HARLEY ESTATE & ENVIRONS PRECINCT
2-8 Bonville Court and 29-77 Cooloongatta Road and 28-92 Cooloongatta Road and 78-92 Fordham Avenue and 1-7 Gowar Avenue and 2-4 Gowar Avenue CAMBERWELL, BOROONDARA CITY
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Statement of Significance
What is Significant?
The Harley Estate & Environs Precinct is significant. It comprises 2-8 Bonville Court; 29-77 & 28-92 Cooloongatta Road; 78-92 Fordham Avenue; and 1-7 & 2-4 Gowar Avenue, Camberwell.
Most of Cooloongatta Road was part of the Camberwell Estate, on land released in 1921 and 1924. Houses in this part of the precinct were built between 1925 and 1940. At the south end of the precinct is the Harley Estate, which was created in 1935 by the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society to assist employees of the society to obtain their own homes, and then opened to the general public. Homes were architect-designed in the English cottage style to recreate an English village feel, and were constructed 1935-40.
The houses at 75 Cooloongatta Road and 78 Fordham Avenue are Significant to the precinct. Non-contributory houses at 29, 34, 36, 37, 41, 42, 48, 54, 60, 62, 68 & 82 Cooloongatta Road and 7 Gowar Avenue. The remaining properties, including the Methodist Church at 58 Cooloongatta Road, are Contributory. Original front fences and garages are contributory.
How is it significant?
The Harley Estate & Environs Precinct is of local historical, architectural and historical significance to the City of Boroondara.
Why is it significant?
The precinct as a whole is historically significant for exemplifying the important role of public transport in the suburban development of Camberwell prior to widespread car ownership by its proximity to Hartwell Station which was mentioned in advertisements for the Camberwell Estate subdivisions. (Criterion A)
Harley Estate is significant as an example of an unusual interwar employer-sponsored housing development in Boroondara. While there are many examples from the 19th century through to the 1950s of manufacturing businesses, such as brickworks and factories, building workers housing in Hawthorn, Canterbury and many other Melbourne suburbs, these were usually located so that employees could live near their place of work. In the Harley Estate, created for CBD office workers, we see the acceptance of the ideal of the suburban lifestyle which involved a daily train commute by fathers. (Criterion A)
Architecturally, the houses in the precinct are fine representative examples of styles popular during the 1920s and the 1930s, including California Bungalow, Art Deco, Tudor Revival/Old English, and Georgian Revival. The houses generally exhibit a high level of intactness, including the retention of many original front fences. (Criterion D)
The Harley Estate is of aesthetic significance for its high-quality architecture and visual unity. The estate was planned to resemble an English village, full of 'English cottage style' dwellings, which were the work of the most prominent designer of this style, Robert Bell Hamilton. These designs are distinguished by their quality design and details, including many that are repeated to indicate their inter-relatedness, including cut-outs of a pine tree or a simple flower seen on timber shutters and the gables of timber houses, gable vents created of brick headers set on an angle for clinker brick houses, and massive brick chimneys with corbelling at the top. The Significant dwellings at 75 Cooloongatta Road and 78 Fordham Avenue are fine two-storey examples of Georgian and half-timbered Old English dwellings, respectively. They are distinguished by their picturesque massing and distinctive details. As a whole, its serves as a showcase of the English-inspired domestic architecture for which Robert Bell Hamilton is so renowned. (Criteria E & H)
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HARLEY ESTATE & ENVIRONS PRECINCT - Physical Description 1
The Harley Estate & Environs Precinct is located in central Camberwell, situated on the east side of the Outer Circle Railway line (now the Alamein Railway line). The precinct encompasses interwar residential development on both sides of the north-south Cooloongatta Road, running from its intersection with Fordham Road at the south end, and around Carramar Avenue at the north. It also encompasses the entire extent of Harley Estate at the southern end of the precinct, which comprises the triangular block bounded by Cooloongatta Road, Fordham Avenue, and Gowar Avenue. Extending into the block from Gowar Avenue is Bonville Court, which was created as part of Harley Estate.
