View allAll Photos Tagged streamlinemoderne
Egon is a family restaurant chain in Norway. I was drawn by the streamline style and the copper cladding on this building. Oslo, Norway.
(CC BY-SA - credit: Images George Rex.)
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.
This classic Greyhound terminal in Downtown Evansville appears to have been abandoned only recently. Hopefully, someone in Evansville will follow the examples of Jackson, Mississippi and Washington, DC in recognizing the building's significance.
The Korumburra Comfort Station for Women was designed and constructed in 1944 by the Public Works Department. Located at 3 Radovick Street Korumburra, the Women’s Comfort Station is on one of Korumburra's main commercial streets.
Aesthetically, the Women’s Comfort Station is very Art Deco in style. Built of smart clinker brick, it is a well resolved interwar public building, which is notable as a locally rare example that features progressive Streamline Moderne influences such as the stepped pylon at the south west corner. The rounded verandah of corrugated iron with wooden supports is a much later edition, introduced when Korumburra became known for its fine Victorian buildings during the 1980s.
The quality of the design and prominent location of the facility illustrates prevailing attitudes to the provision of separate public conveniences for women in the pre-Second World War period.
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 Cameo Theatre, at 1445 Washington Avenue, was designed by Robert E. Collins and originally opened in 1936. Over the years, the space has seen several different incarnations. From 1986 to 1989, it was a major venue for punk and hardcore acts, with acts such as Black Flag, Sonic Youth, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Iggy Popp, Jane's Addiction, the Ramones and the Dead Kennedys all booked under promoter Richard Shelter. During the 2000's, it was converted to a popular nightclub, Crobar, and later Cameo. It is also home Osteria del Teatro, regarded as one of the best Italian restaurants in Miami
The streamline moderne masterpiece features a façade with a large block of glass bricks above the entrance, and a panel with a cameo in the center of stylized plants. The theater was a favorite subject of painter Davis Cone and appears several times in the book Popcorn Palaces.
The Miami Beach Architectural District, also known as Old Miami Beach Historic District, or the more common, Miami Beach Art Deco District, is roughly bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, Alton Road and Collins Canal/Dade Boulevard and 5th Street. With 960 vibrantly colored historic buildings, it contains the largest concentration of 1920s and 1930s resort architecture in the United States.
Miami Beach Architectural District #79000667 (1979)
The New York Central K-5b Pacific Class 4-6-2 steam locomotive #4915 with Henry Dreyfuss' streamline design. Originally manufactured in 1926 by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO), no. 4915 and her sister no. 4917 were streamlined in 1936 to lead The New York Central’s most luxurious experience on rails.
This project is my first MOC and has taken about a year and a half to complete with many challenges arising in trying to obtain the beautiful "streamline moderne" styling. Perseverance paid off however and through 1/2 steps, 1/3 steps and even 1/6 steps I have ended with a final version that I hope you all will enjoy.
The model is 8-wide, built to 1:48 scale and is designed to fit all standard lego track geometry. The locomotive is powered by two Power Functions M motors.
Directions to the build can be found here:
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.
This impressive Miss Havisham style champagne glass fountain was one of the standout installations of the Rone "Empire" exhibition. Long after the champagne, and the love, has dried up, the glasses remain as a reminder of what once was.
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 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. 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.
Before The Studios at Paramount moved into 5555 Melrose Avenue Hollywood, CA this building was the home of KCAL, Drake-Chenault Enterprises, Capitol Records, the first home of NBC West Coast. First it was Consolidated Film Industries.
The tour of the historic Paramount Tour starts here, but this building was a breeding ground of many pop icons. Before the iconic Capitol Records building, this is where they recorded.
As a radio studio it was Jack Benny's favorite during his days (1932-1948) with NBC. CFI was a film lab, Gladys Baker, Marilyn Monroe's Mom, worked for Consolidated as a negative film cutter, many think her Dad was another Consolidated employee Charles Stanley Gifford. There are still scorch marks from a fire at CFI in the building from a nitrate film stock fire.
