suburban building blocks. Development wasslow until theVictoria Street Bridge was opened in 1884, providing ready access to Melbourne (via Richmond). As development stagnated in the 1890s, due to the depression, the area was only fully developed in the prosperous Edwardian period, with minor infill and replacement of dwellings during the interwar period. (Criterion A)
Architecturally, Fairmount Park Precinct demonstrates middle-class housing types from the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, and the interwar period to a lesser extent. Due to the relative prosperity of the owners and occupiers, most of the houses are free standing, witha few duplexes (some disguised as more prestigious double-fronted houses).It was only at the end of the interwar period that living in flats was considered reasonably acceptable in middle-class areas, hence the appearance of up-to-date Moderne examples in 1940.(Criterion D)
Aesthetically, the Significant houses in the precinct exhibit fine architectural design, a strong visual presence and high level of intactness.They include a number of late Victorian Italianate villas(32Barkers Road, 22 Elm Street, 19 & 25 Oak Street), Federationvillas(15 Elm Street, 29 Oak Street) and Federation Bungalows (3FindonStreet, 30-32 Oak Street). Overall the streetscapes of gracious houses behind consistent garden setbacks are also of aesthetic significance.(Criterion E)
Grading and Recommendations
Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay of the Boroondara Planning Scheme as a precinct.
For a full list of individual place gradings within the precinct, please refer to the attached PDF citation, or individual child records attached to this parent record.
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Fairmount Park Estate Precinct - Physical Description 1
The precinct takes in the central part of the Fairmount Park subdivision, covering about half of its area. It contains all of Oak Street, most of Elm Street and the adjoining section of Barkers Road, and parts of Myrtle Street and Findon Street at its corner. This boundary was drawn to encompass the area with the most intact houses of the highest architectural quality in cohesive streetscapes.
This section of Barkers Road is defined by its steep drop to the Victoria Street Bridge over the Yarra. The Fairmount Park subdivision created only a single depth of allotments between Barkers Road and Elm Street, giving owners a choice of which street to front upon. As the cutting once began just to the west of 16 Barkers, as shown on the 1902 MMBW plan, houses built to the west of it all faced Elm Street (and some of the Barkers Road houses have changed their functional address to Elm Street). One element of interest that survives further along Barkers Road (on the footpath behind 5 Elm Street), is a cast-iron lamp standard (with a modern lamp head attached).
The other streets within the precinct are generous in width, and have only immature street trees, which makes the high quality housing easier to appreciate. For the most part, they are single-family dwellings ranging in size from a few tightly packed single- fronted cottages, to larger freestanding villas and generous duplexes. Houses have fairly regular front setback, allowing for generous front gardens, and the interwar (and most postwar) flats respect this setback.
Houses of the Victorian era are all Italianate in style, ranging from rather simple with ornamentation limited to the use of bichromatic brickwork, to more ornate examples with complex rooflines, canted bay windows and richly modelled cast-iron lacework. There are a few examples symmetrical double-fronted houses, both single-storey (see 18-20 Barkers Road, 1, 10 & 12 Oak Street), as well as three two-storey houses that mimic the terrace-house form (16 Barkers Road, 14-16 Elm Street). The house at 16 Barkers Road is unusual in the precinct for its decorative parapet (of a kind common in the inner suburbs). Also unusual, for their size, are the single-fronted cottages at 8-12 Elm Street. 3 &4 Myrtle Street; one of two pairs of duplexes with an unusual double-fronted form.
Most of the Victorian houses have asymmetrical facades, with a projecting room to one side of the verandah. Generally this is a rectangular projection, but in two cases it is hexagonal in form (4 & 6 Oak Street). 4 Oak Street is also unusual as the only timber house in the precinct. Another rare type is a pair of duplexes that comprise two asymmetrical, double-fronted dwellings joined together (3 to 6 Myrtle Street).
The Victorian-era houses generally have M-hip roofs (a low line created by an internal valley) covered in slates or corrugated iron (which replaced slate in some cases), rendered or facebrick chimneys with a cement-render cornice, rendered walls or facebrick walls of Hawthorn brick (often with cream brick accents), bracketed eaves, sash windows (some with sidelights), and front or return verandahs with corrugated-metal roofs, slender columns and cast-iron lace.Only two Victorian houses in the precinct retain what appears to be an original fence, 25 Barkers Road and 10 Elm Street; in both cases an iron palisade on a bluestone plinth.
While the Victorian houses vary between small and simple to large and imposing, almost all of the Edwardian houses are substantial villas. The only exceptions are the single- fronted house and duplex modelled to look like an asymmetrical villa at 3-5A Elm Street, and two timber gable-fronted houses (24 Elm Street, 15 Oak Street).
