BURLINGTON TERRACE
15-27 LANSDOWNE STREET and 384-400 ALBERT STREET EAST MELBOURNE, Melbourne City
Victorian Heritage Register
Statement of Significance
Last updated on - January 19, 2000
What is significant?
Burlington Terrace is a row of sixteen houses built between 1866 and 1871 to the designs of architect Charles Webb for HP Harris. It was a speculative venture for Harris and he did not live in any part of the terrace. The terrace forms a facade to both Lansdowne Street and Albert Street. Burlington Terrace makes an elegant return with a curved corner at 384 Albert Street. All the houses in the terrace have the same overall classically-derived decorative characteristics. The windows have simple mouldings. A bracketed render cornice runs uninterrupted the full length of the Albert Street facade and returns on Lansdowne Street, curving down at every junction of each group to follow the slope of the ground. A balustraded parapet runs the length of both parts of the terrace. Party walls are elaborately decorated with pressed cement details including elaborate brackets and acanthus leaves on top of each party wall forming the sides of the verandahs. The verandah is a continuous two-storey composite cast iron and timber construction. It contains a small decorative cast iron frieze below a dentillated cornice. Surviving original balustrade panels depict a pair of birds within an intricate foliated pattern. 400 Albert Street has a two storey brick stable block at the rear. The stable has parapeted gable ends and a corrugated iron roof. The pitched courtyard adjacent to the stables, served by the right of way from Lansdowne Street, was a common area for all the houses. At the rear of each property there was originally an outside toilet. The pair of toilets at 19 and 21 Lansdowne Street are excellent examples, as the only two with decorated Dutch gables. In all cases the night soil access has been bricked up. Internally each house in the terrace had identical layouts.
How is it significant?
Burlington Terrace is of architectural and social significance to the State of Victoria.
Why is it significant?
Burlington Terrace is architecturally significant as an unusual example of intact terrace housing dating from the 1860s. The terrace is highly unusual for its facade to two streets with an equally unusual curved corner linking the two parts. It is one of the longest terraces in Melbourne and is an important example of the early work of noted architect Charles Webb, the designer of the Windsor Hotel, Melbourne Grammar School and Royal Arcade. The composite construction of the verandah with timber columns and cast iron balustrade panels and frieze demonstrates the evolution of the verandah before the later general use of cast iron.
Burlington Terrace is historically significant for its nineteenth century associations with members of Melbourne's business and Jewish communities who occupied the terrace as tenants. Through the survival of the coach house and the pitched yard at the rear of the terrace, Burlington Terrace demonstrates the communal provision for horse based transport at the rear of nineteenth century terraces.
