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.

The Beach Patrol Headquarters Building, at 1001 Ocean Drive, was designed by Robert Taylor in 1934. The backside of the building is a prime example of Tropical Deco--a style that mimics the lines of 1920's era oceanliners. The MiMo facade along Ocean Drive fronts the Oceanfront Auditorium--home to the Miami Design Preservation League's Art Deco Welcome Center, designed by Leonard Glasser in 1954. As part of the City of Miami Beach's Planned Progress program of capital improvements, the two buildings will be separated, opening up pedestrian access.

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 Art Moderne Eddington Apartments. One of my favorite buildings in Shanghai. Also known as the Eileen Chang Apartments.......Why is this one of my fav buildings? When I first visited Shanghai in 1991 I landed about 200 meters from the intersection of Nanjing Xi Lu and Changde Lu. My wife's Aunt and Uncle still live in that same lane house where I spent several weeks in June of 1991.

St Barnabas Library - Grade II listed building.Built in 1937. Designed by Symington, Prince & Pike. Possibly influenced by the Central Library in Stockhom or Arnos Grove tube station in London?

"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.

Built between the two World Wars, this wonderfully stylised Streamline Moderne Art Deco Villa of clinker brick is in one of the finer suburbs of Ballarat.

The villa is large and stand alone, with its original garage next to it. The clean uncluttered lines of the villa attest to the architectural fashions of the Art Deco movement during the 1920s and 1930s. Streamline Moderne features include the brown brick banding mid way around the wall and the top of the enclosed vestibule. It also features large sash windows.

A house of this style would have appealed to a moneyed upper-class Ballarat family who wished to express their chic artistic advancement, and would have displayed their wealth and standing in the Ballarat community.

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)

980 Whitmore is minimalist in its external decoration, with only angled brick piers. Its style comes from its clean lines, orange brick and rectilinear shape.

Is it 30s or 50s? I am not enough of an expert to tell. The ocean liner shape looks rather art deco, but the fenestration, especially on the first floor, has a look of the 50s. The balcony railings are neither, nor are those privacy screens between the individual flats, or the canopy over the pavement.

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).

Oscar’s Hotel and Café Bar is a beautiful Art Deco, boutique hotel in the heart of the Victorian provincial city of Ballarat. Located at 18 Doveton Street, it is the perfect base when sightseeing around the city, as it is so close to many beautiful and historical Ballarat buildings.

Oscar’s, when it was first built in the 1860s was originally the Criterion Hotel, a popular venue in the gold rush days. However, as the Gold Rush dwindled and was replaced with wealth generated through grazing and agriculture in the surrounding area, so the Criterion Hotel changed.

In the 1930s, it was completely refurbished inside. It is this interior with its Streamline Moderne liner style staircase, acid etched frosted glass windows and skyscraper style fireplaces that you see today after a recent restoration.

On a personal note as someone who has stayed there, Oscar’s offers a stylish and comforatable hotel experience at a reasonable price. It also has great food and excellent service.

Kia Ora is located at 449-453 St. Kilda Road, Melbourne, 3004. It is on the east side of St. Kilda Road, half-way between Toorak and Commercial Roads.

Kia Ora was completed in 1936 in the style of Streamline Moderne. Kia Ora was commissioned by the Dixon family, who owned the "Kia Ora" cordial factory, and designed by architect Lewis Levy (1890-1970). When first built, they boasted wall panel hydronic heating, walk-in closets and modern kitchens.

Fawkner Park, one of Melbourne's larger inner city parks, graces the rear of Kia Ora, and the residents are fortunate to have a private gate to access the park.

This was a tough view to get of the marquee and tower. I was at the edge of the sidewalk pressed up again the street light post. I'm glad I brought the wide-angle lens this night!

This is a 5-exposure HDR.

Downtown Los Angeles - April 2016

The tall and thin Victor Hotel was built in 1937. The asymmetrical hotel was one of the first to break away from the traditional Art Deco symmetry.

Long horizontal Moderne style windows and extended eyebrows counter the hotel's strong vertical element. The rows of windows end with porthole-like bosses.

To the left of the entrance is a massive square column that continues above the roof. It seems to act as a counterbalance to the building.

Merced, CA - August 2013

1936, Gilbert V. Steel and Abbott and Merkt Company

see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecht_Company_Warehouse

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)

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).

Standing well back from the road across a well clipped lawn, this substantial 1920s Art Deco villa in the Ballarat suburb of Wendouree, would have been for a larger sized upper-class family.

Built of honeyed clinker bricks with red and brown feature brick detailing, this sprawling house with its wide gables and stepped chimney is far simpler than older Federation Queen Anne style properties in older subdivisions of Ballarat. It's simplicity extolls the clean lines of the Art Deco movement that was so popular across Britain and her dominions during the 1920s and 1930s. The cottage like decoration is typical of the "Metroland" suburban style. The white wrought-iron grille of curls enclosing the vestibule is more Spanish Mission in style.

