View allAll Photos Tagged ArtDecoArchitecture
Arnos Grove tube station.
The station was designed by Charles Holden and opened September, 1932. For six months, Arnos Grove was the terminus of the Piccadilly Line.
"...Arnos Grove station announces its presence in clean-cut, crystal-clear architectural terms. A great glazed and corniced, brick, steel and glass drum sits on top of what is essentially a hollow box made of the same simple and unadorned materials...
...Homely yet magnificent, modest yet capacious, the design of Arnos Grove is a brilliant architectural tightrope act. In London, despite the bravura qualities of some of the stations built in the 1990s for the Jubilee line extension, its design has never been bettered.
When it opened, the station was truly what German art historians would describe as a gesamtkunstwerk, a total and entire work of art. Not only did lettering used throughout the station complement the architecture, so did its benches, lamps, ticket machines and, of course, Harry Beck's underground maps. Adverts on display inside and outside the ticket hall, and along the lengths of its platforms, might be designed by such distinguished graphic artists as Edward McKnight Kauffer, Hans Schleger and Man Ray. Trains that came to serve its platforms included the sleekly purposeful 1938 tube stock designed, at Acton Works, by a team led by W S Graff-Baker, the underground's chief mechanical engineer. By the 1950s, among the buses that met these trains were the RT double-deckers designed, at Chiswick Works, under the direction of Eric Ottaway, Frank Pick's technical officer (buses and coaches). In the 1960s, these superbly proportioned and beautifully engineered double-deckers were joined by the long-lived, and now much missed, Routemasters, the last buses designed and built in London for Londoners.
No detail was too insignificant for Holden, Pick and Arnos Grove station. From 1937, LPTB bus stops, at Arnos Grove as elsewhere, were standardised to a streamlined concrete design adorned with signs by Hans Schleger. Seat fabrics of tube trains and London buses - hardwearing, innovative moquettes - were styled by textile designers such as Enid Marx (1902-1998) and the American-born Marion Dorn (1896-1964). No wonder architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described Frank Pick's LPTB as "a civilising agent". No wonder many of us still look at Arnos Grove station today and think, why can't we ensure such high standards of integrated, imaginative, wholly convincing and well-crafted public design today?"
Jonathan Glancey, architecture critic for the Guardian
This monumental office building was designed by for the eponymous insurance company by architects Master, Sarhe and Bhuta, with assistance from artistic designer N.G. Parsare.
It displays its Art Deco credentials in its huge vertical ribs, massive allegorical statuary (not quite sure who/what is being depicted though) and sleek clean lines. There are detailed reliefs depicting both Indian agricultural (to the right of the entrance) and industrial (to the left) scenes.
This neat Art Deco cottage villa with wonderful red brick detailing may be found in the South Gippsland town of Leongatha.
Sitting neatly amid its pretty cottage garden, the cottage is quite small, but its detailing makes up for what it lacks in size with stylishness. The use of Fibro cement sheets to build the cottage suggests it was built in the late 1930s. Other giveaway signs are the neat cottage style windows which are typical of the "Metroland" suburban style which was common throughout Britain and her dominions in the interwar years. It is the brickwork on this cottage and its stained glass nook windows that are perhaps its most charming features. The rounded Streamline Moderne enclosed vestibule of red brick with simple banding, the matching red brick stepped chimney and the geometric Art Deco designed stained glass nook windows to either side of the fireplace are all typical of the uncluttered lines of Australian Art Deco architecture in the late 30s, just before the Second World War. Unlike its neighbours, which are Victorian and and Edwardian, it is very stark in detail and stands out amongst the crowd. As most houses in Leongatha were built and well established by this time, this Art Deco villa is somewhat of a rarity in the town.
Leongatha is a town in the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges, South Gippsland Shire, Victoria, Australia, located 135 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. The town is the civic, commercial, industrial, religious, educational and sporting centre of the region. The Murray Goulburn Co-operative Co. Limited, is a farmers' co-operative which trades in Australia under the Devondale label, and has a dairy processing plant just north of the town producing milk-based products for Australian and overseas markets. First settlement of the area by Europeans occurred in 1845. The Post Office opened as Koorooman on 1 October 1887 and renamed Leongatha in 1891 when a township was established on the arrival of the railway. The Daffodil Festival is held annually in September. Competitions are held and many daffodil varieties are on display. A garden competition is also held and there are many beautiful examples throughout the provincial town. The South Gippsland Railway runs historical diesel locomotives and railcars between the market and dairy towns of Nyora and Leongatha, passing through Korumburra.
Although all the rooms of the Rone - Empire installation exhibition are amazing for many different reasons, there are two major standouts. The Study is one of them. It features walls of books covered with a portrait of Lily Sullivan, and the entire room is partially submerged in a lake of black water with the occasional red oak leaf floating across its glassy surface.
Melbourne based street artist Rone (Tyrone Wright) used the decaying glory of the 1933 Harry Norris designed Streamline Moderne mansion, Burnham Beeches in the Dandenong Ranges' Sherbrooke, between March the 6th and April 22nd to create an immersive hybrid art space for his latest installation exhibition; "Empire".
"Empire" combined a mixture of many different elements including art, sound, light, scent, found objects, botanic designs, objects from nature and music especially composed for the project by Nick Batterham. The Burnham Beeches project re-imagines and re-interprets the spirit of one of Victoria’s landmark mansions, seldom seen by the public and not accessed since the mid 1980s. According to Rone - Empire website; "viewers are invited to consider what remains - the unseen cultural, social, artistic and spiritual heritage which produces intangible meaning."
Rone was invited by the current owner of Burnham Beeches, restaurateur Shannon Bennett, to exhibit "Empire" during a six week interim period before renovations commence to convert the heritage listed mansion into a select six star hotel.
Rone initially imagined the mansion to be in a state of dereliction, but found instead that it was a stripped back blank canvas for him to create his own version of how he thought it should look. Therefore, almost all the decay is in fact of Rone's creation from grasses in the Games Room which 'grow' next to a rotting billiards table, to the damp patches, water staining and smoke damage on the ceilings. Nests of leaves fill some spaces, whilst tree branches and in one case an entire avenue of boughs sprout from walls and ceilings. Especially designed Art Deco wallpaper created in Rone's studio has been installed on the walls before being distressed and damaged. The rooms have been adorned with furnishings and objects that might once have graced the twelve original rooms of Burnham Beeches: bulbulous club sofas, half round Art Deco tables, tarnished silverware and their canteen, mirrored smoke stands of chrome and Bakelite, glass lamps, English dinner services, a glass drinks trolley, photos of people long forgotten in time, walnut veneer dressing tables reflecting the installation sometimes in triplicate, old wire beadsteads, luggage, shelves of books, an Underwood typewriter, a John Broadwood and Sons of London grand piano and even a Kriesler radiogramme. All these objects were then covered in a thick sheet or light sprinkling of 'dust' made of many different things including coffee grinds and talcum powder, creating a sensation for the senses. Burnham Beeches resonated with a ghostly sense of its former grandeur, with a whiff of bittersweet romance.
Throughout the twelve rooms, magnificent and beautifully haunting floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall portraits of Australian actress Lily Sullivan, star of the Foxtel re-make of Picnic at Hanging Rock, appear. Larger than life, each portrait is created in different colours, helping to create seasonal shifts as you move from room to room.
Although all the rooms are amazing for many different reasons, there are two major standouts. The Study is one. The Dining Room features two long tables covered in a Miss Havisham like feast of a trove of dinner table objects from silverware and glassware to empty oyster shells and vases of grasses and feathers.
The Dining Room installation I found especially confronting. In 1982, I visited Burnham Beeches when it was a smart and select hotel and had Devonshire tea in the dining room at a table alongside the full length windows overlooking the terraces below. I was shocked to see a room I remember appointed with thick carpets and tables covered in gleaming silver and white napery, strewn with dust and leaves, and adorned with Miss Havisham's feast of found dining objects.
I feel very honoured and privileged to be amongst the far too few people fortunate enough to have seen Rone's "Empire", as like the seasons, it is ephemeral, and it will already have been dismantled. Rone's idea is that, like his street art, things he creates don't last forever, and that made the project exciting. I hope that my photographs do justice to, and adequately share as much as is possible of this amazing installation with you.
Originally called the “Music Museum and Grainger Museum”, the “Grainger Museum” is a small Streamline Moderne Art Deco building, built between 1935 and 1939, a repository of items documenting the life, career and music of the well known Australian composer, folklorist and pianist, Percy Grainger (1882 – 1961).
Built on one of Melbourne’s grand tree lined boulevards, Royal Parade in Parkville, the autobiographical museum was constructed in two stages between 1935 and 1939, on land provided for the purpose by the University of Melbourne. The Grainger Museum was designed by the staff architect of Melbourne University, John Stevens Gawler (1885 – 1978) through his architectural firm Gawler and Drummond. The building, built of brown clinker bricks is typical of Streamline Moderne design in Australia in the late 1930s, yet it also has undertones of the Arts and Crafts movement. It has very little detailing on the outside, with a severe arched entranceway, two windows featuring Art Deco grillework, a few decorative panels of brickwork (quite typical of John Gawler’s work) and the remaining windows consisting of glass bricks. The name of the museum appears above the main entranceway in stark Art Deco lettering made of cast iron which have been painted black. The museum is circular and features a small central courtyard accessed by two sets of French doors. The courtyard facades are detailed with decorative brickwork.
The Grainger Museum received input from Mr. Grainger in its design as well as its purpose, as well as funding provided by the composer. Mr. Grainger had contemplated establishing an autobiographical museum in the early 1920s, following the sudden suicide of his mother Rose, to whom he was very devoted. The museum contains large quantity of material from Mr. Grainger’s life, including art and furnishings from his home, musical instruments that he used, compositions, recordings, reformist clothing, published scores, field recordings, photographs, books and personal items belonging not only to Mr. Grainger, but also his mother. It also contains a curio case of whips that Mr. Grainger used in sadomasochist sexual acts which were in a trunk given to the museum with strict instructions that it was not to be opened until ten year after his death. The trunk also contained photographs of the composer after sessions of self flagellation. The museum also contains large amounts of material concerning some of his musical contemporaries, many of whom have fallen into obscurity. The Grainger Museum was officially opened in December 1938, and was staffed and maintained by Mr. Grainger throughout his life.
Sadly, the Grainger Museum suffered some initial setbacks with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, when the building was used for storage for the duration, rather than its original purpose. The museum’s designs were also problematic, as the building was prone to leaks and required extensive waterproofing. The majority of objects were not put on public display until the 1950s when Mr. Grainger visited Australia with the intention of finishing his autobiographical project; something he failed to do as he set sail for his New York home with the task still incomplete. During the 1960s the Grainger Museum was opened to the public regularly for the first time and was sometimes used for concerts and musical workshops for jazz and other avant-garde music, which would have pleased Mr. Grainger, who sadly had died some five years before this eventuality. The Grainger Museum quietly closed its doors in 2003 for extensive renovation, restoration and conservation work. It reopened seven years later 2010, and has been open selectively ever since, showcasing Mr. Grainger’s life and works in a smart, well set out and discreet fashion.
