Creswick Estate Pricinct
Calvin Street and Creswick Street and Mason Street HAWTHORN, BOROONDARA CITY
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Statement of Significance
What is Significant?
Creswick Estate Precinct, comprising 4-16, CalvinStreet, 3-15 and 2-12 Creswick Street, and 15-27 and 12-30 Mason Street, Hawthorn, is significant.
The precinct contains a number of large Victorian houses who segrounds were subdivided and developed with suburban houses in the interwar period. Many of the interwar dwellings retain their original front fences and gates.
The following properties are Significant to the precinct: 6CalvinStreet, HO461 - 17 Mason Street, HO97 - 24 Mason Street, and HO462- 27Mason Street.
How is it significant?
Creswick Estate Precinct is of local historical, architectural, aesthetic and associative significance to the City of Boroondara.
Why is it significant?
Historically, the precinct demonstrates the break-up of Victorian-era mansion estates during the interwar period, as exemplified by 'Creswick Estate' of 1923, which gives the precinct a strong interwar character that is unusual in Hawthorn. (Criterion A)
Architecturally, the precinct demonstrates high-quality middle-class housing of the interwar period. Earlier examples are free-standing bungalows on garden suburb allotments, with a tendency to ward denser development in the late interwar period in the form of duplexes,maisonettes and flats. It contains good examples of typical California Bungalows, and Old English and Moderne houses and flats.(Criterion D)
Aesthetically, the Significant houses in the precinct exhibit fine architectural design, strong visual presence and high level of intactness. They include interwar bungalows at 6 Calvin Street, and17and 27 Mason Street. The streets capes are enhanced by the consistent garden setbacks and the high number of original interwar fences and gates that survive. (Criterion E)
The bungalow at 6 Calvin Street is significant for its associations with Harry Albert Norris (1888-1967), who was born in Hawthorn and became a leading architect nation wide by the 1920s. It was at this time, in1925,that he purchased land in the Creswick Estate and built a home for himself, where he resided until 1938. The City of Boroondara is noted for the substantial number of homes that architects have designed for themselves over the last century and a half, of which this is a fine and intact example. (Criterion H)
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Creswick Estate Pricinct - Physical Description 1
The precinct centres on Mason Street, stretching from Creswick Street to Calvin Street. Through out the precinct is a pattern of large Victorian houses whose grounds were subdivided and developed with suburban houses in the interwar period. The north- western half of the precinct corresponds to the majority of the 1923 Creswick Estate (excluding Osborne Street, which has little interwar building stock). This encompasses Creswick Street north of Mason Street, the north side of Mason Street, and the west side of Calvin Street. Outside of the Creswick Estate is the Victorian mansion 'Carrigal' (now flats) on the south side of Mason Street, with interwar flats and houses around it.
The Victorian houses reflect the long period over which they were built, beginning with the Gothic Revival 'The Hawthorns' built in bluestone in 1845 (5 Creswick Street, HO39), followed by a later example of this style in polychrome brick at 'Carrigal' of the 1860s (18 Mason Street, HO96). At the close of the century, in 1893, the 'Kardinia' was built at 8Calvin Street (HO26). It shows a transition to the Queen Anne style, with red bricks and multiple gables.
The interwar houses and flats can be divided into three main groups, with some overlap between them: Bungalow, Old English/Tudor, and Moderne.
The bungalows were built during the second half of the 1920s and early 1930s. The 1920s California Bungalows have tiled gabled roofs, either a gable-front or transverse roof with a minor front gable often comprising the porch. Walls are rarely of a single material, but various combinations of red and clinker bricks and roughcast render. The porches were also used to vary standard designs, some beneath a gable or the main roof and others beneath a timber pergola, with supports ranging from chunky square piers or tapered piers on a brick plinth, to dwarf columns of various types on a brick plinth. The porch pier of the bungalow at 12 Calvin Street extends through the roof, to echo its tall chimneys. This house is also distinguished by its never-painted roughcast rendered walls. At 12 Creswick Street is another unusual design dominated by a very wide front gable with delicate ornamental half-timbering in it, set above heavy rendered piers. The front fence is quite special, comprising dwarf clinker-brick piers with a chain hanging between them, above rows of rough bluestones. Other 1920s bungalows are at 4 and 6 Calvin Street; 2, 3, 6 and 8 Creswick Street; and 15, 17 (HO461), 23 and 27 (HO462) Mason Street. 12 Calvin Street, of c1930, can be grouped with them stylistically.