Within the precinct all roadways are asphalted and footpaths are of concrete. While Fordham Avenue retains bluestone kerb and channel, which characterised Victorian and Edwardian development, the remaining streets all have concrete kerbs as was typical of the interwar period. Street tree plantings in the precinct are generally immature and semi-mature eucalypts.
As noted in the history, Cooloongatta Road (and the north side of Gowar Avenue) began to develop in 1925, continuing into the 1930s. As a result, about half of the houses are Californian Bungalows, most of them are clad in weatherboards with brick porch piers and balustrades, while a few are entirely masonry (face brick or roughcast rendered). Some of these houses have a hipped roof, often combined with a projecting gable, while most have a transverse or cross-gabled roof, all clad in terracotta tiles. While a few houses have casement windows, which survived from the Edwardian period, most have double-hung sash windows in a projecting box frame. Most have a decorative upper sash, either divided into multiple square or diamond-shaped panes, while a few have diamond-pane or floral leadlights. Porch supports range from the very simple single or paired posts on a brick plinth, tapered or square piers, or cast-concrete dwarf or full-length columns. The heavy barley-sugar (twisted) columns of 50 Cooloongatta Road are an unusual variation. Other decorative details include exposed rafter tails below eaves, and a range of gable treatments, including timber shingles, roughcast render, and simple faux half-timbering created with cement sheet and cover straps.
One of the finest California Bungalows in the precinct is 30 Cooloongatta Road. It has a red brick plinth and roughcast rendered walls above window-sill level. Large in size, with generous gables, it retains high-quality details such as the tapered chimney, struts to the gable eaves, and diamond-shaped panes to the upper sashes. It is highly intact externally and retains an original brick front fence and wire side fence.
The bungalow at 76 Cooloongatta Road has an unusual front porch in the form of a pergola, resting on heavy rendered piers with decorative shaped rafter tails.
California Bungalows continued to be built into the early 1930s, often with a main hipped roof instead of gabled, for examples at 1-5 Gowar Avenue, built 1933-35. Otherwise they form a continuum with the 1920s bungalows in their materiality and detailing. By the mid-1930s, a whole range of new styles were popular, including Art Deco, Tudor Revival/Old English, and Georgian Revival.
The most common of these in this part of the precinct is Art Deco, which overlaps to a great degree with Tudor Revival (by the introduction of a depressed Tudor arch to the front porch or windows, as at 70 & 92 Cooloongatta Road). These houses are all masonry with tiled hipped roofs. Walls are finished in textured render with exposed brick decorative accents. Many of them retain geometric leadlights windows of clear glass to window sashes and doors. Like the California Bungalows, windows are timber double-hung sashes, sometimes in a Chicago window configuration (with a central fixed picture window), and often in projecting box frames.
A particularly good example of the Art Deco type is 32 Cooloongatta Road, which has tapestry brick decoration around openings and a fine brick and render front fence with a stepped design.
The quirkiest example, which defies precise stylistic definition is the house (and fence) at 49 Cooloongatta Road. It has a semi-circular front porch, with a round-headed openings and scalloped parapet. Windows have a shallow pediment design above them, with a Tudor-arched picture window below, and the front fence is similarly ornate.
The Harley Estate section of the precinct is characterised by substantial houses in the Old English and Georgian Revival styles. There are also a few, more modest, examples of these styles in the Camberwell Estate part of the precinct. There is a gabled weatherboard Georgian Revival house at 78 Cooloongatta Road, and two Old English houses (47 & 90 Cooloongatta Road). Of the three, 47 Cooloongatta Road is particularly successful, incorporating a catslide roof to the front porch.