Los Angeles, 2009
The original ticket office (now closed off from the public by a barrier; it's used now just for film shoots, I suspect) of glorious Union Station (1939). The current ticket booths are way in the back of the station and look every bit as full of character as a Greyhound Bus Station.
The tower of the old Lewis's store in Leicester. Finished in 1936. Designed by G. de C. Fraser. It was attached to a rather grand store with creaky escalators and Art Deco features. Made of Portland Stone. In Humberstone Gate. There are some photos here of the Lewis's store taken just as it was about to open.
I love the plain flowing lines of these bus stops throughout Brighton. See what this looks like 6 years later: www.flickr.com/photos/catchesthelight/9743924070/ (There are more photos of this and other art deco structures near it in my photostream around the link I gave you and at my bncatchesthelight flickr acct.)
This is my absolute favorite deco structure in all of SoBe but I can't find any documentation on it online to tell you what it is for sure. I'm assuming it is a bus shelter and is right outside The Wolfsonian Museum at around 1000 Washington Ave. These will be my last SoBe images in this 1st set and for awhile since I have lots of other photos waiting to be uploaded. Enjoy!!
This wonderfully stylised "Metroland" Art Deco villa in the Melbourne suburb of Travancore would have been home to a medium sized family when first built.
Well proportioned, this stand alone villa has primrose yellow painted stuccoed brick walls with picked out brown feature bricks in geometric patterns and speed lines around the width of the house and above and below the Streamline Moderne "waterfall windows". It also features rounded walls and a rounded chimney, also typical features of Streamline Moderne design.
Travancore is a bijou suburb named after a beautiful Victorian mansion erected in 1863. The mansion's grounds were subdivided in the late 1890s to form the new suburb, which consists only of only about five streets. With commanding views of Royal Park, the area was much sought after by aspiring middle and upper middle-class citizens. This medium-sized residence was built on the lowest section of Travancore, which was the last portion of the suburb to be subdivided on what was formerly the mansion's old dairy. Its position and size would suggest it have been acquired by an aspiring middle-class family who wanted modernity. The mistress of this house would probably have kept it without any help from outside, but with the modern conveniences of her home, she would not have needed help.
"Riawena" is a wonderfully stylised Streamline Moderne Art Deco Villa in the Melbourne suburb of Thornbury. Its name is taken from the Australian Aboriginal word for "fun" or "sport", which is an unusual choice in the 1930s, when so many people were naming their houses after English or American places.
Standing on the corner of a busy main thoroughfare and a much quieter side street, this well proportioned stand alone villa is extremely large and sprawling, with its original garage next to it behind a high wall. The clean uncluttered lines of the house, the speed lines around the pedement of the rounded portico, feature bricks in geometric patterns and the overall low slung design of the house are very Streamline Moderne in design.
The whole property is surrounded by a low fence with plain pillars and wrought-iron swirls inserts and a gate featuring a geometric Art Deco pattern.
The tree in blossom in this photograph is a prunus; a genus of trees and shrubs, which includes the plums, cherries, peaches, apricots and almonds. This is an ornamental variety, which burst into blossom almost a month before usual owing to an unusually warm spell of weather just prior to the photograph being taken.
The Palo Alto Southern Pacific Railroad Depot, at 95 University Avenue, was built in 1940 by architect J.H. Christie. As a regional transit center it serves Santa Clara County and San Mateo County Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) transit bus passengers as well as Caltrain commuters. The depot is an excellent example of the Streamline Moderne--atypical for Palo Alto, whose most significant buildings were designed exclusively in Mission Revival or Spanish Colonial Revival style. It echoes the look of Streamline trainwith porthole windows, horizontal parallel lines to indicate speed and glass blocks.
The one-story building, which replaced an earlier depot built in 1897, is The building is 215 feet long by 25 feet wide with an arcade in front and a marquee at the rear including two buildings connected by an arcade. The interior features a mural, by John McQuarrie, with a central theme of Leland Stanford's dream of a University influenced by a pageant of transportation.