Harry Norris' house at 6 Calvin Street takes the classic bungalow form, with a transverse gable roof punctuated by a minor front gable, and refines it. Here the gable roof is high and steep enough to house an attic storey. The dado is of red brick with a clinker soldier course at the top and roughcast render above. The verandah is continuous with the roof and rest on clinker brick piers. It extends outward into a pergola resting on tubular columns, reminiscent of those used by members of Walter Burley Griffin's school (see, for example, Eric Nicholl's 'Herborn House' at 88 Pleasant Road, Hawthorn East, and the Essendon Incinerator (VHR H424), both of 1929-31). The front fence echoes the house's walls, with the addition of a saltire timber balustrade.
The 1930s bungalows are generally simpler in detail, relying on variation in walling materials and bold entrance arches, paired with hip roofs (16 and 19 Mason Street).
The Old English style was used for free-standing houses, maisonettes and larger blocks of flats in the 1930s and early '40s. Most have the typical walls of clinker brick and vergeless gables, or a looser interpretation with a hip roof and rendered walls, often with brick accents. A picturesque variant on the style is the duplex at 25-25A Mason Street, which has low Tudor arches to the entrance porches, the top window sashes, and a wide 'blind arch' in raised render above the banks of three front windows. Other examples are houses and duplexes at 10-10A Calvin Street and 14 and 21-21A Mason Street; and maisonettes and flats at 4, 5A, 7-9 and 15 Creswick Street.
An example of the Moderne style is the duplex at 14-16 Calvin Street, with a high pyramidal roof and raised vertical strips around the windows. Other examples in the precinct are houses at 28 and 30 Mason Street; and flats at 11 and 13 Creswick Street and 12 and 24 (HO97) Mason Street.
The majority of the interwar houses and flats retain their original dwarf front fences of facebrick and/or roughcast render, and many retain original mild-steel gates as well. No. 4 Calvin Street has and unusual front fence that appears to be of concrete block, with vehicular gates of plaited metal strips with a fine-grade chain-mesh infill.
The level of intactness in the precinct is generally very high. Exceptions to this are upper- storey additions, some of which include front dormers and others a visible section set behind the main ridgeline (4 Calvin Street and 8 Creswick 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 Creswick Estate Precinct, Significant properties are those dating from the interwar era that are distinguished by their fine architectural design and high level of intactness. Most of these houses are likely to have been architect-designed, even where the name of the designer has not been identified. The two interwar houses and one block of flats with individual HO numbers also contribute to the significance of the precinct (17, 27 and 24 Mason Street). The three Victorian houses within the precinct are of individual significance (and have their own HOs), but do not contribute to the precinct.
In the Creswick Estate Precinct, Contributory properties are mostly good examples of the housing types and styles of the interwar era. All are sufficiently intact for their built-era and style to be readily recognised, with any upper-storey extensions set back from the facade.
Buildings graded Non-contributory date from the post-war era up to the present day. They include two recent houses (3A and 10 Creswick Street, NB: 3A is a Victorian reproduction).Heritage Study and Grading
Boroondara - Neighbourhood Character Precinct 24 - Heritage Citations
Author: Context
Year: 2015
Grading: Local
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FORMER INVERGOWRIE LODGEVictorian Heritage Register H0517
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FORMER BRIDGE HOTELVictorian Heritage Register H0449
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INVERGOWRIEVictorian Heritage Register H0195
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