Most of the Edwardian-era villas (c1901-12) can be classed as Federation in style. They are all asymmetrical in form, with red brick walls (often tuckpointed) with cement-render dressings, high hipped roofs covering in slates or terracotta tiles, faux half-timbering in the projecting gables, often above a canted bay window filled with casement sashes and highlights, floral leadlight windows showing an Art Nouveau influence, and verandahs that are continuations of the roofline (a hallmark of the Federation villa) supported on turned timber posts with timber fretwork. Examples include 3, 5-5A, 23 and 25 Elm Street, and 11 and 31 Oak Street. A few are timber (13 & 20 Elm Street, or a timber dado below roughcast rendering (20A Elm Street).Particularly fine examples of this type are the following:
'Lauriston' at 29 Oak Street is a Federation villa with tuckpointed red brick walls and a high hipped slate roof. It is attributed to local builder William Langdon, as it shares signature features with houses he built nearby at 2-8 Pine Street in 1905-07. These include the chimneys with a reverse corbel at the top, a niche beside the front door with a half-dome head and projecting semicircular shelf below, and a highly decorative half- timbering pattern (here, a diagonal lattice). The front window (three casements below a broad segmental arch) and the verandah form (a skillion continuous with the main roof, half-timbered gablet at the centre and timber posts and fretwork) are shared with 4 Pine Street. The verandah of 'Lauriston' is particularly fine and unusual for its Tudor-arch form. Overall, it is a finely detailed house.
The house at 15 Elm Street is an even more substantial Federation villa with a sweeping roofline and return verandah. It was built c1912 for owner/occupiers Letitia and George Tindale (LV:V3586 F016; S&McD). Walls are of tuckpointed red brick with cement render dressings, and the roof is slate (renewed) with terracotta ridgecapping. The projecting front gable to the facade has half-timbering jettied over a canted bay window of highlights and casement windows. While simple in pattern, the uprights of the half-timbering have an unusual pierced design. This is complimented by the classic Art Nouveau whiplash curves incised into the solid timber verandah frieze, and the floral designs pressed into a cement render band at the centre of the chimney shafts. The arched front entrance, with floral leadlights, is also impressive.The large format of this villa, allows full expression of the diagonal emphasis seen in the Federation style, here in a corner bay window beneath the return verandah.
A second stylistic type, seen in the later years of the Edwardian era, is the Federation Bungalow. Three such houses were built in short succession (1913-14) in the precinct (30 Barkers Road, 3 Findon Street, 16 Oak Street), followed by attic bungalows at 30-32 Oak Street (of 1916-17). The Federation Bungalow style is influenced by British Arts and Crafts architects, such as Voysey, using bolder forms than Federation villas, broad arches, varied natural textures (particularly roughcast render and timber shingles), and heavy timber struts (to eaves, verandahs and oriel windows). Bungalows typically have broad and dominant gables, and largely gabled roofs.
The examples in the precinct pair this style with the high hip roof forms of the Federation style, at 16 Oak Street and 30 Barkers Road (which also has a Federation-type diagonal plan), with a stronger emphasis on gable roof forms. Other cross-overs between the styles are seen in slate or Marseille tile roofs with terracotta finials, the half-timbering of gables (which was popular well into the 1920s) and the use of Tuscan columns for porches (popularised by architect Christopher Cowper). The two-storey villa at 16 Oak Street is of particular interest for its oriel windows supported on timber struts, a design element favoured by architect Harold Desbrowe-Annear. Federation Bungalows in the precinct of Individual Significance are the following:
The house at 3 Findon Street, built for Henry James Urwin in 1914 (S&McD), is gable- fronted, with a projecting minor gable for the porch. The elegantly composed house responds to its corner site with a second major gable facing Oak Street, the long Tuscan- columned porch along this elevation, resting on a solid brick and render balustrade, and the port-hole window beneath it. The walls are set on a high red-brick plinth, with roughcast render above window sill height. The gables are filled with small-scale half timbering and scalloped timber shingles. All windows to the two street elevations are leadlight casements in shallow bow windows.
The duplex at 30-32 Oak Street, built for Mary and Florence Urwin in 1916-17, is distinguished by its dramatic gabled roof forms, whose power is doubled by their duplex form (unusual for attic bungalows). The two dwellings sit beneath a long transverse gable roof, with two projecting major gables at the centre of the front facade. The house has a red brick plinth and roughcast rendered walls. The front gables have small areas of jettied half-timbering with picturesque curved timbers set above French windows letting out onto bold semi-circular balconies (clad in scalloped timber shingles). The side gables are shingled with half-timbering in the apex. Their most striking feature of these gables is the massive external chimney shafts with raised vertical bands, corbelled top and three slender terracotta chimney pots each. Each dwelling has two porches - each with Tuscan columns resting on a solid brick and render balustrade - and entrance porch beneath the outer corner, and a sun porch beneath a hipped roof projecting from below the curved balconies. Interwar dwellings in the precinct can be divided into two basic groups: California Bungalows of the 1920s to the mid-1930s, and Moderne houses and flats built as World War II began.
