Beverley Hills is a landmark historic apartment development at 65 Darling Street in South Yarra, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, designed by the architect and developer Howard Lawson, and built in 1935-36. Consisting of two blocks in a shared landscape including a swimming pool, they are the best known of a larger precinct of at least 15 apartment buildings in the immediate area. [1] all developed by Lawson and business partner Reginald Biffen in the 1930s, . [2] [3] [4]
Howard Ratcliff Lawson (1886–1946) was an architect, property developer and builder who specialised in apartments from the 1910s to the 1940s. He is reputed to have designed over 200 places, [5] and is most noted for the series of apartments in and around the Beverley Hills blocks, as well as the Gardens of the Moon at Arthur's Seat. [2] Lawson famously advertised himself as ‘the architect who builds’, [6] a claim that later seemed to stretch the truth since was not a registered architect. In 1923 his application to the new architects registration board had been rejected since the board frowned on the practice of being both architect and builder, [7] however, up until 1939 there was no restriction on the use of the term architect.
By the 1920s in Australia, the apartment was growing more common as an accepted means of housing, as areas like Potts Point and Darlinghurst in Sydney and St Kilda in Melbourne began to embrace higher-density living. However, despite an increasingly affluent clientele, there was still a widely held belief that flats were not fit for a home and high-density living was still often associated with the crowded workers tenements of North America and Europe. This led to attempts to ban flats outright by some local governments in NSW and Victoria and the different laws introduced by governments in the two states begin to create differing languages of design in the two cities, with Melbourne's stricter open space provisions creating a unique character of apartments in the city. Melbourne apartment buildings were very rarely more than three storeys, ie. ‘walk ups’ without lifts, and usually set back from boundaries with sometimes large front gardens, unlike their sometimes larger scale Sydney counterparts. This type of development allowed the inner south and eastern suburbs of Melbourne where apartment development concentrated, around St Kilda, Elwood and South Yarra, to maintain a more suburban image. [3] Unlike Sydney, only two 'elevator' blocks were built in the CBD itself before WW2, and only a handful outside.
It was against this backdrop that Lawson constructed his Beverley Hills blocks, which, at a total of seven storeys high, caused a stir amongst nearby residents. Lawson's future work on the site was subsequently restricted to three storeys, making the Beverley Hills complex unique in the area and indeed Melbourne for its size and character.
The development consisted of two separate blocks, with the larger Block 2 set behind and uphill from Block 1, on a steep sloping site up from Darling Street. Each block is nominally 5 storeys, but with the slope allowing for flats below the main entrance, the front building, Block 1 is six floors and the rear Block 2 is seven. They are set within a landscape of steep stairs and paths, balustrades and platforms, amongst heavy planting of trees and shrubs, with the famous pool part way up the site.
Each block includes a tall narrow light well/courtyard which includes the access stairs, allowing some light and air to penetrate into the building.
Most apartments are 1 or 2 bedrooms, tightly planned with a small kitchen, and bathroom, with the emphasis being on the living and bedroom spaces. Most apartments maintain a strong visual connection to the outside through balconies, opening to the land along or on upper levels sweeping views north towards the Yarra River and over the flat suburb of Richmond beyond.
Arguably the most flamboyant of Lawson's work in South Yarra, Beverley Hills can be broadly described as Spanish Mission style, but in Lawsons own eclectic version, with a dash of Hollywood-esque glamour. [4] The style was particularly popular in California, New Mexico and Florida and brought together elements of Spanish Baroque with a romanticized image of the simplicity and monastic qualities of the early Californian Spanish Missions. Brought to Australia in 1918 by Leslie Wilkinson, professor of Architecture at Sydney University, the style was popularized by many Hollywood stars during the interwar period, and became associated with glamour and luxury, influencing a number of up-market homes in and around Sydney. [8] As evident in the name ‘Beverley Hills’, a clear reference to upscale Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, Lawson's otherwise modest flats express the opulence and grandeur of 1930s Hollywood, even featuring an under-water window into the swimming pool.
Architecturally, the building features the motif of a circle and a cross in the balustrading and detailing, seen in much of Lawson's work. Spanish Mission style elements include the rough textured grey stucco used throughout, the barley sugar-twist columns, [9] the elaborate patterning on the window cills and above some of the windows, and the steep red tiled roofs. Some medieval ‘Old English’ features also appear, in the lettering of the signage and the diamond pattern leadlight windows.