This style of house would have appealed to the moneyed upper-classes of Ballarat whose money came from either the Nineteenth Century gold rush, or from the wool or farming industries that developed post the boom. Comfortable and very English, it would have shown respectablity and not inconsiderable wealth.

Southgate tube station, Piccadilly Line. London, England, UK.

Southgate station opened on 13 March 1933 and is built in the Art Deco Streamline Moderne style. The architect was Charles Holden.

Please contact me to arrange the use of any of my images. They are copyright, all rights reserved.

No time for photo taking this week, so I'm posting some of my postcards & ephemera. :-)

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Jackson, TN bus station built in 1938

Oscar’s Hotel and Café Bar is a beautiful Art Deco, boutique hotel in the heart of the Victorian provincial city of Ballarat. Located at 18 Doveton Street, it is the perfect base when sightseeing around the city, as it is so close to many beautiful and historical Ballarat buildings.

Oscar’s, when it was first built in the 1860s was originally the Criterion Hotel, a popular venue in the gold rush days. However, as the Gold Rush dwindled and was replaced with wealth generated through grazing and agriculture in the surrounding area, so the Criterion Hotel changed.

In the 1930s, it was completely refurbished inside. It is this interior with its Streamline Moderne liner style staircase, acid etched frosted glass windows and skyscraper style fireplaces that you see today after a recent restoration.

On a personal note as someone who has stayed there, Oscar’s offers a stylish and comforatable hotel experience at a reasonable price. It also has great food and excellent service.

Kia Ora is located at 449-453 St. Kilda Road, Melbourne, 3004. It is on the east side of St. Kilda Road, half-way between Toorak and Commercial Roads.

Kia Ora was completed in 1936 in the style of Streamline Moderne. Kia Ora was commissioned by the Dixon family, who owned the "Kia Ora" cordial factory, and designed by architect Lewis Levy (1890-1970). When first built, they boasted wall panel hydronic heating, walk-in closets and modern kitchens.

Fawkner Park, one of Melbourne's larger inner city parks, graces the rear of Kia Ora, and the residents are fortunate to have a private gate to access the park.

This wonderful Art Deco walnut case wireless radio was made by the New Zealand manufacturers, Temple. According to its serial number, it was made in 1935 and is very much typical of a wireless found in most middle-class homes during the 1930s. It has a pyramid case; still a popular shape after “Egyptomania” or “Tutmania” gripped the world after the discovery of Pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. Its edges however, are rounded, hinting at the Streamline Moderne style so popular in the mid 1930s. Whilst the fine veneer is a warm walnut, the very Art Deco speaker grille and the two fin details on the front are made of stained blackwood. The manufacturer’s name is picked out in brass on red enamel above the convex glass dial and the lozenge knobs are of mottled chocolate brown Bakelite (an early form of plastic that came into everyday use in the 1920s and 30s). Worked with beautiful glass valves, this radio has to be allowed to warm up before use, but still works beautifully, sending forth a soft, slightly dappled sound that only wireless radios of this era and vintage can do. It can still pick up all AM radio stations as well as shortwave radio from around the world.

Private collection.

“Elizabeth House” at 3 Bair Street Leongatha, was designed by Trevor C. McCullough between 1939 and 1940.

“Elizabeth House” is a group of three interwar shops contained under a common rendered parapet of modern Art Deco design, stepping up to a central motif with the name “Elizabeth House" in large raised Chicago Art Deco style lettering placed centrally. The cantilevered verandah has raised horizontal bands at the top and bottom of the fascia. Today, only the shop front of the north shop is original. The building, typically for many interwar commercial developments, focuses on the complex itself, rather than permitting each shop a separate identity.

"Elizabeth House" was constructed as a complex of three brick shops for Miss A. C. Wightman. Trevor C. McCullough also designed Bair's Otago Hotel on the opposite side of Bair Street in the same year as construction bgan on the three shops. The Shire of Woorayl Rate Books show that one of the first tenants in 1942 was "Kenneth Alfred Hayes, Jeweller"; Hayes Jewellers still occupied a shop in the building in 2002.

Historically, “Elizabeth House” is one of a group of buildings that demonstrate the important phase of development of the commercial centre of Leongatha in the interwar years. Aesthetically, it is a locally rare and superior example of an interwar commercial building in the Art Deco style. It makes an important contribution to the historic character of the precinct surrounding the intersection of Bair and McCartin Streets in Leongatha.

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 Palmer Park Apartment Buildings Historic District includes a wide variety of styles, from revivals of Moorish and Spanish buildings to Art Deco. The peak building period was the mid 1920s through the 1930s, but construction continued through the 1960s. This is a detail from a 1939 Streamline Moderne building in the district.

The soon to be demolished Finchley Gaumont at Tally Ho Corner. Opened in 1937, closed in 1980 little altered, demolished c1986.

Gaumont Theatre Finchley, North London.

A scanned negative from around 1986.

