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Rounded Art Deco Villa in White - Travancore

Built in the late 1930s, this very stylised Art Deco villa can be found in the Melbourne suburb of Travancore. The rounded roofline featuring speed lines and the horizontal focus of the design of the house all pay homage to the chic, uncluttered lines of Functionalist Moderne Art Deco architecture, which often featured a horizontal emphasis.

 

Travancore is a bijou suburb named after a beautiful Victorian mansion erected in 1863. The mansion's grounds were subdivided in the late 1890s to form the new suburb, which consists only of only about five streets. With commanding views of Royal Park, the area was much sought after by aspiring middle and upper middle-class citizens. This medium-sized residence was built on the lowest section of the hill which the Travancore estate once covered, however, its owners had it elevated to allow views over the trees of the parkland, and it is approached by way of a wide sweeping set of stairs which cut their way through a terraced garden. This would suggest it may have been acquired by an aspiring middle-class family who wanted modernity and had enough money to build in the area. The mistress of this house would probably have kept it without any help from outside except for a "daily" woman to do the harder, more manual chores.

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Uploaded on June 16, 2011
Taken on June 13, 2011