Percy Aldridge Grainger was born in Brighton, Melbourne. He showed precocious talent in music, and at the age of 13 he left Australia to further his ability by attending the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1901 he moved to London, where with the assistance of his mother, he established himself as a successful society pianist, and developed a career as a concert performer and composer. During his time in London, he also collected original folk melodies and helped revive interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th Century. Mr. Grainger left England in 1914, and moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life, residing in White Haven, a suburb of New York with his mother, Rose, who was always his greatest supporter and exponent. Mr. Grainger took up American citizenship in 1918. After his mother committed suicide in 1922, he involved himself more with educational work, and created his own experimental and unusual musical compositions. He particularly enjoyed musical experiments with fantastic music machines that he imagined, and perhaps hoped, would supersede human interpretation one day. During this time, he also made adaptations of other composers' musical works. In 1926, while returning to America from a tour, he met Ella Ström, a Swedish-born artist, whom he married before an enraptured audience at one of his concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in 1928. Mr. Grainger already had a great interest in Nordic music, but his wife’s lineage only served to drive his passion for such music even more. As he grew older he continued to give concerts. He also revised and rearranged compositions of his own, preferring this to writing new music, of which he produced little. After the Second World War, he suffered ill health which reduced his productivity and activity in his passions, and he considered his career to be a failure. He gave his final concert in 1960, less than a year before his death. The piece of music with which Percy Grainger is most generally remembered is his pretty piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune “Country Gardens”.
The architectural firm of Gawler and Drummond was a prolific, though rather undistinguished firm that designed a range of domestic, industrial, commercial and church buildings. These include the McRorie house in Camberwell in 1916, the Fitzroy department store Ackmans Ltd in 1918, the Loch Church of England in 1926, the Korumburra Church of England in 1927, the Deaf and Dumb Society's church at Jolimont in 1929 and the Nyora Church of England in 1930. The Percy Grainger Museum is perhaps Gawler and Drummond’s most distinguished work.
The Grainger Museum was open as part of the 2014 Open House Melbourne Weekend.
Located near the top end of the main shopping strip, the Commercial Banking Company’s former Korumburra bank branch is a tribute to 1930s architectural style and stands out sharply amid its Victorian and Edwardian neighbours with its clean lines and bold brown brick and white painted colour scheme.
Like the Korumburra Masonic Hall around the corner, the Art Deco facade of the former bank branch, is extremely stripped back. The only piece of ornamentation identifying it as a branch of the Commercial Banking Company is the cartouche above the central window of the building, in which appear the letters CBC intertwined in classical script. Whilst the building now houses a firm of barristers and solicitors, when the building was occupied by its original owners there would not have been any more signage to advertise the business inside. There were identically designed and decorated branches in towns across South Gippsland to give uniformity and help with the recognition of the bank’s brand. There is still an existing example in Korumburra’s neighbouring town, Leongatha.
The building is very Inter-War Stripped Classical in style because of the limited decoration, its symmetrical façade, the division of the frontage into vertical bays indicating classical origin, vestigial classical columns and the element of the Art Deco style in its decoration. This Art Deco detailing is perhaps the building’s main attraction as it is very much in the “Egyptomania” or “Tutmania” style that gripped the world after the discovery of Pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. The columns have stylised papyrus capitals and the portico they hold up is decorated in the same patterns which is so evocative of the Jazz Age. A similar design of papyrus flowers top each of the three windows appearing on the bank’s façade. The bank also features Functionalist Moderne metal windows.
The Commercial Banking Company began operations on 1 November 1834 as The Commercial Banking Company of Sydney. In 1848 it was incorporated by an Act of the New South Wales Parliament. 1981 saw the bank amalgamate with the National Bank of Australasia Limited.
Korumburra is a medium-sized dairy and farming town in country Victoria, located on the South Gippsland Highway, 120 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. Surrounded by rolling green hills, the town has a population of a little over 4,000 people. Korumburra has built itself on coal mining (after the discovery of a coal seam in 1870), local forestry and dairy farming. Whilst the coal seam has been used up, farming in the area still thrives and a great deal of dairy produce is created from the area. The post office in the area opened on the 1st of September in 1884, and moved to the township on the railway survey line on the 1st of November 1889, the existing office being renamed Glentress. The steam railway connecting it with Melbourne arrived in 1891. Whilst the train line has long since operating commercially, it has found a new life as the popular tourist railway the South Gippsland Railway which operates a heritage railway service between the major country centre of Leongatha and the small market town of Nyora.
The current Bair’s Otago Hotel located at 18 – 22 Bair Street Leongatha, dates from 1939 and replaced the original hotel which has timber verandahs and cast iron lacework. The 1939 Bair’s Otago Hotel was designed by architect Trevor C. McCullough for Arthur C. Bair, whose father, Robert Bair, had purchased the site at the second sale of Leongatha township allotments held on 18 June, 1889. The first building on this site, known as Bair’s Coffee House, was constructed in 1890 and was subsequently renamed the ‘Otago’ upon the grant of a full hotel licence in March 1891. Due to the lack of any suitable public buildings at that time, the first hotel was to be the venue for Woorayl Council meetings until the new Shire Offices were opened in November 1891. The association of the Council with the Hotel continued for over 90 years, as Council adjourned to the Bair’s Otago Hotel on each meeting day for their midday lunch. This practice was finally discontinued in 1985.
Bair’s Otago Hotel is a two storey manganese brick and render corner hotel built in an amalgam of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne architectural styles. It displays typically strong vertical Art Deco elements in the façade, and horizontal canopies with rounded corners, which are more typical of the Streamline Moderne movement. The hotel features vertical counterpoints of flag pole, rain heads and downpipes and an end bay with a central pier of full height brick. The cantilevered street canopy expresses the corner with a semi-circular end below a band of face brickwork containing the upper windows and a recessed upper verandah with a projecting balustrade and canopy. The corner of Bair’s Otago Hotel features a splendid rounded glass brick infill to the upper floor, horizontal step and groove mouldings to the stepped parapet and the sign on the parapet in typical Art Deco lettering. Sadly, the original acid-etched glass windows of the hotel with a koala motif and the name of the hotel were removed during the post war years and have since been lost.
Historically, Bair’s Otago Hotel demonstrates the development of the hotel industry in the Shire through the interwar period. Whilst many earlier hotels were adapted to Art Deco or Streamline Moderne style in this period of change in the hotel trade, the Otago was completely rebuilt in a much more comprehensive expression of an amalgam of the two styles. It is a notable part of the historic interwar character of Bair Street.
Trevor C. McCullough was a Melbourne based architect and builder who designed and constructed a number of commercial buildings in the Shire during the interwar and immediate postwar period including Bair's Otago Hotel (1939), Elizabeth House (1940) and extensions to the Mirboo North Butter Factory (1949).
Leongatha is a town in the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges, South Gippsland Shire, Victoria, Australia, located 135 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. The town is the civic, commercial, industrial, religious, educational and sporting centre of the region. The Murray Goulburn Co-operative Co. Limited, is a farmers' co-operative which trades in Australia under the Devondale label, and has a dairy processing plant just north of the town producing milk-based products for Australian and overseas markets. First settlement of the area by Europeans occurred in 1845. The Post Office opened as Koorooman on 1 October 1887 and renamed Leongatha in 1891 when a township was established on the arrival of the railway. The Daffodil Festival is held annually in September. Competitions are held and many daffodil varieties are on display. A garden competition is also held and there are many beautiful examples throughout the provincial town. The South Gippsland Railway runs historical diesel locomotives and railcars between the market and dairy towns of Nyora and Leongatha, passing through Korumburra.
Originally called the “Music Museum and Grainger Museum”, the “Grainger Museum” is a small Streamline Moderne Art Deco building, built between 1935 and 1939, a repository of items documenting the life, career and music of the well known Australian composer, folklorist and pianist, Percy Grainger (1882 – 1961).
Built on one of Melbourne’s grand tree lined boulevards, Royal Parade in Parkville, the autobiographical museum was constructed in two stages between 1935 and 1939, on land provided for the purpose by the University of Melbourne. The Grainger Museum was designed by the staff architect of Melbourne University, John Stevens Gawler (1885 – 1978) through his architectural firm Gawler and Drummond. The building, built of brown clinker bricks is typical of Streamline Moderne design in Australia in the late 1930s, yet it also has undertones of the Arts and Crafts movement. It has very little detailing on the outside, with a severe arched entranceway, two windows featuring Art Deco grillework, a few decorative panels of brickwork (quite typical of John Gawler’s work) and the remaining windows consisting of glass bricks. The name of the museum appears above the main entranceway in stark Art Deco lettering made of cast iron which have been painted black. The museum is circular and features a small central courtyard accessed by two sets of French doors. The courtyard facades are detailed with decorative brickwork.
The Grainger Museum received input from Mr. Grainger in its design as well as its purpose, as well as funding provided by the composer. Mr. Grainger had contemplated establishing an autobiographical museum in the early 1920s, following the sudden suicide of his mother Rose, to whom he was very devoted. The museum contains large quantity of material from Mr. Grainger’s life, including art and furnishings from his home, musical instruments that he used, compositions, recordings, reformist clothing, published scores, field recordings, photographs, books and personal items belonging not only to Mr. Grainger, but also his mother. It also contains a curio case of whips that Mr. Grainger used in sadomasochist sexual acts which were in a trunk given to the museum with strict instructions that it was not to be opened until ten year after his death. The trunk also contained photographs of the composer after sessions of self flagellation. The museum also contains large amounts of material concerning some of his musical contemporaries, many of whom have fallen into obscurity. The Grainger Museum was officially opened in December 1938, and was staffed and maintained by Mr. Grainger throughout his life.
Sadly, the Grainger Museum suffered some initial setbacks with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, when the building was used for storage for the duration, rather than its original purpose. The museum’s designs were also problematic, as the building was prone to leaks and required extensive waterproofing. The majority of objects were not put on public display until the 1950s when Mr. Grainger visited Australia with the intention of finishing his autobiographical project; something he failed to do as he set sail for his New York home with the task still incomplete. During the 1960s the Grainger Museum was opened to the public regularly for the first time and was sometimes used for concerts and musical workshops for jazz and other avant-garde music, which would have pleased Mr. Grainger, who sadly had died some five years before this eventuality. The Grainger Museum quietly closed its doors in 2003 for extensive renovation, restoration and conservation work. It reopened seven years later 2010, and has been open selectively ever since, showcasing Mr. Grainger’s life and works in a smart, well set out and discreet fashion.
Percy Aldridge Grainger was born in Brighton, Melbourne. He showed precocious talent in music, and at the age of 13 he left Australia to further his ability by attending the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1901 he moved to London, where with the assistance of his mother, he established himself as a successful society pianist, and developed a career as a concert performer and composer. During his time in London, he also collected original folk melodies and helped revive interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th Century. Mr. Grainger left England in 1914, and moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life, residing in White Haven, a suburb of New York with his mother, Rose, who was always his greatest supporter and exponent. Mr. Grainger took up American citizenship in 1918. After his mother committed suicide in 1922, he involved himself more with educational work, and created his own experimental and unusual musical compositions. He particularly enjoyed musical experiments with fantastic music machines that he imagined, and perhaps hoped, would supersede human interpretation one day. During this time, he also made adaptations of other composers' musical works. In 1926, while returning to America from a tour, he met Ella Ström, a Swedish-born artist, whom he married before an enraptured audience at one of his concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in 1928. Mr. Grainger already had a great interest in Nordic music, but his wife’s lineage only served to drive his passion for such music even more. As he grew older he continued to give concerts. He also revised and rearranged compositions of his own, preferring this to writing new music, of which he produced little. After the Second World War, he suffered ill health which reduced his productivity and activity in his passions, and he considered his career to be a failure. He gave his final concert in 1960, less than a year before his death. The piece of music with which Percy Grainger is most generally remembered is his pretty piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune “Country Gardens”.
The architectural firm of Gawler and Drummond was a prolific, though rather undistinguished firm that designed a range of domestic, industrial, commercial and church buildings. These include the McRorie house in Camberwell in 1916, the Fitzroy department store Ackmans Ltd in 1918, the Loch Church of England in 1926, the Korumburra Church of England in 1927, the Deaf and Dumb Society's church at Jolimont in 1929 and the Nyora Church of England in 1930. The Percy Grainger Museum is perhaps Gawler and Drummond’s most distinguished work.