National Register #96000425
The original Odeon cinema opened in 1937, closed in 1975 and became a church in 1977. It is a grade II listed building. Designed by Harry Weedon.
Dudley Odeon
A scanned negative from 1995.
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.
Sears is closing its northwest Houston, Texas, store at 4000 N. Shepherd Drive after 70 years of business at this location. It is not yet known what will become of the Streamline Moderne bus shelter with the fab Sears neon sign integrated into the top of it.
After this store closes, the Houston area will be left with only one Sears store, located approximately 21 miles away in the city of Pasadena.
More: medium.com/@mollyblock/historic-houston-store-to-close-af...
This wonderfully sleek and stylised Art Deco mansion built in the 1930s may be found in the Melbourne suburb of Essendon.
The clean uncluttered lines of the mansion are very Streamline Moderne in design. The mansion is made almost entirely of clinker bricks and features a wide circular sun deck balcony. It has very functionalist windows and a feature "waterfall window" of curved floor to ceiling glass on the ground floor, mirroring the curve of the sun deck above. Aside from a small amount of wrought iron balustrading and a matching grille on the front door, it is entirely devoid of decoration. The whole property is surrounded by its original low brick wall.
Essendon was etablished in the 1860s and became an area of affluence and therefore only had middle-class, upper middle-class and some very wealthy citizens. The modernity of this mansion, which is so different to that of its Queen Anne and Arts and Crafts style neighbours was built by either an architecturally inspired family or the parvenu who may have built this new mansion in place of an older house. A mansion like this built in the finest pocket of Essendon suggests that it was built for an aspiring upper class family of some means. Even in the 1930s world of labour saving devices and minimalism, this mansion would have required a small retinue of servants to maintain.
The Korumburra Comfort Station for Women was designed and constructed in 1944 by the Public Works Department. Located at 3 Radovick Street Korumburra, the Women’s Comfort Station is on one of Korumburra's main commercial streets.
Aesthetically, the Women’s Comfort Station is very Art Deco in style. Built of smart clinker brick, it is a well resolved interwar public building, which is notable as a locally rare example that features progressive Streamline Moderne influences such as the stepped pylon at the south west corner. The rounded verandah of corrugated iron with wooden supports is a much later edition, introduced when Korumburra became known for its fine Victorian buildings during the 1980s.
The quality of the design and prominent location of the facility illustrates prevailing attitudes to the provision of separate public conveniences for women in the pre-Second World War period.
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.
This is the final shot that my Canon PowerShot A300 ever produced. In the middle of a neon sign project the thing just died. It was a good 3,125 shots -- R. I. P., buddy
7/18/2007
11:34:40 PM
Explore July 21, 2007 #139
The original Rincon Annex building was a United States Post Office, designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood in the Streamline Moderne style and completed in 1940. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The exterior of the building is decorated by dolphins in stone relief friezes above the doorways and windows. Today, only the original Post Office lobby remains, serving as a vestibule for the modern-day Rincon Center.
The lobby interior features the renowned "History of California" mural, composed of 27 watercolor murals painted by the Russian immigrant muralist Anton Refregier, from 1941 to 1948 under the Federal Art Project of the Work Projects Administration. The murals, in the Social realism style, depict the history of California and San Francisco's role in it. As the murals were completed immediately following World War II, they generated fierce controversies. Refregier's detractors criticized his artistic style and questioned his political leanings. The controversy eventually reached the U.S. Congress, where critics called for the murals to be destroyed. Ironically, it was the murals that led to the preservation of the post office lobby as part of the Rincon Center development.
The Sepulveda Dam on the Los Angeles River was constructed in 1941 by the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers. An access road crosses over the top on a bridge.
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.
