"Stratton Heights" - Alexandra Avenue, South Yarra
"Stratton Heights" is a large complex of Art Deco flats designed by Howard Lawson in the late 1930s for Melbourne rag trade character Harry Newport, who had a very successful clothes and fabric import business in Melbourne's Flinders Lane.
Advertised as "bachelor flats" when first built and leased, "Stratton Heights" has a very pared down masculine look about it, with Functionalist streamlined windows and a flat roof. Unlike some of its nighbouring apartment complexes, built in the 20s and 30s, it has no decorative wall treatment beyond the cream stuccoed concrete. A round tower helps to soften its look, as do the ballustrades, which owe more to the Spanish Mission style of the 30s than Functionalism or Streamline Moderne.
With a prominent terraced street frontage along Alexandra Avenue it affords splendid views overlooking the Yarra River to Richmond and the Melbourne city skyline. Harry Newport lived in the penthouse on the very top when the flats were first built, and a friend of mine who moved into "Stratton Heights" in 1945 after the Second World War (who still owns a flat sold to him by Harry Newport in the late 1950s) remembers Christmas and New Year parties held in the penthouse and its rooftop garden.
The "Stratton Heights" complex stretches right back to Davidson Street, where there is a second entrance and a driveway to the only garage, intended for use by the occupier of the penthouse.
"Stratton Heights" - Alexandra Avenue, South Yarra
"Stratton Heights" is a large complex of Art Deco flats designed by Howard Lawson in the late 1930s for Melbourne rag trade character Harry Newport, who had a very successful clothes and fabric import business in Melbourne's Flinders Lane.
Advertised as "bachelor flats" when first built and leased, "Stratton Heights" has a very pared down masculine look about it, with Functionalist streamlined windows and a flat roof. Unlike some of its nighbouring apartment complexes, built in the 20s and 30s, it has no decorative wall treatment beyond the cream stuccoed concrete. A round tower helps to soften its look, as do the ballustrades, which owe more to the Spanish Mission style of the 30s than Functionalism or Streamline Moderne.
With a prominent terraced street frontage along Alexandra Avenue it affords splendid views overlooking the Yarra River to Richmond and the Melbourne city skyline. Harry Newport lived in the penthouse on the very top when the flats were first built, and a friend of mine who moved into "Stratton Heights" in 1945 after the Second World War (who still owns a flat sold to him by Harry Newport in the late 1950s) remembers Christmas and New Year parties held in the penthouse and its rooftop garden.
The "Stratton Heights" complex stretches right back to Davidson Street, where there is a second entrance and a driveway to the only garage, intended for use by the occupier of the penthouse.