The Grainger Museum was open as part of the 2014 Open House Melbourne Weekend.
The Chrysler Building.
Midtown, Manhattan.
The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, located on the east side of Manhattan in the Turtle Bay area at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Standing at 319 metres (1,047 ft), it was the world's tallest building for 11 months before it was surpassed by the Empire State Building in 1931. After the destruction of the World Trade Center, it was again the second-tallest building in New York City until December 2007, when the spire was raised on the 365.8-metre (1,200 ft) Bank of America Tower, pushing the Chrysler Building into third position. In addition, The New York Times Building which opened in 2007, is exactly level with the Chrysler Building in height.
The Chrysler Building is a classic example of Art Deco architecture and considered by many contemporary architects to be one of the finest buildings in New York City. In 2007, it was ranked ninth on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects. It was the headquarters of the Chrysler Corporation from 1930 until the mid 1950's, but although the building was built and designed specifically for the car manufacturer, the corporation did not pay for the construction of it and never owned it, as Walter P. Chrysler decided to pay for it himself, so that his children could inherit it.
The Chrysler Building was designed by architect William Van Alen for a project of Walter P. Chrysler. When the ground breaking occurred on September 19, 1928, there was an intense competition in New York City to build the world's tallest skyscraper. Despite a frantic pace (the building was built at an average rate of four floors per week), no workers died during the construction of this skyscraper. - Source
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Originally called the “Music Museum and Grainger Museum”, the “Grainger Museum” is a small Streamline Moderne Art Deco building, built between 1935 and 1939, a repository of items documenting the life, career and music of the well known Australian composer, folklorist and pianist, Percy Grainger (1882 – 1961).
Built on one of Melbourne’s grand tree lined boulevards, Royal Parade in Parkville, the autobiographical museum was constructed in two stages between 1935 and 1939, on land provided for the purpose by the University of Melbourne. The Grainger Museum was designed by the staff architect of Melbourne University, John Stevens Gawler (1885 – 1978) through his architectural firm Gawler and Drummond. The building, built of brown clinker bricks is typical of Streamline Moderne design in Australia in the late 1930s, yet it also has undertones of the Arts and Crafts movement. It has very little detailing on the outside, with a severe arched entranceway, two windows featuring Art Deco grillework, a few decorative panels of brickwork (quite typical of John Gawler’s work) and the remaining windows consisting of glass bricks. The name of the museum appears above the main entranceway in stark Art Deco lettering made of cast iron which have been painted black. The museum is circular and features a small central courtyard accessed by two sets of French doors. The courtyard facades are detailed with decorative brickwork.
The Grainger Museum received input from Mr. Grainger in its design as well as its purpose, as well as funding provided by the composer. Mr. Grainger had contemplated establishing an autobiographical museum in the early 1920s, following the sudden suicide of his mother Rose, to whom he was very devoted. The museum contains large quantity of material from Mr. Grainger’s life, including art and furnishings from his home, musical instruments that he used, compositions, recordings, reformist clothing, published scores, field recordings, photographs, books and personal items belonging not only to Mr. Grainger, but also his mother. It also contains a curio case of whips that Mr. Grainger used in sadomasochist sexual acts which were in a trunk given to the museum with strict instructions that it was not to be opened until ten year after his death. The trunk also contained photographs of the composer after sessions of self flagellation. The museum also contains large amounts of material concerning some of his musical contemporaries, many of whom have fallen into obscurity. The Grainger Museum was officially opened in December 1938, and was staffed and maintained by Mr. Grainger throughout his life.
Sadly, the Grainger Museum suffered some initial setbacks with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, when the building was used for storage for the duration, rather than its original purpose. The museum’s designs were also problematic, as the building was prone to leaks and required extensive waterproofing. The majority of objects were not put on public display until the 1950s when Mr. Grainger visited Australia with the intention of finishing his autobiographical project; something he failed to do as he set sail for his New York home with the task still incomplete. During the 1960s the Grainger Museum was opened to the public regularly for the first time and was sometimes used for concerts and musical workshops for jazz and other avant-garde music, which would have pleased Mr. Grainger, who sadly had died some five years before this eventuality. The Grainger Museum quietly closed its doors in 2003 for extensive renovation, restoration and conservation work. It reopened seven years later 2010, and has been open selectively ever since, showcasing Mr. Grainger’s life and works in a smart, well set out and discreet fashion.
Percy Aldridge Grainger was born in Brighton, Melbourne. He showed precocious talent in music, and at the age of 13 he left Australia to further his ability by attending the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1901 he moved to London, where with the assistance of his mother, he established himself as a successful society pianist, and developed a career as a concert performer and composer. During his time in London, he also collected original folk melodies and helped revive interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th Century. Mr. Grainger left England in 1914, and moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life, residing in White Haven, a suburb of New York with his mother, Rose, who was always his greatest supporter and exponent. Mr. Grainger took up American citizenship in 1918. After his mother committed suicide in 1922, he involved himself more with educational work, and created his own experimental and unusual musical compositions. He particularly enjoyed musical experiments with fantastic music machines that he imagined, and perhaps hoped, would supersede human interpretation one day. During this time, he also made adaptations of other composers' musical works. In 1926, while returning to America from a tour, he met Ella Ström, a Swedish-born artist, whom he married before an enraptured audience at one of his concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in 1928. Mr. Grainger already had a great interest in Nordic music, but his wife’s lineage only served to drive his passion for such music even more. As he grew older he continued to give concerts. He also revised and rearranged compositions of his own, preferring this to writing new music, of which he produced little. After the Second World War, he suffered ill health which reduced his productivity and activity in his passions, and he considered his career to be a failure. He gave his final concert in 1960, less than a year before his death. The piece of music with which Percy Grainger is most generally remembered is his pretty piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune “Country Gardens”.
The architectural firm of Gawler and Drummond was a prolific, though rather undistinguished firm that designed a range of domestic, industrial, commercial and church buildings. These include the McRorie house in Camberwell in 1916, the Fitzroy department store Ackmans Ltd in 1918, the Loch Church of England in 1926, the Korumburra Church of England in 1927, the Deaf and Dumb Society's church at Jolimont in 1929 and the Nyora Church of England in 1930. The Percy Grainger Museum is perhaps Gawler and Drummond’s most distinguished work.
The Grainger Museum was open as part of the 2014 Open House Melbourne Weekend.
Although not famous for its Art Deco architecture, the provincial Victorian city of Ballarat, which was established between the 1860s and 1880s when the area was at the centre of a gold rush, does have some fine examples of interwar and post war architecture when the gold boom was replaced with wealth generated through grazing and agriculture.
These wonderful Streamline Moderne red and brown brick flats with rounded balconies and Functonalist windowframes achieve the refreshingly sleek style that was popular in the mid to late 1930s. Unlike many Art Deco buildings which focussed on angular detail, Streamline Moderne buildings often placed emphasis on rounded edges, as though they were standing up against a great wind. The rounded concrete rendered balcony edges are prime examples of such architectural features. Aside from these and a small amount of feature brickwork, the detail on these flats is minimal.
Originally called the “Music Museum and Grainger Museum”, the “Grainger Museum” is a small Streamline Moderne Art Deco building, built between 1935 and 1939, a repository of items documenting the life, career and music of the well known Australian composer, folklorist and pianist, Percy Grainger (1882 – 1961).
Built on one of Melbourne’s grand tree lined boulevards, Royal Parade in Parkville, the autobiographical museum was constructed in two stages between 1935 and 1939, on land provided for the purpose by the University of Melbourne. The Grainger Museum was designed by the staff architect of Melbourne University, John Stevens Gawler (1885 – 1978) through his architectural firm Gawler and Drummond. The building, built of brown clinker bricks is typical of Streamline Moderne design in Australia in the late 1930s, yet it also has undertones of the Arts and Crafts movement. It has very little detailing on the outside, with a severe arched entranceway, two windows featuring Art Deco grillework, a few decorative panels of brickwork (quite typical of John Gawler’s work) and the remaining windows consisting of glass bricks. The name of the museum appears above the main entranceway in stark Art Deco lettering made of cast iron which have been painted black. The museum is circular and features a small central courtyard accessed by two sets of French doors. The courtyard facades are detailed with decorative brickwork.
The Grainger Museum received input from Mr. Grainger in its design as well as its purpose, as well as funding provided by the composer. Mr. Grainger had contemplated establishing an autobiographical museum in the early 1920s, following the sudden suicide of his mother Rose, to whom he was very devoted. The museum contains large quantity of material from Mr. Grainger’s life, including art and furnishings from his home, musical instruments that he used, compositions, recordings, reformist clothing, published scores, field recordings, photographs, books and personal items belonging not only to Mr. Grainger, but also his mother. It also contains a curio case of whips that Mr. Grainger used in sadomasochist sexual acts which were in a trunk given to the museum with strict instructions that it was not to be opened until ten year after his death. The trunk also contained photographs of the composer after sessions of self flagellation. The museum also contains large amounts of material concerning some of his musical contemporaries, many of whom have fallen into obscurity. The Grainger Museum was officially opened in December 1938, and was staffed and maintained by Mr. Grainger throughout his life.
Sadly, the Grainger Museum suffered some initial setbacks with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, when the building was used for storage for the duration, rather than its original purpose. The museum’s designs were also problematic, as the building was prone to leaks and required extensive waterproofing. The majority of objects were not put on public display until the 1950s when Mr. Grainger visited Australia with the intention of finishing his autobiographical project; something he failed to do as he set sail for his New York home with the task still incomplete. During the 1960s the Grainger Museum was opened to the public regularly for the first time and was sometimes used for concerts and musical workshops for jazz and other avant-garde music, which would have pleased Mr. Grainger, who sadly had died some five years before this eventuality. The Grainger Museum quietly closed its doors in 2003 for extensive renovation, restoration and conservation work. It reopened seven years later 2010, and has been open selectively ever since, showcasing Mr. Grainger’s life and works in a smart, well set out and discreet fashion.
Percy Aldridge Grainger was born in Brighton, Melbourne. He showed precocious talent in music, and at the age of 13 he left Australia to further his ability by attending the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1901 he moved to London, where with the assistance of his mother, he established himself as a successful society pianist, and developed a career as a concert performer and composer. During his time in London, he also collected original folk melodies and helped revive interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th Century. Mr. Grainger left England in 1914, and moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life, residing in White Haven, a suburb of New York with his mother, Rose, who was always his greatest supporter and exponent. Mr. Grainger took up American citizenship in 1918. After his mother committed suicide in 1922, he involved himself more with educational work, and created his own experimental and unusual musical compositions. He particularly enjoyed musical experiments with fantastic music machines that he imagined, and perhaps hoped, would supersede human interpretation one day. During this time, he also made adaptations of other composers' musical works. In 1926, while returning to America from a tour, he met Ella Ström, a Swedish-born artist, whom he married before an enraptured audience at one of his concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in 1928. Mr. Grainger already had a great interest in Nordic music, but his wife’s lineage only served to drive his passion for such music even more. As he grew older he continued to give concerts. He also revised and rearranged compositions of his own, preferring this to writing new music, of which he produced little. After the Second World War, he suffered ill health which reduced his productivity and activity in his passions, and he considered his career to be a failure. He gave his final concert in 1960, less than a year before his death. The piece of music with which Percy Grainger is most generally remembered is his pretty piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune “Country Gardens”.