Painted in crisp white, "Alan'ca" is a stylish Streamline Moderne Art Deco mansion in the Melbourne suburb of North Caulfield. The flat roof over the right hand side of the mansion, the rounded wall treatment and semicircular enclosed vestibule with its stepped parapet, speed lines and the minimal decoration across the building all pay homage to the chic, uncluttered lines of Streamline Moderne Art Deco architecture popular around the world in the 1930s. It almost has an elegant Hollywood mansion style about it as it basks in the sun. Even the angular, arrow like wrought iron in the narrow, elongated vestibule windows is very much in the spirit of the Jazz Age. A small piece of wrought iron in the Juliet balcony above the vestibule is equally Art Deco, as is the rounded, almost nautical porch light in its wrought iron frame. The original low fence with its wrought iron gate is also very Jazz Age and typical of the era.
"Alan'ca" has a smart terraced garden to complement the mansion.
Alan'ca is a place with a very small population in the province of Bilecik, Turkey. The closest major cities include Eskisehir, Bursa, Gebze and Istanbul. Perhaps the original owners went to Alan'ca before their home was built, thus inspiring the name emblazoned in elegant script on the front fence next to the gate.
Painted in crisp white, "Alan'ca" is a stylish Streamline Moderne Art Deco mansion in the Melbourne suburb of North Caulfield. The flat roof over the right hand side of the mansion, the rounded wall treatment and semicircular enclosed vestibule with its stepped parapet, speed lines and the minimal decoration across the building all pay homage to the chic, uncluttered lines of Streamline Moderne Art Deco architecture popular around the world in the 1930s. It almost has an elegant Hollywood mansion style about it as it basks in the sun. Even the angular, arrow like wrought iron in the narrow, elongated vestibule windows is very much in the spirit of the Jazz Age. A small piece of wrought iron in the Juliet balcony above the vestibule is equally Art Deco, as is the rounded, almost nautical porch light in its wrought iron frame. The original low fence with its wrought iron gate is also very Jazz Age and typical of the era.
"Alan'ca" has a smart terraced garden to complement the mansion.
Alan'ca is a place with a very small population in the province of Bilecik, Turkey. The closest major cities include Eskisehir, Bursa, Gebze and Istanbul. Perhaps the original owners went to Alan'ca before their home was built, thus inspiring the name emblazoned in elegant script on the front fence next to the gate.
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.
/|\ /|\ Jerome Grand Hotel Parking Lot /|\ Packard One Eighty Touring Sedan /|\ Front View /|\ /|\
Front View...
1941 Packard 180 Touring Sedan
Jerome Grand Hotel Parking Lot
Old mining town near Sedona and Cottonwood, Arizona
IMG_0769 - Version 2
The Packard 180 was introduced for the 1940 model year (18th series) by the Packard Motor Car Company to replace the discontinued V-12 as their top-of-the-line luxury model. The correct name of the model was Custom Super Eight One-Eighty. The car was derived from the Packard Super Eight One-Sixty with which it shared the complete running gear including the in-line eight-cylinder, 356-cubic-inch (5,830 cc) engine that developed 160 horsepower. It was advertised as the most powerful eight-cylinder engine offered by any automobile manufacturer in 1940. (By contrast, the Cadillac 346 cubic inch V-8 developed 150 hp).
Packards of all series (110, 120, 160, 180) shared similar body styling in 1940 (which some later said led to a "cheapening" of the once-exclusive luxury marque), using the same bodies with hoods and front fenders of different length to meet their respective chassis. Thus the 160 and 180 got identical bodies. However, the 180s featured finer interior detailing with the best fabrics, leather and carpeting available. Packard used a special woolen ceiling in these cars only which was sewn longitudinally. Packard built the partition in its Limousines in a way that there was no hint of it when the partition glass was lowered, allowing the owner to use the car by himself as a sedan (thus the designation "Sedan Limousine" by Packard).
In 1940, Packard made air conditioning an option. It was developed by the Henney Motor Company with whom Packard had a long lasting business connection and used on Henney bodied ambulances as early as 1938. It was the first time that A/C was available on a stock automobile.