Also of the 1930s is the Camberwell Methodist Church at 58 Cooloongatta Road, the once non-residential building in the precinct. Constructed in 1933, it adopts clinker brick for its plinth and red brick for the walls with render dressings. The church has a free medieval character, with a jerkin-head roof, a crenelated entrance porch and a window and door lintel treatment that suggests a Tudor label mould.
The Harley Estate, at the south end of the precinct, was developed over a very short period of time, 1935-40, and designs were mostly by a single firm of architects, so it is very cohesive in appearance. Even so, there are cross-linkages with the remainder of the precinct along Cooloongatta Road, both in the interwar era of the development and the presence of Arts Deco, Old English and Georgian Revival style houses. Harley Estate does stand out, due to the predominant use of face clinker brick, while other 1930s houses in the precinct are mostly rendered, and particularly due to the presence of many substantial, two-storey and attic-storey houses (4 & 6 Bonville Court; 75 & 77 Cooloongatta Road; 78 & 80 Fordham Avenue; and 2 Gowar Avenue), which are not present in the remainder of the precinct. Harley Estate is also distinctive for signature details of architects Hamilton and Norris, which appear on houses in a range of styles. These are cut-outs of a pine tree or a simple flower seen on timber shutters and the gables of timber houses, gable vents created of brick headers set on an angle for clinker brick houses, and massive brick chimneys with corbelling at the top. Many of the houses also retain Hamilton's characteristic medieval lanterns hung at entrances, heavy ledged front doors some with a linen-fold pattern (also seen on the shutters at 73 Cooloongatta Road), and diamond-pane leadlight windows, again emulating medieval houses in England.
The houses in Harley Estate can be divided into two basic groups: picturesque revivalist houses, many of them large, that are typical of Hamilton's oeuvre; and stripped back, Art Deco houses with minimal detail, most of them single-storey. Original plans survive for some of the houses, indicating that Hamilton and Norris were responsible for the design of some (probably most) of the simple houses as well, for example, 74 Fordham Avenue. Two exceptions to this are the two cream-brick houses in the precinct: the Art Deco house with a semi-circular bay at 76 Fordham Avenue (1938), and the Old English-Moderne hybrid at 4 Gowar Avenue. The other 'simple' houses in the precinct have clinker brick walls and steel or double-hung timber sash windows.
The revivalist houses in Harley Estate are predominantly Old English, the style for which Hamilton is best known (4 Bonville Court; 65, 67, 71 & 77 Cooloongatta Road; 78 Fordham Avenue; 2 Gowar Avenue). These houses are all of clinker brick with gabled roofs. Most have steeply pitched roofs with vergeless gables and the offset brick vents in the gable, for example, both the house and the (original but extended) garage at 65 Cooloongatta Road. The only exception is the house at 71 Cooloongatta Road, which has a more standard, lower pitched roof. This house has a bargeboard and weatherboards in the gable, with a cut-out pine tree at the centre. It is also ornamented with curved timber struts to the eaves and framing the entrance. Most of the houses have rectangular six-over-six double-hung timber windows, which demonstrate a cross-over with the Georgian Revival. Two have more medievalising diamond-pane leadlights in their sash windows (78 Fordham Avenue, 2 Gowar Avenue). 77 Cooloongatta Road also has casement windows to the stairwell with a variation on diamond leadlights. Note that 4 Bonville Court (of 1940) has simpler ornamentation than the others in this group, which may indicate other authorship than Hamilton.
The finest example of this group is the Individually Significant 78 Fordham Avenue. It is a two-storey house with a steep cross-gabled roof with deep eaves. Its height is emphasised by the narrowness of the gabled-fronted facade and its position atop a slight slope. The ground floor is clad in clinker bricks with a canted bay to the facade while the first floor and steep gables are finished in half timbering with a king-post truss pattern in the gable. Windows have diamond-pane leadlights. The house retains an attached garage at the rear, accessed via ornately scrolled wrought-iron gates. The front fence piers echo the gables of the house. Overall, it is a picturesque and well-detailed composition that stays close to the English roots of the style. The house is highly intact externally, apart from the recent (2017) addition of a matching carport.