The architectural firm of Gawler and Drummond was a prolific, though rather undistinguished firm that designed a range of domestic, industrial, commercial and church buildings. These include the McRorie house in Camberwell in 1916, the Fitzroy department store Ackmans Ltd in 1918, the Loch Church of England in 1926, the Korumburra Church of England in 1927, the Deaf and Dumb Society's church at Jolimont in 1929 and the Nyora Church of England in 1930. The Percy Grainger Museum is perhaps Gawler and Drummond’s most distinguished work.
The Grainger Museum was open as part of the 2014 Open House Melbourne Weekend.
Trying out the 75-200 mm zoom lens with my old Minolta SRT 101 SLR 35 mm camera. This is a shot of the John W. McCormack Federal building in Boston's Post Office Square, with the zoom pretty much out at its maximum. The Art Deco styled structure was built in the early 1930's and originally housed the US Post Office and Courthouse. I did crop this image, but only a bit.
Minolta SRT 101 SLR
Minolta MD 75-200 zoom lens
f/16 1/125 (perfect day for 'Sunny 16 Rule')
Kodak Ektar 35mm film - ISO 100
Photoshop Elements/NIK Silver Efex Pro
Negative scanned on Canon f8800 flatbed scanner
The site opened in 1933 as the UK headquarters, manufacturing plant and repairs centre for The Hoover Company. The building is now owned by IDM Properties and has been converted into apartments.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Hoover_Buildi...
Omaha Union Station (1931) was the first Art Deco train station in the United States. It closed for rail service in the 1970s and now houses the Durham Museum. Omaha's other passenger train station, the Italianate Burlington Station (1898) also closed when a crappy modern Amtrak station was a block or so to the east (the Burlington may soon be renovated for adaptive reuse as apartments or some other use).
I recently returned from a week in my home town, Omaha (for Fathers Day, the College World Series at Rosenblatt Stadium, music & good friends, etc).
Originally called the “Music Museum and Grainger Museum”, the “Grainger Museum” is a small Streamline Moderne Art Deco building, built between 1935 and 1939, a repository of items documenting the life, career and music of the well known Australian composer, folklorist and pianist, Percy Grainger (1882 – 1961).
Built on one of Melbourne’s grand tree lined boulevards, Royal Parade in Parkville, the autobiographical museum was constructed in two stages between 1935 and 1939, on land provided for the purpose by the University of Melbourne. The Grainger Museum was designed by the staff architect of Melbourne University, John Stevens Gawler (1885 – 1978) through his architectural firm Gawler and Drummond. The building, built of brown clinker bricks is typical of Streamline Moderne design in Australia in the late 1930s, yet it also has undertones of the Arts and Crafts movement. It has very little detailing on the outside, with a severe arched entranceway, two windows featuring Art Deco grillework, a few decorative panels of brickwork (quite typical of John Gawler’s work) and the remaining windows consisting of glass bricks. The name of the museum appears above the main entranceway in stark Art Deco lettering made of cast iron which have been painted black. The museum is circular and features a small central courtyard accessed by two sets of French doors. The courtyard facades are detailed with decorative brickwork.
The Grainger Museum received input from Mr. Grainger in its design as well as its purpose, as well as funding provided by the composer. Mr. Grainger had contemplated establishing an autobiographical museum in the early 1920s, following the sudden suicide of his mother Rose, to whom he was very devoted. The museum contains large quantity of material from Mr. Grainger’s life, including art and furnishings from his home, musical instruments that he used, compositions, recordings, reformist clothing, published scores, field recordings, photographs, books and personal items belonging not only to Mr. Grainger, but also his mother. It also contains a curio case of whips that Mr. Grainger used in sadomasochist sexual acts which were in a trunk given to the museum with strict instructions that it was not to be opened until ten year after his death. The trunk also contained photographs of the composer after sessions of self flagellation. The museum also contains large amounts of material concerning some of his musical contemporaries, many of whom have fallen into obscurity. The Grainger Museum was officially opened in December 1938, and was staffed and maintained by Mr. Grainger throughout his life.
Sadly, the Grainger Museum suffered some initial setbacks with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, when the building was used for storage for the duration, rather than its original purpose. The museum’s designs were also problematic, as the building was prone to leaks and required extensive waterproofing. The majority of objects were not put on public display until the 1950s when Mr. Grainger visited Australia with the intention of finishing his autobiographical project; something he failed to do as he set sail for his New York home with the task still incomplete. During the 1960s the Grainger Museum was opened to the public regularly for the first time and was sometimes used for concerts and musical workshops for jazz and other avant-garde music, which would have pleased Mr. Grainger, who sadly had died some five years before this eventuality. The Grainger Museum quietly closed its doors in 2003 for extensive renovation, restoration and conservation work. It reopened seven years later 2010, and has been open selectively ever since, showcasing Mr. Grainger’s life and works in a smart, well set out and discreet fashion.
Percy Aldridge Grainger was born in Brighton, Melbourne. He showed precocious talent in music, and at the age of 13 he left Australia to further his ability by attending the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1901 he moved to London, where with the assistance of his mother, he established himself as a successful society pianist, and developed a career as a concert performer and composer. During his time in London, he also collected original folk melodies and helped revive interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th Century. Mr. Grainger left England in 1914, and moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life, residing in White Haven, a suburb of New York with his mother, Rose, who was always his greatest supporter and exponent. Mr. Grainger took up American citizenship in 1918. After his mother committed suicide in 1922, he involved himself more with educational work, and created his own experimental and unusual musical compositions. He particularly enjoyed musical experiments with fantastic music machines that he imagined, and perhaps hoped, would supersede human interpretation one day. During this time, he also made adaptations of other composers' musical works. In 1926, while returning to America from a tour, he met Ella Ström, a Swedish-born artist, whom he married before an enraptured audience at one of his concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in 1928. Mr. Grainger already had a great interest in Nordic music, but his wife’s lineage only served to drive his passion for such music even more. As he grew older he continued to give concerts. He also revised and rearranged compositions of his own, preferring this to writing new music, of which he produced little. After the Second World War, he suffered ill health which reduced his productivity and activity in his passions, and he considered his career to be a failure. He gave his final concert in 1960, less than a year before his death. The piece of music with which Percy Grainger is most generally remembered is his pretty piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune “Country Gardens”.
The architectural firm of Gawler and Drummond was a prolific, though rather undistinguished firm that designed a range of domestic, industrial, commercial and church buildings. These include the McRorie house in Camberwell in 1916, the Fitzroy department store Ackmans Ltd in 1918, the Loch Church of England in 1926, the Korumburra Church of England in 1927, the Deaf and Dumb Society's church at Jolimont in 1929 and the Nyora Church of England in 1930. The Percy Grainger Museum is perhaps Gawler and Drummond’s most distinguished work.
The Grainger Museum was open as part of the 2014 Open House Melbourne Weekend.
The Chrysler Building.
Midtown, Manhattan.
The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, located on the east side of Manhattan in the Turtle Bay area at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Standing at 319 metres (1,047 ft), it was the world's tallest building for 11 months before it was surpassed by the Empire State Building in 1931. After the destruction of the World Trade Center, it was again the second-tallest building in New York City until December 2007, when the spire was raised on the 365.8-metre (1,200 ft) Bank of America Tower, pushing the Chrysler Building into third position. In addition, The New York Times Building which opened in 2007, is exactly level with the Chrysler Building in height.
The Chrysler Building is a classic example of Art Deco architecture and considered by many contemporary architects to be one of the finest buildings in New York City. In 2007, it was ranked ninth on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects. It was the headquarters of the Chrysler Corporation from 1930 until the mid 1950's, but although the building was built and designed specifically for the car manufacturer, the corporation did not pay for the construction of it and never owned it, as Walter P. Chrysler decided to pay for it himself, so that his children could inherit it.
The Chrysler Building was designed by architect William Van Alen for a project of Walter P. Chrysler. When the ground breaking occurred on September 19, 1928, there was an intense competition in New York City to build the world's tallest skyscraper. Despite a frantic pace (the building was built at an average rate of four floors per week), no workers died during the construction of this skyscraper. - Source
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View more of my photography at my website NY Through The Lens.
To purchase any of my work as prints or cards, view my site gallery and store for info here.
To use any of my photos commercially, simply click the link which reads "Request to license Vivienne Gucwa's photos via Getty Images". This link can be found on the bottom right corner of the page of the photo you are interested in using.
The Chrysler Building.
Midtown, Manhattan.
The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, located on the east side of Manhattan in the Turtle Bay area at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Standing at 319 metres (1,047 ft), it was the world's tallest building for 11 months before it was surpassed by the Empire State Building in 1931. After the destruction of the World Trade Center, it was again the second-tallest building in New York City until December 2007, when the spire was raised on the 365.8-metre (1,200 ft) Bank of America Tower, pushing the Chrysler Building into third position. In addition, The New York Times Building which opened in 2007, is exactly level with the Chrysler Building in height.
The Chrysler Building is a classic example of Art Deco architecture and considered by many contemporary architects to be one of the finest buildings in New York City. In 2007, it was ranked ninth on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects. It was the headquarters of the Chrysler Corporation from 1930 until the mid 1950's, but although the building was built and designed specifically for the car manufacturer, the corporation did not pay for the construction of it and never owned it, as Walter P. Chrysler decided to pay for it himself, so that his children could inherit it.
The Chrysler Building was designed by architect William Van Alen for a project of Walter P. Chrysler. When the ground breaking occurred on September 19, 1928, there was an intense competition in New York City to build the world's tallest skyscraper. Despite a frantic pace (the building was built at an average rate of four floors per week), no workers died during the construction of this skyscraper. - Source
--
View more of my photography at my website NY Through The Lens.
To purchase any of my work as prints or cards, view my site gallery and store for info here.
To use any of my photos commercially, simply click the link which reads "Request to license Vivienne Gucwa's photos via Getty Images". This link can be found on the bottom right corner of the page of the photo you are interested in using.
The former State Government offices building in Ballarat's Camp Street was designed by Chief Government Architect Percy Everett (1888 - 1967) and opened in 1941 to house the local state government offices and courthouse. A commemorative plaque announcing that building was opened by the then Premier of Victoria, the Honourable A. A. Dunstan M. L.A. appears to the right of the main entranceway. Created of clinker brick and concrete in Art Deco style, it is remarkably similar in design to the Russell Street Police Station in Melbourne (also designed by Percy Everett), and a good example of the era. It features Functionalist Moderne windows and doors, hexagonal Art Deco lamps and very stripped back detailing. The main entranceway is crowned by Dieu et Mon Droit emblem on the King George VI which is painted and gilt.
It's curious that this beautiful building sits in Camp Street given its contrasting architectural style to the otherwise Victorian-influenced street. The building faces Sturt Street rather than Camp Street, and has been beautifully maintained.
The State Government Offices are now located in Mair Street, and the city's court house has moved to the corner of Albert and Dana Streets. This building is now part of the University of Ballarat's Arts Academy.
Percy Everett is also known for having designed Heatherton hospital (1945), the Fairfield Golf Clubhouse (1934),
Essendon Technical School (1939), the State Accident Insurance Office in Melbourne (1941), the William Angliss Food Trades in Melbourne(1941), the Russel Street Police Headquarters in Melbourne (1942–1943), F.G.Scholes Block (Wards) Fa Hospital in Fairfield(1949) and the RMIT Building 5&9 in Melbourne(1938).