In an exclusive agreement with Packard since 1937 until Henney's demise in 1954, Henney provided bodies for Packards's ambulances, hearses and flower cars, and they often provided special custom body work for passenger cars. The pre-WWII Henney models usually had 160-180 trim but were actually on the Packard 120A 156" wheelbase chassis with the smaller 288 cubic inch engine although there were also 160 and 180 versions available.
There were minor styling changes in the 1941 and 1942 models (19th and 20th series), the most notable of which was the moving of the headlights into the fenders. Also for the first time, running boards could be deleted with a rocker panel put in their place to cover the chassis, and two-tone paint schemes were available.
The final 180s rolled off the Packard assembly line in February, 1942, as World War II brought a halt to civilian automobile production.
I have always been interested in the streamlining of cars in the 40s and statues of tigers, leopards and jaguars in sculpture of the 30s...
Streamline Moderne
A related style named Streamline Moderne, or simply Streamline, developed soon after Art Deco. Streamline was influenced by the modern aerodynamic designs,[14] including those developing from the advancing technologies of aviation, ballistics, and other applications requiring high velocity. The shapes resulting from scientifically applied aerodynamic principles were adopted for Art Deco, applying streamlining techniques to other useful objects of everyday life, such as cars. The Chrysler Airflow design of 1933 was unsuccessful commercially,[26] but the beauty of the design, being functional rather than simply added ornamentation, provided the precedent for more conservatively designed pseudo-streamlined vehicles.
Streamlining quickly influenced American and European automobile design and changed the appearance from the rectangular "horseless carriages" into sleek vehicles with sweeping lines, symmetry, and V-shapes that seemed to add to their suggestiveness of speed and efficiency.[27] Nash Motors introduced the modern fully unitized body (monocoque) design for the low-price market during 1941[28] that featured fastback “Slipstream” models with high prow-like hoods, and art-deco "speed lines" for chrome grilles and parallel bar trim.[29] These aerodynamic-looking designs were applied by automakers and continued to be popular in the sellers' market after World War 2.[30] These "streamlined" forms began to be used for the design of mundane and static objects such as pencil sharpeners, refrigerators,[14] and gas pumps.[31]
Set back from the road behind its original low brick garden wall, this wonderfully sleek and stylised Art Deco villa may be found near to Lake Wendouree in the provincial Victorian city of Ballarat.
The clean uncluttered lines of the villa are very Streamline Moderne in design. The villa is made almost entirely of clinker brick, with the exception of some brown and red feature bricks along the angular planter boxes enclosing the front entranceway. It features a wide circular porch and a very tall chimney, both signature design elements of Ballarat’s most renowned architect of the 1930s, Herbert Leslie Coburn (1891 – 1956). Built in 1939 for a middle class family, it cost £950.00, not an insignificant sum in the late 1930s. It has very functionalist windows and once had an oeil de boeuf window to the right of the front porch. The difference in colour of the mortar makes where it once was just discernable. Aside from the small band of feature bricks, it is entirely devoid of decoration.
This style of house would have appealed to the up and coming middle-classes of Ballarat whose money came from local merchant trade, the wool or farming industries that developed in the Twentieth Century. Comfortable and very English, it would have shown respectablity and a certain level of avant garde style and modernism that money could provide.