"Stratton Heights" is a large complex of Art Deco flats designed by Howard Lawson in the late 1930s for Melbourne rag trade character Harry Newport, who had a very successful clothes and fabric import business in Melbourne's Flinders Lane.

Advertised as "bachelor flats" when first built and leased, "Stratton Heights" has a very pared down masculine look about it, with Functionalist streamlined windows and a flat roof. Unlike some of its nighbouring apartment complexes, built in the 20s and 30s, it has no decorative wall treatment beyond the cream stuccoed concrete. A round tower helps to soften its look, as do the ballustrades, which owe more to the Spanish Mission style of the 30s than Functionalism or Streamline Moderne.

With a prominent terraced street frontage along Alexandra Avenue it affords splendid views overlooking the Yarra River to Richmond and the Melbourne city skyline. Harry Newport lived in the penthouse on the very top when the flats were first built, and a friend of mine who moved into "Stratton Heights" in 1945 after the Second World War (who still owns a flat sold to him by Harry Newport in the late 1950s) remembers Christmas and New Year parties held in the penthouse and its rooftop garden.

The "Stratton Heights" complex stretches right back to Davidson Street, where there is a second entrance and a driveway to the only garage, intended for use by the occupier of the penthouse.

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.

During the 1920s and 1930s, those people thriving from farming or local industry had plenty to spend in local shops. This wonderful Art Deco facade (circa 1925 - 1930) belongs to the PPL Building in Ballarat's main shopping thoroughfare, Sturt Street. Whilst the street level may have fallen victim to the changes in marketing, the upper floors remain unchanged by fickle owners. It still retains its striking minimalist Art Deco design. It features the building's name in a rounded cartouche on the building's corner facade which overlooks Albert Street. The PPL Building has a stylised stepped roofline, long spandrels with rounded edging and glass brick windows, all of which were popular architectural features of the Art Deco movement in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The rounded edges are very representative of the Streamline Moderne movement, and the building is everything a smart and successful business would want in the booming interwar years in Australia.

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.

“Elizabeth House” at 3 Bair Street Leongatha, was designed by Trevor C. McCullough between 1939 and 1940.

“Elizabeth House” is a group of three interwar shops contained under a common rendered parapet of modern Art Deco design, stepping up to a central motif with the name “Elizabeth House" in large raised Chicago Art Deco style lettering placed centrally. The cantilevered verandah has raised horizontal bands at the top and bottom of the fascia. Today, only the shop front of the north shop is original. The building, typically for many interwar commercial developments, focuses on the complex itself, rather than permitting each shop a separate identity.

"Elizabeth House" was constructed as a complex of three brick shops for Miss A. C. Wightman. Trevor C. McCullough also designed Bair's Otago Hotel on the opposite side of Bair Street in the same year as construction bgan on the three shops. The Shire of Woorayl Rate Books show that one of the first tenants in 1942 was "Kenneth Alfred Hayes, Jeweller"; Hayes Jewellers still occupied a shop in the building in 2002.

Historically, “Elizabeth House” is one of a group of buildings that demonstrate the important phase of development of the commercial centre of Leongatha in the interwar years. Aesthetically, it is a locally rare and superior example of an interwar commercial building in the Art Deco style. It makes an important contribution to the historic character of the precinct surrounding the intersection of Bair and McCartin Streets in Leongatha.

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.

Leica M7

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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.

Oscar’s Hotel and Café Bar is a beautiful Art Deco, boutique hotel in the heart of the Victorian provincial city of Ballarat. Located at 18 Doveton Street, it is the perfect base when sightseeing around the city, as it is so close to many beautiful and historical Ballarat buildings.

Oscar’s, when it was first built in the 1860s was originally the Criterion Hotel, a popular venue in the gold rush days. However, as the Gold Rush dwindled and was replaced with wealth generated through grazing and agriculture in the surrounding area, so the Criterion Hotel changed.

In the 1930s, it was completely refurbished inside. It is this interior with its Streamline Moderne liner style staircase, acid etched frosted glass windows and skyscraper style fireplaces that you see today after a recent restoration.

On a personal note as someone who has stayed there, Oscar’s offers a stylish and comforatable hotel experience at a reasonable price. It also has great food and excellent service.

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).

BNSF No. 7190 (GE ES44C4) is the second engine on this westbound freight train.

Macy´s canopy. -------- (BOS_0806_2108 - Image copyrighted).

Although all the rooms of the Rone - Empire installation exhibition are amazing for many different reasons, the stairwell also stands out. Part of the reason for this is the softly fashioned portrait of Lily Sullivan, but it is also for the generous, light filled space of grand proportions itself, with its sweeping staircase and wrought iron balustrades.

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.

The architect of this building is unidentified, but the 1939 apartment dwelling fits well with the other modernistic buildings in this section of Whitmore Road. The building is notable for its orange brick and Streamline Moderne piers at the entry and front of the building.

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.

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)