The current Bair’s Otago Hotel located at 18 – 22 Bair Street Leongatha, dates from 1939 and replaced the original hotel which has timber verandahs and cast iron lacework. The 1939 Bair’s Otago Hotel was designed by architect Trevor C. McCullough for Arthur C. Bair, whose father, Robert Bair, had purchased the site at the second sale of Leongatha township allotments held on 18 June, 1889. The first building on this site, known as Bair’s Coffee House, was constructed in 1890 and was subsequently renamed the ‘Otago’ upon the grant of a full hotel licence in March 1891. Due to the lack of any suitable public buildings at that time, the first hotel was to be the venue for Woorayl Council meetings until the new Shire Offices were opened in November 1891. The association of the Council with the Hotel continued for over 90 years, as Council adjourned to the Bair’s Otago Hotel on each meeting day for their midday lunch. This practice was finally discontinued in 1985.
Bair’s Otago Hotel is a two storey manganese brick and render corner hotel built in an amalgam of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne architectural styles. It displays typically strong vertical Art Deco elements in the façade, and horizontal canopies with rounded corners, which are more typical of the Streamline Moderne movement. The hotel features vertical counterpoints of flag pole, rain heads and downpipes and an end bay with a central pier of full height brick. The cantilevered street canopy expresses the corner with a semi-circular end below a band of face brickwork containing the upper windows and a recessed upper verandah with a projecting balustrade and canopy. The corner of Bair’s Otago Hotel features a splendid rounded glass brick infill to the upper floor, horizontal step and groove mouldings to the stepped parapet and the sign on the parapet in typical Art Deco lettering. Sadly, the original acid-etched glass windows of the hotel with a koala motif and the name of the hotel were removed during the post war years and have since been lost.
Historically, Bair’s Otago Hotel demonstrates the development of the hotel industry in the Shire through the interwar period. Whilst many earlier hotels were adapted to Art Deco or Streamline Moderne style in this period of change in the hotel trade, the Otago was completely rebuilt in a much more comprehensive expression of an amalgam of the two styles. It is a notable part of the historic interwar character of Bair Street.
Trevor C. McCullough was a Melbourne based architect and builder who designed and constructed a number of commercial buildings in the Shire during the interwar and immediate postwar period including Bair's Otago Hotel (1939), Elizabeth House (1940) and extensions to the Mirboo North Butter Factory (1949).
Leongatha is a town in the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges, South Gippsland Shire, Victoria, Australia, located 135 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. The town is the civic, commercial, industrial, religious, educational and sporting centre of the region. The Murray Goulburn Co-operative Co. Limited, is a farmers' co-operative which trades in Australia under the Devondale label, and has a dairy processing plant just north of the town producing milk-based products for Australian and overseas markets. First settlement of the area by Europeans occurred in 1845. The Post Office opened as Koorooman on 1 October 1887 and renamed Leongatha in 1891 when a township was established on the arrival of the railway. The Daffodil Festival is held annually in September. Competitions are held and many daffodil varieties are on display. A garden competition is also held and there are many beautiful examples throughout the provincial town. The South Gippsland Railway runs historical diesel locomotives and railcars between the market and dairy towns of Nyora and Leongatha, passing through Korumburra.
Originally opened in 1912, the Leongatha Masonic Hall on the corner of Bruce Street and Masonic Lane has served the local community for one hundred years.
The current building of clinker and brown brick is a more recent construction, enveloping the original 1912 hall with a new facade and adding to the lodge in the 1930s. Low slung and minimal in detail, the Leongatha Masonic Hall is typical of architecture of the Streamline Moderne movement. Unlike many Art Deco buildings which focussed on a vertical emphasis, Streamline Moderne buildings often featured horizontal emphasis. This is evident in the wide entranceway to the lodge on Bruce Street. This section, constructed in the 1930s also features a flat roof which is another common feature of Streamline Moderne buildings. The gable on the left hand corner of the Bruce Street facade is in fact the original 1912 lodge with a more modern facade. The Functionalist metal windows installed beneath the gable are accentuated by the addition of ornamental buttresses which are capped with neat stone carvings. The entrance itself is flanked by classically inspired columns with Ionic capitals.
Leongatha is a town in the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges, South Gippsland Shire, Victoria, Australia, located 135 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. The town is the civic, commercial, industrial, religious, educational and sporting centre of the region. The Murray Goulburn Co-operative Co. Limited, is a farmers' co-operative which trades in Australia under the Devondale label, and has a dairy processing plant just north of the town producing milk-based products for Australian and overseas markets. First settlement of the area by Europeans occurred in 1845. The Post Office opened as Koorooman on 1 October 1887 and renamed Leongatha in 1891 when a township was established on the arrival of the railway. The Daffodil Festival is held annually in September. Competitions are held and many daffodil varieties are on display. A garden competition is also held and there are many beautiful examples throughout the provincial town. The South Gippsland Railway runs historical diesel locomotives and railcars between the market and dairy towns of Nyora and Leongatha, passing through Korumburra.
Omaha Union Station (1931) was one of the first Art Deco train station in the United States. It closed for rail service in the 1970s and now houses the Durham Museum. Omaha's other passenger train station, the Italianate Burlington Station (1898) also closed in 1974 when a new Amtrak station was built a block or so to the east. The Burlington Station just underwent a major renovation, see blog post and photos.
I've shot the Durham Museum / Union Station before. See, e.g. here for a closer up shot of the front façade, here for a close up of one of the south side entrances, and here for another shot of the interior.
Florin Court, Charterhouse Square, EC1. Built by Guy Morgan and Partners and completed in 1936. Used as fictional home of detective Hercule Poirot in TV series! Key features include the undulating facade and the roof garden. A retro deco swimming pool was added in the 1980's for the use of residents. The art deco foyer was tiled over in the 1980's.
Omaha Union Station (1931) was one of the first Art Deco train stations in the United States. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, the Station was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016 (the designation noted that the Station "is one of the most distinctive and complete examples of Art Deco architecture in the nation. . . [and] outstandingly expresses the style’s innovative and diverse surface ornamentation inspired by the machine age.") See here for more on the station's architecture and history.
Omaha Union Station closed for rail service in the 1970s when a new Amtrak station opened nearby. The Station now houses the Durham Museum. As noted on the museum's website, the Durham showcases everything from "permanent exhibits highlighting the history of Omaha and its surrounding regions, to impressive traveling exhibitions from our national partners such as the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, the Library of Congress and the Field Museum."
The former State Government offices building in Ballarat's Camp Street was designed by Chief Government Architect Percy Everett (1888 - 1967) and opened in 1941 to house the local state government offices and courthouse. A commemorative plaque announcing that building was opened by the then Premier of Victoria, the Honourable A. A. Dunstan M. L.A. appears to the right of the main entranceway. Created of clinker brick and concrete in Art Deco style, it is remarkably similar in design to the Russell Street Police Station in Melbourne (also designed by Percy Everett), and a good example of the era. It features Functionalist Moderne windows and doors, hexagonal Art Deco lamps and very stripped back detailing. The main entranceway is crowned by Dieu et Mon Droit emblem on the King George VI which is painted and gilt.
It's curious that this beautiful building sits in Camp Street given its contrasting architectural style to the otherwise Victorian-influenced street. The building faces Sturt Street rather than Camp Street, and has been beautifully maintained.
The State Government Offices are now located in Mair Street, and the city's court house has moved to the corner of Albert and Dana Streets. This building is now part of the University of Ballarat's Arts Academy.
Percy Everett is also known for having designed Heatherton hospital (1945), the Fairfield Golf Clubhouse (1934),
Essendon Technical School (1939), the State Accident Insurance Office in Melbourne (1941), the William Angliss Food Trades in Melbourne(1941), the Russel Street Police Headquarters in Melbourne (1942–1943), F.G.Scholes Block (Wards) Fa Hospital in Fairfield(1949) and the RMIT Building 5&9 in Melbourne(1938).
By Lee Lawrie
At the entrance to 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
The Rockefeller Center was sponsored by, and named after, John D Rockefeller Jr. (1874-1960). The development consists of 14 Art Deco buildings, designed by Raymond Mathewson Hood (1881-1934) and constructed between 1930-39, plus 4 International-Style buildings built in the 1960-70s.
The only project employed 40,000 people, and cost an estimated $250m at the time (this included the acquiring the land and demolishing some existing buildings).
If you paint it they will come....People from all over the SF Bay Area come to admire the City of Hayward's monumental Movie Palace Tower Mural designed and painted by Award-winning Artist Andrew Kong Knight.
Knight conducts a lecture as part of the City of Hayward's Mural Program's Mural Walk Tours. Knight explains the process in the creation of the Movie Palace Tower Mural.
This mural is part of Knight's, "Hayward Meets Hollywood" mural series, three murals that surround the main parking structure in the heart of the downtown area of Hayward, CA.
testdrivinglife.blogspot.com/2011/09/hayward-california-m...
Photo (out of car window) by Yzsabella Mercedes Coath
This neat Art Deco cottage villa with wonderful red brick detailing may be found in the South Gippsland town of Leongatha.
Sitting neatly amid its pretty cottage garden, the cottage is quite small, but its detailing makes up for what it lacks in size with stylishness. The use of Fibro cement sheets to build the cottage suggests it was built in the late 1930s. Other giveaway signs are the neat cottage style windows which are typical of the "Metroland" suburban style which was common throughout Britain and her dominions in the interwar years. It is the brickwork on this cottage and its stained glass nook windows that are perhaps its most charming features. The rounded Streamline Moderne enclosed vestibule of red brick with simple banding, the matching red brick stepped chimney and the geometric Art Deco designed stained glass nook windows to either side of the fireplace are all typical of the uncluttered lines of Australian Art Deco architecture in the late 30s, just before the Second World War. Unlike its neighbours, which are Victorian and and Edwardian, it is very stark in detail and stands out amongst the crowd. As most houses in Leongatha were built and well established by this time, this Art Deco villa is somewhat of a rarity in the town.
Leongatha is a town in the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges, South Gippsland Shire, Victoria, Australia, located 135 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. The town is the civic, commercial, industrial, religious, educational and sporting centre of the region. The Murray Goulburn Co-operative Co. Limited, is a farmers' co-operative which trades in Australia under the Devondale label, and has a dairy processing plant just north of the town producing milk-based products for Australian and overseas markets. First settlement of the area by Europeans occurred in 1845. The Post Office opened as Koorooman on 1 October 1887 and renamed Leongatha in 1891 when a township was established on the arrival of the railway. The Daffodil Festival is held annually in September. Competitions are held and many daffodil varieties are on display. A garden competition is also held and there are many beautiful examples throughout the provincial town. The South Gippsland Railway runs historical diesel locomotives and railcars between the market and dairy towns of Nyora and Leongatha, passing through Korumburra.
Originally called the “Music Museum and Grainger Museum”, the “Grainger Museum” is a small Streamline Moderne Art Deco building, built between 1935 and 1939, a repository of items documenting the life, career and music of the well known Australian composer, folklorist and pianist, Percy Grainger (1882 – 1961).
Built on one of Melbourne’s grand tree lined boulevards, Royal Parade in Parkville, the autobiographical museum was constructed in two stages between 1935 and 1939, on land provided for the purpose by the University of Melbourne. The Grainger Museum was designed by the staff architect of Melbourne University, John Stevens Gawler (1885 – 1978) through his architectural firm Gawler and Drummond. The building, built of brown clinker bricks is typical of Streamline Moderne design in Australia in the late 1930s, yet it also has undertones of the Arts and Crafts movement. It has very little detailing on the outside, with a severe arched entranceway, two windows featuring Art Deco grillework, a few decorative panels of brickwork (quite typical of John Gawler’s work) and the remaining windows consisting of glass bricks. The name of the museum appears above the main entranceway in stark Art Deco lettering made of cast iron which have been painted black. The museum is circular and features a small central courtyard accessed by two sets of French doors. The courtyard facades are detailed with decorative brickwork.