Ballarat born Herbert Leslie Coburn grew up to be a renowned Ballarat architect, practicing from 1905 to 1956. He taught Architecture and Building Construction at the Ballarat School of Mines from 1922, resigning in 1948 due to ill health. The Royal Victorian Institute of Architects awarded Herbert Coburn a Silver Medal for the designs of an Anglican Gothic Suburban Church in 1913 while he was still a student of the institute. In 1917 Herbert became associated with Percy Richards, and they formed a partnership in 1918, Richards, Coburn, Richards, which lasted until 1933, when they separated owing to artistic differences. Whilst Percy Richards wished to retain a more traditional style in keeping with the popular conservative tastes of their clients, Herbert Coburn wanted to be at the vanguard of architectural design and was very interested in following the sleeker and stylised designs of the Streamline Moderne movement which was coming out of Europe. Herbert Coburn therefore started his own architectural practice. Coburn studied for formal qualifications by correspondence with the International Correspondence School, obtaining an architectural diploma two years later. His rooms were in the Clyde Chambers at 313 Sturt St, Ballarat. He was a Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects. Some of Herbert Coburn's architectural achievements include: St Patrick's Primary School in Drummond Street Ballarat (1935), the Shire of Wimmera Council Offices in Firebrace Street Horsham (1936), Paterson's Furniture Store in Horsham (circa 1936), the Railway Hotel in Maryborough (1938) and the clock tower of the Stawell Town Hall (1939). In addition to these, there are many beautiful, well designed and executed modernist Art Deco villas around Ballarat that bear his distinct architectural style.
The community minded Herbert Coburn was elected a Councillor with the City of Ballarat in 1938, and Mayor in 1945. Herbert’s motivation was the 'proper development and advancement of his city.' He held the position of Councillor until 1952.
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 Camberwell Police Station and Court House Complex on the Corner of Camberwell Road and Butler Street in the Melbourne eastern suburb of Camberwell, was designed by Public Works Department architect, Percy Edgar Everett (1888 - 1967).
The complex was built by W. A. Medbury between 1938 and 1939. in the Streamline Moderne style which had been influencing Australian architecture since its first appearance in the early 1930s. The complex is set on a diagonal axis. The buildings are constructed of red, brown and manganese bricks and contain Percy Everett's trademark pattern detailing.
The complex still retains a law enforcement function to this day, as the court house is now used for Administrative Appeals Tribunals and the police station still functions.
Percy Everett's other architectural works include; the Fairfield Club House in 1934, the Essendon technical School in 1939 and the Russell Street Police Headquarters in 1942 and 1943.
The facade of a pretty and very stylised cream stucco Art Deco villa in the Melbourne suburb of Fairfield . The speed lines picked out in yellow around the walls, the stepped chimney, the scalloped edging around the garage (with its original green metal door) and the streamlined windows all pay homage to the chic, uncluttered lines of Art Deco architecture. The low fence with its plain pillars and wrough iron decoration is also very Art Deco.
This stylied Streamline Moderne Art Deco Villa in the Melbourne suburb of Thornbury, has sadly fallen into decay since it was built.
Standing on the corner of a busy main thoroughfare and a much quieter side street, this well proportioned stand alone villa is quite large, and has its original garage behind it. The clean uncluttered lines of the house, and the speed lines around the pedement and columns of the rounded porch are very Streamline Moderne in design, as is the rounded vestibule window built of glass bricks (which would have been very chic in the mid 1930s when this villa was built). Even the swirled grille on the front door and its two flanking windows are very Art Deco in spirit, as is the original eau-de-nil colour scheme.
The whole property is surrounded by a low fence with plain pillars and wrought iron gate featuring a geometric Art Deco pattern.
Palo Alto, California. National Register of Historic Places #96000425. Construction began 1940, info here.
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.
Set well back from the road on a large corner block, this wonderfully sleek and stylised sprawling Art Deco villa may be found near to Lake Wendouree in the provincial Victorian city of Ballarat.
The clean uncluttered lines of the villa are very Streamline Moderne in design. The villa is made almost entirely of clinker brick, with the exception of some brown feature brick banding along the upper section of the gable, in a geometric pattern under the eave and above the windows. The villa's windows are made of cast iron, and are large and Functionalist Moderne in design. The villa features a wide circular porch with concrete pillars and very tall chimneys, both signature design elements of Ballarat’s most renowned architect of the 1930s, Herbert Leslie Coburn (1891 – 1956). Streamline Moderne was known in Australia as Modern Ship Style during the 1930s. This nickname was used because the buildings designed in this style often looked very much like the cascading upper superstructures of ocean liners with their towering decks, railings and porthole windows. The whole property is surrounded by its original clinker brick wall with brown and red feature brick decorated newel posts.
