ST THERESE'S CATHOLIC CHURCH
48A LINCOLN ROAD, ESSENDON, MOONEE VALLEY CITY
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Statement of Significance
What is significant?
St Therese's Catholic Church at 48A Lincoln Road, Essendon, is significant. The 1934 church was designed by architectural practice Payne & Dale. It is sited on the diagonal, to face the intersection of Lincoln Road and Florence Street. The church is monumental in scale and the facade is dominated by a soaring central tower. The walls are of clinker brick, with red brick dressings and a terracotta tiled roof. The church sits within a large forecourt, defined by rubble stone walls and garden beds, which are contemporary with the church.
Other buildings on the site, including the Parish Office on Lincoln Road and the school buildings along Edward Street with associated play areas, are not significant.
How is it significant?
St Therese's Catholic Church is of local historical, architectural/aesthetic and social significance to the City of Moonee Valley.
Why is it significant?
It is historically significant as an ambitious example of the Catholic Church's conscious decision to accelerate building programs during the 1930s depression as a form of social support by providing employment and business for many local tradesmen and suppliers. (Criterion A)
The church is architecturally significant as a monumental and highly intact example of the Romanesque Revival style applied in a stripped and streamlined manner. This same modern approach characterises Payne & Dale's other important design: St Monica's Catholic Church, also of 1934, which is a monumental sandstone building in a modern Spanish Gothic style. Architect Thomas G Payne was an Essendon local who had previously worked for the St Therese parish with his father in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The building is distinguished by its high-quality materials and details such as the red brick dressings and corbel tables, but mainly for the dramatic massing of its central front tower whose height is emphasised by its diminishing size and the elongated buttresses that project from its corners. Its monumental quality is enhanced by its dramatic diagonal siting. (Criteria E & H)
The forecourt, which wraps around the two street frontages of the church, with its rubble stone walls and garden beds, enhances the presentation of the church. (Criterion E)
St Therese's is socially significant as the centre of Catholic worship in the North Essendon Parish since 1922. (Criterion G)
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ST THERESE'S CATHOLIC CHURCH - Physical Description 1
The St Therese's Catholic Church complex stands on the south-west corner of Lincoln Road and Florence Street. Behind the 1934 church stands the Parish office and to its east a number of modern school buildings along Edwards Street, which together comprise almost half of the block bounded by Lincoln Road, and Florence, Edwards and Thorn streets. The 1934 church is of a monumental scale, and its visibility is amplified by its siting on a diagonal, oriented to address the intersection of Lincoln Road and Florence Street.
The church is a striking clinker-brick building with a cruciform plan, in the Neo-Romanesque style. Its most prominent feature is the soaring tower with prominent corner buttresses at the centre of the front facade. The high nave is flanked by two parapeted aisles, and the transept has prominent parapeted gables with rose windows above a small gabled porch. The roof of Marseille roof tiles is accentuated by a dog-tooth frieze of red brick below the eaves. Red brick is also used as parapet copings, as decorative bands, as voussoirs to the round-arched windows and doors, and around oculus windows. The tower form is stepped and crowned with an octagonal belfry and with stylised arcaded corbel tables above and below. The tall central stained glass window is an elongated round arched window with a contemporary pattern of leaded glass, a keystone at the top and raked brick sill. The entrance porch and tower is flanked by the original baptistery and committee rooms with hip roofs set behind parapets connecting at a stepped cross detail in the centre of the tower.
The front doors sit below a tympanum with a relief of two kneeling angels. The double doors have a traditional coffered form but appear to be of modern anodised aluminium.
The interwar hard landscaping survives with a rubble stone wall around the perimeter and garden beds of the same stone. The chequerboard pattern of concrete and brick edging to the church forecourt is sympathetic and may also be early.
Heritage Study and Grading
Moonee Valley - Moonee Valley Heritage Study
Author: Context Pty Ltd, 2015
Year: 2015
Grading: LocalMoonee Valley - City of Moonee Valley Stage 1 Heritage Gap Study
Author: Context PL
Year: 2013
Grading:
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ESSENDON RAILWAY STATION COMPLEXVictorian Heritage Register H1562
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CANARY ISLAND DATE PALM AVENUE (PHOENIX CANARIENSIS)Victorian Heritage Register H1200
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FORMER ESSENDON HIGH SCHOOLVictorian Heritage Register H1294
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"1890"Yarra City
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"AMF Officers" ShedMoorabool Shire
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"AQUA PROFONDA" SIGN, FITZROY POOLVictorian Heritage Register H1687
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1) ST. ANDREWS HOTEL AND 2) CANARY ISLAND PALM TREENillumbik Shire
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