A Streamline Moderne Mansion - Essendon
This wonderfully sleek and stylised Art Deco mansion built in the 1930s may be found in the Melbourne suburb of Essendon.
The clean uncluttered lines of the mansion are very Streamline Moderne in design. The mansion is made almost entirely of clinker bricks and features a wide circular sun deck balcony. It has very functionalist windows and a feature "waterfall window" of curved floor to ceiling glass on the ground floor, mirroring the curve of the sun deck above. Aside from a small amount of wrought iron balustrading and a matching grille on the front door, it is entirely devoid of decoration. The whole property is surrounded by its original low brick wall.
Essendon was etablished in the 1860s and became an area of affluence and therefore only had middle-class, upper middle-class and some very wealthy citizens. The modernity of this mansion, which is so different to that of its Queen Anne and Arts and Crafts style neighbours was built by either an architecturally inspired family or the parvenu who may have built this new mansion in place of an older house. A mansion like this built in the finest pocket of Essendon suggests that it was built for an aspiring upper class family of some means. Even in the 1930s world of labour saving devices and minimalism, this mansion would have required a small retinue of servants to maintain.
A Streamline Moderne Mansion - Essendon
This wonderfully sleek and stylised Art Deco mansion built in the 1930s may be found in the Melbourne suburb of Essendon.
The clean uncluttered lines of the mansion are very Streamline Moderne in design. The mansion is made almost entirely of clinker bricks and features a wide circular sun deck balcony. It has very functionalist windows and a feature "waterfall window" of curved floor to ceiling glass on the ground floor, mirroring the curve of the sun deck above. Aside from a small amount of wrought iron balustrading and a matching grille on the front door, it is entirely devoid of decoration. The whole property is surrounded by its original low brick wall.
Essendon was etablished in the 1860s and became an area of affluence and therefore only had middle-class, upper middle-class and some very wealthy citizens. The modernity of this mansion, which is so different to that of its Queen Anne and Arts and Crafts style neighbours was built by either an architecturally inspired family or the parvenu who may have built this new mansion in place of an older house. A mansion like this built in the finest pocket of Essendon suggests that it was built for an aspiring upper class family of some means. Even in the 1930s world of labour saving devices and minimalism, this mansion would have required a small retinue of servants to maintain.