The four California Bungalows are all brick with tiled roofs. While 2 and 21 Oak Street have predominantly red brick walls, the interwar fashion for multi-coloured clinker bricks is seen at 9 Elm Street and 2A Oak Street where they are paired with roughcast render. Two of them share the popular transverse gable roof form with a shingled minor gable sheltering the front porch, while 21 Oak Street has a gabled porch with a hip roof. The house at 2A Oak Street betrays its later date (c1935-37) by the use of solely hip roofs. The houses display a variety of porch supports popular for California Bungalows, including a broad arch between heavy buttressed piers (9 Elm Street), tapered piers on brick plinths (2A and 21 Oak Street), and dwarf columns on brick plinths (2 Oak Street). All houses have double-hung sash windows with simple leadlights, which the three earlier houses have windows set into a box frame - a popular treatment in this period. Both 9 Elm Street and 2 Oak Street retain their low masonry front fences with mild-steel gates.
At the end of the interwar period, the Old English and Streamlined Moderne styles were dominant. Moderne buildings use smooth curves and strong horizontal lines, often emphasised by banding of contrasting materials or applied 'speed lines'. It is a pared- back celebration of the machine-age, incorporating smooth surfaces and steel windows. The examples of this style in the precinct include a duplex at 18-20 Oak Street, the remodelling of 27 Oak Street, and the Monalto flats at 26A Oak Street. The Loyola Court flats at 7 Elm Street combine the horizontal brick banding and curved balconies of the Moderne with the vergeless gables of the Old English Style. The duplex and the blocks of flats all retain their original brick front fences. In the case of Loyola Court the trend for dwarf walls - lending visual openness to front gardens - is taken to its extreme.
Figure 12. Loyloa Court flats at 7 Elm Street, 1941. Note the dwarf brick fence. (Contributory)
There is generally a high degree of intactness of the Significant and Contributory buildings. Alterations to the houses include the overpainting of brick walls of many Victorian houses, minor alterations or restorations of a few front verandahs, and the addition of an octagonal bay to the facade of the accomplished Arts & Crafts at 16 Oak Street (which would otherwise be Significant to the precinct).
The precinct also retains contributory elements of the public domain, including the early lamp standard on Barkers Road and the bluestone pitched laneway that runs between Elm and Oak streets, as well as a tiny laneway that sits between 4 and 5 Myrtle Street. The only sections of bluestone kerbing in the precinct are along Barkers Road, and in front of 4-6 Myrtle Street.
Properties within the precinct are graded in line with the Boroondara Heritage Policy (Clause 22.05) definitions, as set out below:
'Significant' heritage places are places of State, municipal or local cultural heritage significance that are individually important in their own right. When in a precinct, they may also contribute to the cultural heritage significance of the precinct. 'Significant' graded places within a precinct are of the same cultural heritage value as places listed individually in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay.
'Contributory' heritage places are places that contribute to the cultural heritage significance of a precinct. They are not considered to be individually important places of State, municipal or local cultural heritage significance, however when combined with other 'significant' and/or 'contributory' heritage places, they play an integral role in demonstrating the cultural heritage significance of a precinct.
'Non-contributory' places are places within a heritage precinct that have no identifiable cultural heritage significance. They are included within a Heritage Overlay because any development of the place may impact on the cultural heritage significance of the precinct or adjacent 'significant' or 'contributory' heritage places.
As applied in the Fairmount Park Precinct, Significant properties are those dating from the Victorian to interwar eras that are distinguished by their fine architectural design, visual presence and high level of intactness. All or most of these houses are likely to have been architect-designed, even where the name of the designer has not been identified. The four Victorian-era houses with individual HO numbers also contribute to the significance of the precinct.
In the Fairmount Park Precinct, Contributory properties are mostly typical examples of the housing types and styles of the Victorian through interwar eras. All are sufficiently intact for their built-era and style to be readily recognised, with any upper-storey extensions set well back from the facade. Buildings that were remodelled during the period of significance (up to c1942) are also considered Contributory. In some cases a high-quality building that would have been Significant is graded Contributory due to visible alterations.
Buildings graded non-contributory date from the post-war era up to the present day. They include apartment buildings, units and recent houses, and comprise 17% of the properties in the precinct (note: unit developments and flats are counted as a single property).Heritage Study and Grading
Boroondara - Neighbourhood Character Precinct 24 - Heritage Citations
Author: Context
Year: 2015
Grading: Local
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