The Grainger Museum received input from Mr. Grainger in its design as well as its purpose, as well as funding provided by the composer. Mr. Grainger had contemplated establishing an autobiographical museum in the early 1920s, following the sudden suicide of his mother Rose, to whom he was very devoted. The museum contains large quantity of material from Mr. Grainger’s life, including art and furnishings from his home, musical instruments that he used, compositions, recordings, reformist clothing, published scores, field recordings, photographs, books and personal items belonging not only to Mr. Grainger, but also his mother. It also contains a curio case of whips that Mr. Grainger used in sadomasochist sexual acts which were in a trunk given to the museum with strict instructions that it was not to be opened until ten year after his death. The trunk also contained photographs of the composer after sessions of self flagellation. The museum also contains large amounts of material concerning some of his musical contemporaries, many of whom have fallen into obscurity. The Grainger Museum was officially opened in December 1938, and was staffed and maintained by Mr. Grainger throughout his life.
Sadly, the Grainger Museum suffered some initial setbacks with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, when the building was used for storage for the duration, rather than its original purpose. The museum’s designs were also problematic, as the building was prone to leaks and required extensive waterproofing. The majority of objects were not put on public display until the 1950s when Mr. Grainger visited Australia with the intention of finishing his autobiographical project; something he failed to do as he set sail for his New York home with the task still incomplete. During the 1960s the Grainger Museum was opened to the public regularly for the first time and was sometimes used for concerts and musical workshops for jazz and other avant-garde music, which would have pleased Mr. Grainger, who sadly had died some five years before this eventuality. The Grainger Museum quietly closed its doors in 2003 for extensive renovation, restoration and conservation work. It reopened seven years later 2010, and has been open selectively ever since, showcasing Mr. Grainger’s life and works in a smart, well set out and discreet fashion.
Percy Aldridge Grainger was born in Brighton, Melbourne. He showed precocious talent in music, and at the age of 13 he left Australia to further his ability by attending the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1901 he moved to London, where with the assistance of his mother, he established himself as a successful society pianist, and developed a career as a concert performer and composer. During his time in London, he also collected original folk melodies and helped revive interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th Century. Mr. Grainger left England in 1914, and moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life, residing in White Haven, a suburb of New York with his mother, Rose, who was always his greatest supporter and exponent. Mr. Grainger took up American citizenship in 1918. After his mother committed suicide in 1922, he involved himself more with educational work, and created his own experimental and unusual musical compositions. He particularly enjoyed musical experiments with fantastic music machines that he imagined, and perhaps hoped, would supersede human interpretation one day. During this time, he also made adaptations of other composers' musical works. In 1926, while returning to America from a tour, he met Ella Ström, a Swedish-born artist, whom he married before an enraptured audience at one of his concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in 1928. Mr. Grainger already had a great interest in Nordic music, but his wife’s lineage only served to drive his passion for such music even more. As he grew older he continued to give concerts. He also revised and rearranged compositions of his own, preferring this to writing new music, of which he produced little. After the Second World War, he suffered ill health which reduced his productivity and activity in his passions, and he considered his career to be a failure. He gave his final concert in 1960, less than a year before his death. The piece of music with which Percy Grainger is most generally remembered is his pretty piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune “Country Gardens”.
The architectural firm of Gawler and Drummond was a prolific, though rather undistinguished firm that designed a range of domestic, industrial, commercial and church buildings. These include the McRorie house in Camberwell in 1916, the Fitzroy department store Ackmans Ltd in 1918, the Loch Church of England in 1926, the Korumburra Church of England in 1927, the Deaf and Dumb Society's church at Jolimont in 1929 and the Nyora Church of England in 1930. The Percy Grainger Museum is perhaps Gawler and Drummond’s most distinguished work.
The Grainger Museum was open as part of the 2014 Open House Melbourne Weekend.
Although all the rooms of the Rone - Empire installation exhibition are amazing for many different reasons, there are two major standouts. The Dining Room is one. As a well proportioned and elegant space, it runs over half of the original Burnham Beeches floor plan. It features two long tables covered in a Miss Havisham like feast of a trove of found dinner table objects from silverware and glassware to empty oyster shells and vases of grasses and feathers.
The Dining Room installation I personally found especially confronting. In 1982, I visited Burnham Beeches when it was a smart and select hotel and had Devonshire tea in the dining room at a table alongside the full length windows overlooking the terraces below. I was shocked to see a room I remember appointed with thick carpets and tables covered in gleaming silver and white napery, strewn with dust and leaves, and adorned with Miss Havisham's feast of found dining objects.
Melbourne based street artist Rone (Tyrone Wright) used the decaying glory of the 1933 Harry Norris designed Streamline Moderne mansion, Burnham Beeches in the Dandenong Ranges' Sherbrooke, between March the 6th and April 22nd to create an immersive hybrid art space for his latest installation exhibition; "Empire".
"Empire" combined a mixture of many different elements including art, sound, light, scent, found objects, botanic designs, objects from nature and music especially composed for the project by Nick Batterham. The Burnham Beeches project re-imagines and re-interprets the spirit of one of Victoria’s landmark mansions, seldom seen by the public and not accessed since the mid 1980s. According to Rone - Empire website; "viewers are invited to consider what remains - the unseen cultural, social, artistic and spiritual heritage which produces intangible meaning."
Rone was invited by the current owner of Burnham Beeches, restaurateur Shannon Bennett, to exhibit "Empire" during a six week interim period before renovations commence to convert the heritage listed mansion into a select six star hotel.
Rone initially imagined the mansion to be in a state of dereliction, but found instead that it was a stripped back blank canvas for him to create his own version of how he thought it should look. Therefore, almost all the decay is in fact of Rone's creation from grasses in the Games Room which 'grow' next to a rotting billiards table, to the damp patches, water staining and smoke damage on the ceilings. Nests of leaves fill some spaces, whilst tree branches and in one case an entire avenue of boughs sprout from walls and ceilings. Especially designed Art Deco wallpaper created in Rone's studio has been installed on the walls before being distressed and damaged. The rooms have been adorned with furnishings and objects that might once have graced the twelve original rooms of Burnham Beeches: bulbulous club sofas, half round Art Deco tables, tarnished silverware and their canteen, mirrored smoke stands of chrome and Bakelite, glass lamps, English dinner services, a glass drinks trolley, photos of people long forgotten in time, walnut veneer dressing tables reflecting the installation sometimes in triplicate, old wire beadsteads, luggage, shelves of books, an Underwood typewriter, a John Broadwood and Sons of London grand piano and even a Kriesler radiogramme. All these objects were then covered in a thick sheet or light sprinkling of 'dust' made of many different things including coffee grinds and talcum powder, creating a sensation for the senses. Burnham Beeches resonated with a ghostly sense of its former grandeur, with a whiff of bittersweet romance.
Throughout the twelve rooms, magnificent and beautifully haunting floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall portraits of Australian actress Lily Sullivan, star of the Foxtel re-make of Picnic at Hanging Rock, appear. Larger than life, each portrait is created in different colours, helping to create seasonal shifts as you move from room to room.
Although all the rooms are amazing for many different reasons, there are two major standouts. The Dining Room is one. The Study is the other. It features walls of books covered with a portrait of Lily Sullivan, and the entire room is partially submerged in a lake of black water with the occasional red oak leaf floating across its glassy surface.
I feel very honoured and privileged to be amongst the far too few people fortunate enough to have seen Rone's "Empire", as like the seasons, it is ephemeral, and it will already have been dismantled. Rone's idea is that, like his street art, things he creates don't last forever, and that made the project exciting. I hope that my photographs do justice to, and adequately share as much as is possible of this amazing installation with you.
The current Bair’s Otago Hotel located at 18 – 22 Bair Street Leongatha, dates from 1939 and replaced the original hotel which has timber verandahs and cast iron lacework. The 1939 Bair’s Otago Hotel was designed by architect Trevor C. McCullough for Arthur C. Bair, whose father, Robert Bair, had purchased the site at the second sale of Leongatha township allotments held on 18 June, 1889. The first building on this site, known as Bair’s Coffee House, was constructed in 1890 and was subsequently renamed the ‘Otago’ upon the grant of a full hotel licence in March 1891. Due to the lack of any suitable public buildings at that time, the first hotel was to be the venue for Woorayl Council meetings until the new Shire Offices were opened in November 1891. The association of the Council with the Hotel continued for over 90 years, as Council adjourned to the Bair’s Otago Hotel on each meeting day for their midday lunch. This practice was finally discontinued in 1985.
Bair’s Otago Hotel is a two storey manganese brick and render corner hotel built in an amalgam of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne architectural styles. It displays typically strong vertical Art Deco elements in the façade, and horizontal canopies with rounded corners, which are more typical of the Streamline Moderne movement. The hotel features vertical counterpoints of flag pole, rain heads and downpipes and an end bay with a central pier of full height brick. The cantilevered street canopy expresses the corner with a semi-circular end below a band of face brickwork containing the upper windows and a recessed upper verandah with a projecting balustrade and canopy. The corner of Bair’s Otago Hotel features a splendid rounded glass brick infill to the upper floor, horizontal step and groove mouldings to the stepped parapet and the sign on the parapet in typical Art Deco lettering. Sadly, the original acid-etched glass windows of the hotel with a koala motif and the name of the hotel were removed during the post war years and have since been lost.
Historically, Bair’s Otago Hotel demonstrates the development of the hotel industry in the Shire through the interwar period. Whilst many earlier hotels were adapted to Art Deco or Streamline Moderne style in this period of change in the hotel trade, the Otago was completely rebuilt in a much more comprehensive expression of an amalgam of the two styles. It is a notable part of the historic interwar character of Bair Street.
Trevor C. McCullough was a Melbourne based architect and builder who designed and constructed a number of commercial buildings in the Shire during the interwar and immediate postwar period including Bair's Otago Hotel (1939), Elizabeth House (1940) and extensions to the Mirboo North Butter Factory (1949).
Leongatha is a town in the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges, South Gippsland Shire, Victoria, Australia, located 135 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. The town is the civic, commercial, industrial, religious, educational and sporting centre of the region. The Murray Goulburn Co-operative Co. Limited, is a farmers' co-operative which trades in Australia under the Devondale label, and has a dairy processing plant just north of the town producing milk-based products for Australian and overseas markets. First settlement of the area by Europeans occurred in 1845. The Post Office opened as Koorooman on 1 October 1887 and renamed Leongatha in 1891 when a township was established on the arrival of the railway. The Daffodil Festival is held annually in September. Competitions are held and many daffodil varieties are on display. A garden competition is also held and there are many beautiful examples throughout the provincial town. The South Gippsland Railway runs historical diesel locomotives and railcars between the market and dairy towns of Nyora and Leongatha, passing through Korumburra.
The facade of a pretty stylised cream stuccoed brick Art Deco villa in the north eastern country town of Alexandra.
This villa with its low slung tile roof, cream stucco work, and windows of geometrically patterned leadlight glass windows were very popular amongst the newly moneyed middle-class who could finally afford to buy their own homes. Comfortable and cottage like in the Metroland style of interwar Art Deco architecture so popular in Australia during the late 1920s, this house and many others like it represented stability and respectability, without being showy. It has a neighbouring sister villa painted in primrose yellow with slightly different windows, but the exact same layout.
