1293 Toorak Road
1293 Toorak Road CAMBERWELL, BOROONDARA CITY
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Statement of Significance
The house at 1293 Toorak Road is of local historical and architectural significance as a fine, representative and externally intact example of a villa from the late phases of the Federation period. While relatively conservative for its construction date, the building exemplifies the central aspects of Federation composition: return verandah, major event at the verandah turn, anchorage of the verandah at either end with projecting wings that imply an L-shaped armature or spine of rooms and more sold massing, with the corner behind the verandah dissolving into a fabric of robust turned woodwork, filtering the sun.
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1293 Toorak Road - Physical Description 1
1293 Toorak Road is a double-fronted brick Federation bungalow with a projecting wing at its east end, a return verandah and a corner tower anchoring the verandah on its west side. Compositionally, the wing and tower create an armature that 'holds' in place and counterbalances the mobility implied by the verandah, by expressing movement in an outward direction rather than movement around the central mass of the building. Central unity derives from a hipped central roof, not unlike that of a country homestead. This is characteristic Federation composition, punctuated by touches of free style timber detailing around the doors and windows, related to the Queen Anne movement in England and America and as a general label applied at the time to such houses.[i] The timber detailing is stylized here into a set of slatted balusters, as in the wave-slatted verandah frieze and balustrade, and the half timbering suggestions around the wing window and the gable above it.
The verandah was partly enclosed in 1955, and a sun room was added in 1961.[ii] A garage was added in 1975. The house is sheltered from Toorak Road by an unsympathetic full-height fence built in 1976.[iii] As noted above, the original allotment has been subdivided and the garden has been extensively paved, to allow drive-in parking and reduced maintenance.
[i] See Mark Girouard, Sweetness and Light: the 'Queen Anne' movement, 1860-1900 Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977. Queen Anne was a term hastily applied to a free and loosely historical manner of housing developed by Norman Shaw and his inventive London contemporaries in the 1870s. The red brick and white window trim and other small decorative details were the only element that really linked this architecture with the actual terraces and houses of Queen Anne's time, but the term stuck. As a descriptive term Queen Anne became synonymous with any late nineteenth or turn of the century architecture that was generally experimental and free in its approach to period styles.
[ii] Details sourced from the City of Camberwell Building Index, #16580, dated 5 July 1955; # 18502, dated 25 May 1956; #30180, dated 1 December 1961.
[iii] Details sourced from the City of Camberwell Building Index, #57378, dated 18 July 1975 (garage); # 59053, dated 24 May 1976 (fence).
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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