The large mass of the buildings are varied by the use of shallow bay windows, inset balconies, and projecting horizontal balconies at the top floor, and the deep raves of the roofs (which are effectively just for show, with flat roofs used a patios behind).
Like the architecture, the choice of planting heavily references the Hollywood Spanish style, with palms and cactus featuring throughout the complex, as well as vines and creepers which soften the greyness of the stucco finish.
An apartment, flat, or unit is a self-contained housing unit that occupies part of a building, generally on a single storey. There are many names for these overall buildings. The housing tenure of apartments also varies considerably, from large-scale public housing, to owner occupancy within what is legally a condominium, to tenants renting from a private landlord.
South Yarra is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 4 km south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the Cities of Melbourne and Stonnington local government areas. South Yarra recorded a population of 25,028 at the 2021 census.
East Melbourne is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 km (1.2 mi) east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Melbourne local government area. East Melbourne recorded a population of 4,896 at the 2021 census.
Australian residential architectural styles have evolved significantly over time, from the early days of structures made from relatively cheap and imported corrugated iron to more sophisticated styles borrowed from other countries, such as the California bungalow from the United States, the Georgian style from Europe and Northern America, and the Victorian style from the United Kingdom. A common feature of the Australian home is the use of fencing in front gardens, also common in both the United Kingdom and the United States.
Neville Gruzman, AM was an Australian architect, mayor of Woollahra, writer and architectural activist. He is considered to have exerted a decisive influence on Sydney's architecture, mostly through his dedication to designing architecture that reacts to the landscape and to the needs of the client.
Neil Clerehan was an Australian architect and architectural writer.
Frederick Romberg,, , was a Swiss-trained architect who migrated to Australia in 1938, and became a leading figure in the development of Modernism in his adopted city.
Dr. Graeme Cecil Gunn AM is an Australian architect and former Dean of the School of Architecture at RMIT.
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The Brunswick Fire Station and Flats, located at 24 Blyth Street, Brunswick, Victoria, Australia, was constructed in 1937–1938. Designed by Seabrook and Fildes, it was the first fire station commissioned by the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade to embrace a Modernist ideology.
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Yarrabee Flats is a building located at 44 Walsh street, South Yarra, Melbourne, Australia consisting of five flats. Built in 1940. it was designed by the Australian architecture firm, Romberg & Shaw, and is known for introducing European Modernist architecture into flat development in Melbourne.
Dr Ernest Fooks was an influential European-trained architect who made a significant contribution to architecture, town planning, and design education in Australia and to the cultural life of Melbourne after emigrating to the city just before the Second World War.
Mary Turner Shaw (1906–1990) was an Australian architect. She was born in Caulfield, Melbourne, Australia and is one of the first women to be employed as an architect in the early 1930s in Australia and thus pioneered new pathways for female architects. Her career is widely known for her working qualities that made her oversee many projects across Australia. She also became a distinct figure as an architectural historian, when she started publishing books and written articles. Her skills were diverse as she worked as a fashion designer, interior designer, project manager, public works architect and pioneer architectural librarian. As historian Geoffrey Serle described her, she was "a born writer and research historian with imagination, the ability to tell a story and define and ask fundamental questions".
Mordechai Benshemesh was a noted architect who practiced in Melbourne, Australia from the 1950s to the 1970s. Born in Palestine, he was one of a number of often Jewish émigré architects who migrated to Australia both before and after World War II who brought a different approach to architecture, as well as an appreciation of apartment living. He is best known as the architect for one of the city's first high rise modernist apartment blocks, Edgewater Towers in St Kilda.
Edgewater Towers is a high rise apartment block located in the suburb of St Kilda in Melbourne, Australia. The building, completed in 1961, was Melbourne's first, high rise residential apartment block and the tallest in Victoria until Domain Park Flats was completed in 1962. The building was designed by émigré architect Mordechai Benshemesh who designed many multi-storey buildings in St Kilda and Elwood. Edgewater Towers is considered to be Benshemesh's most iconic design. Edgewater Towers stands at 44 m tall (architectural), 39 m tall, and 13 storeys tall.
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