Alexandra is a town in Victoria, Australia. It is located at the junction of the Goulburn Valley Highway (B340) and Maroondah Highway (B360), 26 kilometres west of Eildon. The town was settled in the late 1860s, with a Post Office opening on 15 March 1867 (known until 24 April 1867) as Redgate. The town was originally known as Redgate, or Red Gate Diggings. The current name either derives from Alexandra of Denmark (Queen’s Consort to King Edward VII of England) when given a stature of her to the shire; or from three men named Alexander (Alesander, McGregor, Alexander Don, and Alexander Luckie) who discovered gold in the area in 1866. Charles Jones born Herefordshire also discovered Gold on the Luckie Mine in 1866. He bought a Hotel with John Henry Osborne and was the proprietor of the New York and London Hotel Grant Street Alexandra. The railway to Alexandra arrived in the town via Yea from Tallarook in 1909, and closed on November 18, 1978. The Rubicon Tramway connected Alexandra with the village of Rubicon, at the junction of the Rubicon and Royston Rivers. Today many tourists pass through Alexandra on their way to the Mount Buller ski resort from Melbourne. The town contains the Timber Tramway and Museum (located at the Alexandra Railway Station), and the National Trust classified post office and law courts. There is a local market on the second Saturday of each month from September to May, an annual art show at Easter, an agricultural show and rose festival in November, and the annual Truck, Rod and Ute Show in June.
Located near the top end of the main shopping strip, the Commercial Banking Company’s former Korumburra bank branch is a tribute to 1930s architectural style and stands out sharply amid its Victorian and Edwardian neighbours with its clean lines and bold brown brick and white painted colour scheme.
Like the Korumburra Masonic Hall around the corner, the Art Deco facade of the former bank branch, is extremely stripped back. The only piece of ornamentation identifying it as a branch of the Commercial Banking Company is the cartouche above the central window of the building, in which appear the letters CBC intertwined in classical script. Whilst the building now houses a firm of barristers and solicitors, when the building was occupied by its original owners there would not have been any more signage to advertise the business inside. There were identically designed and decorated branches in towns across South Gippsland to give uniformity and help with the recognition of the bank’s brand. There is still an existing example in Korumburra’s neighbouring town, Leongatha.
The building is very Inter-War Stripped Classical in style because of the limited decoration, its symmetrical façade, the division of the frontage into vertical bays indicating classical origin, vestigial classical columns and the element of the Art Deco style in its decoration. This Art Deco detailing is perhaps the building’s main attraction as it is very much in the “Egyptomania” or “Tutmania” style that gripped the world after the discovery of Pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. The columns have stylised papyrus capitals and the portico they hold up is decorated in the same patterns which is so evocative of the Jazz Age. A similar design of papyrus flowers top each of the three windows appearing on the bank’s façade. The bank also features Functionalist Moderne metal windows.
The Commercial Banking Company began operations on 1 November 1834 as The Commercial Banking Company of Sydney. In 1848 it was incorporated by an Act of the New South Wales Parliament. 1981 saw the bank amalgamate with the National Bank of Australasia Limited.
Korumburra is a medium-sized dairy and farming town in country Victoria, located on the South Gippsland Highway, 120 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. Surrounded by rolling green hills, the town has a population of a little over 4,000 people. Korumburra has built itself on coal mining (after the discovery of a coal seam in 1870), local forestry and dairy farming. Whilst the coal seam has been used up, farming in the area still thrives and a great deal of dairy produce is created from the area. The post office in the area opened on the 1st of September in 1884, and moved to the township on the railway survey line on the 1st of November 1889, the existing office being renamed Glentress. The steam railway connecting it with Melbourne arrived in 1891. Whilst the train line has long since operating commercially, it has found a new life as the popular tourist railway the South Gippsland Railway which operates a heritage railway service between the major country centre of Leongatha and the small market town of Nyora.
Located near the top end of the main shopping strip, the Commercial Banking Company’s former Korumburra bank branch is a tribute to 1930s architectural style and stands out sharply amid its Victorian and Edwardian neighbours with its clean lines and bold brown brick and white painted colour scheme.
Like the Korumburra Masonic Hall around the corner, the Art Deco facade of the former bank branch, is extremely stripped back. The only piece of ornamentation identifying it as a branch of the Commercial Banking Company is the cartouche above the central window of the building, in which appear the letters CBC intertwined in classical script. Whilst the building now houses a firm of barristers and solicitors, when the building was occupied by its original owners there would not have been any more signage to advertise the business inside. There were identically designed and decorated branches in towns across South Gippsland to give uniformity and help with the recognition of the bank’s brand. There is still an existing example in Korumburra’s neighbouring town, Leongatha.
The building is very Inter-War Stripped Classical in style because of the limited decoration, its symmetrical façade, the division of the frontage into vertical bays indicating classical origin, vestigial classical columns and the element of the Art Deco style in its decoration. This Art Deco detailing is perhaps the building’s main attraction as it is very much in the “Egyptomania” or “Tutmania” style that gripped the world after the discovery of Pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. The columns have stylised papyrus capitals and the portico they hold up is decorated in the same patterns which is so evocative of the Jazz Age. A similar design of papyrus flowers top each of the three windows appearing on the bank’s façade. The bank also features Functionalist Moderne metal windows.
The Commercial Banking Company began operations on 1 November 1834 as The Commercial Banking Company of Sydney. In 1848 it was incorporated by an Act of the New South Wales Parliament. 1981 saw the bank amalgamate with the National Bank of Australasia Limited.
Korumburra is a medium-sized dairy and farming town in country Victoria, located on the South Gippsland Highway, 120 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. Surrounded by rolling green hills, the town has a population of a little over 4,000 people. Korumburra has built itself on coal mining (after the discovery of a coal seam in 1870), local forestry and dairy farming. Whilst the coal seam has been used up, farming in the area still thrives and a great deal of dairy produce is created from the area. The post office in the area opened on the 1st of September in 1884, and moved to the township on the railway survey line on the 1st of November 1889, the existing office being renamed Glentress. The steam railway connecting it with Melbourne arrived in 1891. Whilst the train line has long since operating commercially, it has found a new life as the popular tourist railway the South Gippsland Railway which operates a heritage railway service between the major country centre of Leongatha and the small market town of Nyora.
In 1927 Artist Adah Robinson had Bruce Goff design this for her, with much of her own input. The kitchen was then altered to her tastes by Joseph R. Koberling.
The more innovative features were on the inside, such as a two-story living room with a sunken conversation pit The balcony ran the length of the living room.
Originally called the “Music Museum and Grainger Museum”, the “Grainger Museum” is a small Streamline Moderne Art Deco building, built between 1935 and 1939, a repository of items documenting the life, career and music of the well known Australian composer, folklorist and pianist, Percy Grainger (1882 – 1961).
Built on one of Melbourne’s grand tree lined boulevards, Royal Parade in Parkville, the autobiographical museum was constructed in two stages between 1935 and 1939, on land provided for the purpose by the University of Melbourne. The Grainger Museum was designed by the staff architect of Melbourne University, John Stevens Gawler (1885 – 1978) through his architectural firm Gawler and Drummond. The building, built of brown clinker bricks is typical of Streamline Moderne design in Australia in the late 1930s, yet it also has undertones of the Arts and Crafts movement. It has very little detailing on the outside, with a severe arched entranceway, two windows featuring Art Deco grillework, a few decorative panels of brickwork (quite typical of John Gawler’s work) and the remaining windows consisting of glass bricks. The name of the museum appears above the main entranceway in stark Art Deco lettering made of cast iron which have been painted black. The museum is circular and features a small central courtyard accessed by two sets of French doors. The courtyard facades are detailed with decorative brickwork.
The Grainger Museum received input from Mr. Grainger in its design as well as its purpose, as well as funding provided by the composer. Mr. Grainger had contemplated establishing an autobiographical museum in the early 1920s, following the sudden suicide of his mother Rose, to whom he was very devoted. The museum contains large quantity of material from Mr. Grainger’s life, including art and furnishings from his home, musical instruments that he used, compositions, recordings, reformist clothing, published scores, field recordings, photographs, books and personal items belonging not only to Mr. Grainger, but also his mother. It also contains a curio case of whips that Mr. Grainger used in sadomasochist sexual acts which were in a trunk given to the museum with strict instructions that it was not to be opened until ten year after his death. The trunk also contained photographs of the composer after sessions of self flagellation. The museum also contains large amounts of material concerning some of his musical contemporaries, many of whom have fallen into obscurity. The Grainger Museum was officially opened in December 1938, and was staffed and maintained by Mr. Grainger throughout his life.
Sadly, the Grainger Museum suffered some initial setbacks with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, when the building was used for storage for the duration, rather than its original purpose. The museum’s designs were also problematic, as the building was prone to leaks and required extensive waterproofing. The majority of objects were not put on public display until the 1950s when Mr. Grainger visited Australia with the intention of finishing his autobiographical project; something he failed to do as he set sail for his New York home with the task still incomplete. During the 1960s the Grainger Museum was opened to the public regularly for the first time and was sometimes used for concerts and musical workshops for jazz and other avant-garde music, which would have pleased Mr. Grainger, who sadly had died some five years before this eventuality. The Grainger Museum quietly closed its doors in 2003 for extensive renovation, restoration and conservation work. It reopened seven years later 2010, and has been open selectively ever since, showcasing Mr. Grainger’s life and works in a smart, well set out and discreet fashion.
Percy Aldridge Grainger was born in Brighton, Melbourne. He showed precocious talent in music, and at the age of 13 he left Australia to further his ability by attending the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1901 he moved to London, where with the assistance of his mother, he established himself as a successful society pianist, and developed a career as a concert performer and composer. During his time in London, he also collected original folk melodies and helped revive interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th Century. Mr. Grainger left England in 1914, and moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life, residing in White Haven, a suburb of New York with his mother, Rose, who was always his greatest supporter and exponent. Mr. Grainger took up American citizenship in 1918. After his mother committed suicide in 1922, he involved himself more with educational work, and created his own experimental and unusual musical compositions. He particularly enjoyed musical experiments with fantastic music machines that he imagined, and perhaps hoped, would supersede human interpretation one day. During this time, he also made adaptations of other composers' musical works. In 1926, while returning to America from a tour, he met Ella Ström, a Swedish-born artist, whom he married before an enraptured audience at one of his concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in 1928. Mr. Grainger already had a great interest in Nordic music, but his wife’s lineage only served to drive his passion for such music even more. As he grew older he continued to give concerts. He also revised and rearranged compositions of his own, preferring this to writing new music, of which he produced little. After the Second World War, he suffered ill health which reduced his productivity and activity in his passions, and he considered his career to be a failure. He gave his final concert in 1960, less than a year before his death. The piece of music with which Percy Grainger is most generally remembered is his pretty piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune “Country Gardens”.
The architectural firm of Gawler and Drummond was a prolific, though rather undistinguished firm that designed a range of domestic, industrial, commercial and church buildings. These include the McRorie house in Camberwell in 1916, the Fitzroy department store Ackmans Ltd in 1918, the Loch Church of England in 1926, the Korumburra Church of England in 1927, the Deaf and Dumb Society's church at Jolimont in 1929 and the Nyora Church of England in 1930. The Percy Grainger Museum is perhaps Gawler and Drummond’s most distinguished work.
The Grainger Museum was open as part of the 2014 Open House Melbourne Weekend.
The current Bair’s Otago Hotel located at 18 – 22 Bair Street Leongatha, dates from 1939 and replaced the original hotel which has timber verandahs and cast iron lacework. The 1939 Bair’s Otago Hotel was designed by architect Trevor C. McCullough for Arthur C. Bair, whose father, Robert Bair, had purchased the site at the second sale of Leongatha township allotments held on 18 June, 1889. The first building on this site, known as Bair’s Coffee House, was constructed in 1890 and was subsequently renamed the ‘Otago’ upon the grant of a full hotel licence in March 1891. Due to the lack of any suitable public buildings at that time, the first hotel was to be the venue for Woorayl Council meetings until the new Shire Offices were opened in November 1891. The association of the Council with the Hotel continued for over 90 years, as Council adjourned to the Bair’s Otago Hotel on each meeting day for their midday lunch. This practice was finally discontinued in 1985.