The second group is Georgian Revival, one example showing a clear American influence (6 Bonville Court, 69, 73 & 75 Cooloongatta Road, 80 Fordham Avenue). All but one of these houses has a hipped roof. The rendered houses at 69 and 73 Cooloongatta Road have very typical massing for 1930s dwellings, with a tiled hipped roof and projecting hipped roof room to one side of the front facade. No. 69 has Tuscan-order columns to its inset front porch, while No. 73 has a flat concrete hood, and shutters with a linen-fold design and cut-out flower. The clinker brick two storey house at 80 Fordham Avenue shares features with the Old English Houses, including a vergeless gabled entry porch and a vergeless catslide roof to one side of the facade. All of these houses have six-over-six double-hung sash windows. The two-storey house at 6 Bonville Court may be the work of another designer than Hamilton, as it has louvered shutters (instead of ledged with a decorative cut-out), and does not share any other obvious characteristics with the other house. It is distinguished by an elegantly simple entrance portico of a flat entablature and slender Egyptian papyrus-leaf columns.
The finest example of this group is the Individually Significant 75 Cooloongatta Road. It is a timber house that shows a clear American influence. Unlike the other Georgian houses in the Harley Estate, it has a gabled roof. The roof is very similar to that of the Old English houses, with a complex form, a very steep pitch and vergeless gables. The eaves and an oriel window are supported on chunky curved timber brackets. The ledged shutters and gable ends feature a cut-out pine tree. The ground floor is of clinker brick and the upper levels are clad in weatherboards. The house is very sculptural in form and a striking landmark on this street.
Within the precinct, many houses retain their original front fence. In almost all cases, these are dwarf brick fences - sometimes rendered in part - that were so popular in the 1930s (seen at 8 Bonville Court; 30, 32, 35, 49, 51, 65, 66, 70, 74 & 78 Cooloongatta Road; 74, 78 & 80 Fordham Road; and 2 Gowar Avenue). Among this group, the standout is at 49 Cooloongatta Road, which has face brick piers and plinth and a reverse-arched rendered infill. Two exceptions to the brick front fence are an original dwarf timber picket front fence at 3 Gowar Avenue, and a timber and cyclone-mesh front fence at 69 Cooloongatta Road (NB: 49 Cooloongatta Road has a side fence of this type as well). In the Harley Estate, original garages are visible from the street in a number of cases, both freestanding (65 Cooloongatta Road) and attached to the house (4 & 6 Bonville Court; 78 Fordham Avenue). There are likely to be more original garages in this part of the precinct that are not readily visible but are worthy of protection.
Generally, the intactness of the houses within the precinct is very high. The bricks of the porches of California Bungalows have been painted over in a few instances (35, 43, 46 & 84 Cooloongatta Road), but all of the brick accents to the rendered Arts Deco and Tudor houses remains intact, but the walls of the cream brick house at 72 Fordham Avenue have been rendered over. Two porches have been enclosed with windows (28 & 52 Cooloongatta Road), another has neo-Federation posts replacing the porch supports (1 Gowar Avenue), and an arched opening to the facade of 80 Cooloongatta Road has been infilled. Another two houses have replacement windows (31 Cooloongatta Road and 72 Fordham Avenue), and another has an enlarged and replaced front door (46 Cooloongatta Road). The most dramatic alteration has been construction of double-storey extensions to a number of the single-storey dwellings (45, 46, 51, 64 & 73 Cooloongatta Road; and 1 Gowar Avenue), but the original proportions and roof forms are still legible as most sit back from the ridgeline.
Heritage Study and Grading
Boroondara - Municipal-Wide Heritage Gap Study: Vol. 2 Camberwell
Author: Context
Year: 2018
Grading: Local
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