Ballarat born Herbert Leslie Coburn grew up to be a renowned Ballarat architect, practicing from 1905 to 1956. He taught Architecture and Building Construction at the Ballarat School of Mines from 1922, resigning in 1948 due to ill health. The Royal Victorian Institute of Architects awarded Herbert Coburn a Silver Medal for the designs of an Anglican Gothic Suburban Church in 1913 while he was still a student of the institute. In 1917 Herbert became associated with Percy Richards, and they formed a partnership in 1918, Richards, Coburn, Richards, which lasted until 1933, when they separated owing to artistic differences. Whilst Percy Richards wished to retain a more traditional style in keeping with the popular conservative tastes of their clients, Herbert Coburn wanted to be at the vanguard of architectural design and was very interested in following the sleeker and stylised designs of the Streamline Moderne movement which was coming out of Europe. Herbert Coburn therefore started his own architectural practice. Coburn studied for formal qualifications by correspondence with the International Correspondence School, obtaining an architectural diploma two years later. His rooms were in the Clyde Chambers at 313 Sturt St, Ballarat. He was a Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects. Some of Herbert Coburn's architectural achievements include: St Patrick's Primary School in Drummond Street Ballarat (1935), the Shire of Wimmera Council Offices in Firebrace Street Horsham (1936), Paterson's Furniture Store in Horsham (circa 1936), the Railway Hotel in Maryborough (1938) and the clock tower of the Stawell Town Hall (1939). In addition to these, there are many beautiful, well designed and executed modernist Art Deco villas around Ballarat that bear his distinct architectural style.
The community minded Herbert Coburn was elected a Councillor with the City of Ballarat in 1938, and Mayor in 1945. Herbert’s motivation was the 'proper development and advancement of his city.' He held the position of Councillor until 1952.
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 Golden Gate Bridge spans 8,981 feet across the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay onto the Pacific Ocean, connecting San Francisco on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County. Designed by engineer Joseph Strauss and architect Irving Morrow, it was the longest suspension bridge span in the world when it opened on May 27, 1937. It has since been surpassed by eight other bridges, but still has the second longest suspension bridge main span in the United States after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York.
Before the bridge was built, the only practical route across the Golden Gate was by boat, which held San Francisco's growth rate below the national average. However, many experts believed that the 6,700-foot strait could not be bridged. It had strong swirling tides, strong winds, and reached depths of 500-feet at its center.
In 1916, former engineering student James Wilkins wrote an article with a proposed design for a crossing in the San Francisco Bulletin. The City Engineer estimated the cost at an impractical $100 million and challenged bridge engineers to reduce costs. Joseph Strauss, an ambitious but modestly accomplished engineer, responded with a plan for bookend cantilevers connected by a central suspension segment, which he promised could be built for $17 million. Strauss spent the better part of the next decade drumming up support and construction began on January 5, 1933.
As chief engineer in charge, Strauss, with an eye towards self promotion downplayed the contributions of his collaborators who were largely responsible for the bridge's final form Architect Irving Morrow designed the overall shape of the bridge towers, the lighting scheme and Art Deco elements, and used the International Orange color as a sealant. And Charles Alton Ellis, collaborating remotely with Leon Moisseiff, was the principal engineer, producing the basic structural design, introducing Moisseiff's "deflection theory" by which a thin, flexible roadway would flex in the wind, greatly reducing stress by transmitting forces via suspension cables to the bridge towers
In 2007, the Golden Gate Bridge was ranked #5 on the AIA 150 America's Favorite Architecture list.
California Historical Landmark No. 974, San Francisco Landmark No. 222 (5/21/1999)
Unusual shaped, almost a simplified streamline moderne, pub/restaurant on Callendar Road, Falkirk. As with most buildings of this period in the vicinity this entire block was also designed by local architect James Gavin Callendar, probably around 1930. It is likely he designed the layout for development of all buildings at the same time as the land would have been fued in one. Formerly The Callendar Arms.
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.