Bair’s Otago Hotel is a two storey manganese brick and render corner hotel built in an amalgam of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne architectural styles. It displays typically strong vertical Art Deco elements in the façade, and horizontal canopies with rounded corners, which are more typical of the Streamline Moderne movement. The hotel features vertical counterpoints of flag pole, rain heads and downpipes and an end bay with a central pier of full height brick. The cantilevered street canopy expresses the corner with a semi-circular end below a band of face brickwork containing the upper windows and a recessed upper verandah with a projecting balustrade and canopy. The corner of Bair’s Otago Hotel features a splendid rounded glass brick infill to the upper floor, horizontal step and groove mouldings to the stepped parapet and the sign on the parapet in typical Art Deco lettering. Sadly, the original acid-etched glass windows of the hotel with a koala motif and the name of the hotel were removed during the post war years and have since been lost.
Historically, Bair’s Otago Hotel demonstrates the development of the hotel industry in the Shire through the interwar period. Whilst many earlier hotels were adapted to Art Deco or Streamline Moderne style in this period of change in the hotel trade, the Otago was completely rebuilt in a much more comprehensive expression of an amalgam of the two styles. It is a notable part of the historic interwar character of Bair Street.
Trevor C. McCullough was a Melbourne based architect and builder who designed and constructed a number of commercial buildings in the Shire during the interwar and immediate postwar period including Bair's Otago Hotel (1939), Elizabeth House (1940) and extensions to the Mirboo North Butter Factory (1949).
Leongatha is a town in the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges, South Gippsland Shire, Victoria, Australia, located 135 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. The town is the civic, commercial, industrial, religious, educational and sporting centre of the region. The Murray Goulburn Co-operative Co. Limited, is a farmers' co-operative which trades in Australia under the Devondale label, and has a dairy processing plant just north of the town producing milk-based products for Australian and overseas markets. First settlement of the area by Europeans occurred in 1845. The Post Office opened as Koorooman on 1 October 1887 and renamed Leongatha in 1891 when a township was established on the arrival of the railway. The Daffodil Festival is held annually in September. Competitions are held and many daffodil varieties are on display. A garden competition is also held and there are many beautiful examples throughout the provincial town. The South Gippsland Railway runs historical diesel locomotives and railcars between the market and dairy towns of Nyora and Leongatha, passing through Korumburra.
The Chrysler Building.
Midtown, Manhattan.
The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, located on the east side of Manhattan in the Turtle Bay area at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Standing at 319 metres (1,047 ft), it was the world's tallest building for 11 months before it was surpassed by the Empire State Building in 1931. After the destruction of the World Trade Center, it was again the second-tallest building in New York City until December 2007, when the spire was raised on the 365.8-metre (1,200 ft) Bank of America Tower, pushing the Chrysler Building into third position. In addition, The New York Times Building which opened in 2007, is exactly level with the Chrysler Building in height.
The Chrysler Building is a classic example of Art Deco architecture and considered by many contemporary architects to be one of the finest buildings in New York City. In 2007, it was ranked ninth on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects. It was the headquarters of the Chrysler Corporation from 1930 until the mid 1950's, but although the building was built and designed specifically for the car manufacturer, the corporation did not pay for the construction of it and never owned it, as Walter P. Chrysler decided to pay for it himself, so that his children could inherit it.
The Chrysler Building was designed by architect William Van Alen for a project of Walter P. Chrysler. When the ground breaking occurred on September 19, 1928, there was an intense competition in New York City to build the world's tallest skyscraper. Despite a frantic pace (the building was built at an average rate of four floors per week), no workers died during the construction of this skyscraper. - Source
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Originally called the “Music Museum and Grainger Museum”, the “Grainger Museum” is a small Streamline Moderne Art Deco building, built between 1935 and 1939, a repository of items documenting the life, career and music of the well known Australian composer, folklorist and pianist, Percy Grainger (1882 – 1961).
Built on one of Melbourne’s grand tree lined boulevards, Royal Parade in Parkville, the autobiographical museum was constructed in two stages between 1935 and 1939, on land provided for the purpose by the University of Melbourne. The Grainger Museum was designed by the staff architect of Melbourne University, John Stevens Gawler (1885 – 1978) through his architectural firm Gawler and Drummond. The building, built of brown clinker bricks is typical of Streamline Moderne design in Australia in the late 1930s, yet it also has undertones of the Arts and Crafts movement. It has very little detailing on the outside, with a severe arched entranceway, two windows featuring Art Deco grillework, a few decorative panels of brickwork (quite typical of John Gawler’s work) and the remaining windows consisting of glass bricks. The name of the museum appears above the main entranceway in stark Art Deco lettering made of cast iron which have been painted black. The museum is circular and features a small central courtyard accessed by two sets of French doors. The courtyard facades are detailed with decorative brickwork.
The Grainger Museum received input from Mr. Grainger in its design as well as its purpose, as well as funding provided by the composer. Mr. Grainger had contemplated establishing an autobiographical museum in the early 1920s, following the sudden suicide of his mother Rose, to whom he was very devoted. The museum contains large quantity of material from Mr. Grainger’s life, including art and furnishings from his home, musical instruments that he used, compositions, recordings, reformist clothing, published scores, field recordings, photographs, books and personal items belonging not only to Mr. Grainger, but also his mother. It also contains a curio case of whips that Mr. Grainger used in sadomasochist sexual acts which were in a trunk given to the museum with strict instructions that it was not to be opened until ten year after his death. The trunk also contained photographs of the composer after sessions of self flagellation. The museum also contains large amounts of material concerning some of his musical contemporaries, many of whom have fallen into obscurity. The Grainger Museum was officially opened in December 1938, and was staffed and maintained by Mr. Grainger throughout his life.
Sadly, the Grainger Museum suffered some initial setbacks with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, when the building was used for storage for the duration, rather than its original purpose. The museum’s designs were also problematic, as the building was prone to leaks and required extensive waterproofing. The majority of objects were not put on public display until the 1950s when Mr. Grainger visited Australia with the intention of finishing his autobiographical project; something he failed to do as he set sail for his New York home with the task still incomplete. During the 1960s the Grainger Museum was opened to the public regularly for the first time and was sometimes used for concerts and musical workshops for jazz and other avant-garde music, which would have pleased Mr. Grainger, who sadly had died some five years before this eventuality. The Grainger Museum quietly closed its doors in 2003 for extensive renovation, restoration and conservation work. It reopened seven years later 2010, and has been open selectively ever since, showcasing Mr. Grainger’s life and works in a smart, well set out and discreet fashion.
Percy Aldridge Grainger was born in Brighton, Melbourne. He showed precocious talent in music, and at the age of 13 he left Australia to further his ability by attending the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1901 he moved to London, where with the assistance of his mother, he established himself as a successful society pianist, and developed a career as a concert performer and composer. During his time in London, he also collected original folk melodies and helped revive interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th Century. Mr. Grainger left England in 1914, and moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life, residing in White Haven, a suburb of New York with his mother, Rose, who was always his greatest supporter and exponent. Mr. Grainger took up American citizenship in 1918. After his mother committed suicide in 1922, he involved himself more with educational work, and created his own experimental and unusual musical compositions. He particularly enjoyed musical experiments with fantastic music machines that he imagined, and perhaps hoped, would supersede human interpretation one day. During this time, he also made adaptations of other composers' musical works. In 1926, while returning to America from a tour, he met Ella Ström, a Swedish-born artist, whom he married before an enraptured audience at one of his concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in 1928. Mr. Grainger already had a great interest in Nordic music, but his wife’s lineage only served to drive his passion for such music even more. As he grew older he continued to give concerts. He also revised and rearranged compositions of his own, preferring this to writing new music, of which he produced little. After the Second World War, he suffered ill health which reduced his productivity and activity in his passions, and he considered his career to be a failure. He gave his final concert in 1960, less than a year before his death. The piece of music with which Percy Grainger is most generally remembered is his pretty piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune “Country Gardens”.
The architectural firm of Gawler and Drummond was a prolific, though rather undistinguished firm that designed a range of domestic, industrial, commercial and church buildings. These include the McRorie house in Camberwell in 1916, the Fitzroy department store Ackmans Ltd in 1918, the Loch Church of England in 1926, the Korumburra Church of England in 1927, the Deaf and Dumb Society's church at Jolimont in 1929 and the Nyora Church of England in 1930. The Percy Grainger Museum is perhaps Gawler and Drummond’s most distinguished work.
The Grainger Museum was open as part of the 2014 Open House Melbourne Weekend.
The current Bair’s Otago Hotel located at 18 – 22 Bair Street Leongatha, dates from 1939 and replaced the original hotel which has timber verandahs and cast iron lacework. The 1939 Bair’s Otago Hotel was designed by architect Trevor C. McCullough for Arthur C. Bair, whose father, Robert Bair, had purchased the site at the second sale of Leongatha township allotments held on 18 June, 1889. The first building on this site, known as Bair’s Coffee House, was constructed in 1890 and was subsequently renamed the ‘Otago’ upon the grant of a full hotel licence in March 1891. Due to the lack of any suitable public buildings at that time, the first hotel was to be the venue for Woorayl Council meetings until the new Shire Offices were opened in November 1891. The association of the Council with the Hotel continued for over 90 years, as Council adjourned to the Bair’s Otago Hotel on each meeting day for their midday lunch. This practice was finally discontinued in 1985.
Bair’s Otago Hotel is a two storey manganese brick and render corner hotel built in an amalgam of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne architectural styles. It displays typically strong vertical Art Deco elements in the façade, and horizontal canopies with rounded corners, which are more typical of the Streamline Moderne movement. The hotel features vertical counterpoints of flag pole, rain heads and downpipes and an end bay with a central pier of full height brick. The cantilevered street canopy expresses the corner with a semi-circular end below a band of face brickwork containing the upper windows and a recessed upper verandah with a projecting balustrade and canopy. The corner of Bair’s Otago Hotel features a splendid rounded glass brick infill to the upper floor, horizontal step and groove mouldings to the stepped parapet and the sign on the parapet in typical Art Deco lettering. Sadly, the original acid-etched glass windows of the hotel with a koala motif and the name of the hotel were removed during the post war years and have since been lost.
Historically, Bair’s Otago Hotel demonstrates the development of the hotel industry in the Shire through the interwar period. Whilst many earlier hotels were adapted to Art Deco or Streamline Moderne style in this period of change in the hotel trade, the Otago was completely rebuilt in a much more comprehensive expression of an amalgam of the two styles. It is a notable part of the historic interwar character of Bair Street.
Trevor C. McCullough was a Melbourne based architect and builder who designed and constructed a number of commercial buildings in the Shire during the interwar and immediate postwar period including Bair's Otago Hotel (1939), Elizabeth House (1940) and extensions to the Mirboo North Butter Factory (1949).
Leongatha is a town in the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges, South Gippsland Shire, Victoria, Australia, located 135 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. The town is the civic, commercial, industrial, religious, educational and sporting centre of the region. The Murray Goulburn Co-operative Co. Limited, is a farmers' co-operative which trades in Australia under the Devondale label, and has a dairy processing plant just north of the town producing milk-based products for Australian and overseas markets. First settlement of the area by Europeans occurred in 1845. The Post Office opened as Koorooman on 1 October 1887 and renamed Leongatha in 1891 when a township was established on the arrival of the railway. The Daffodil Festival is held annually in September. Competitions are held and many daffodil varieties are on display. A garden competition is also held and there are many beautiful examples throughout the provincial town. The South Gippsland Railway runs historical diesel locomotives and railcars between the market and dairy towns of Nyora and Leongatha, passing through Korumburra.