Photo by Michael Gardner. All rights reserved. Used with permission

Terrace Houses: 31-42 Mitchell Street, Glebe. Sydney, New South Wales

The Glebe Estate contains numerous long and uniform rows of single and double storey terraced homes, many very similar in style and most featuring similar roof features. Pictured is part of a row of thirteen single storey Victorian terraced homes on Mitchell Street.

The cottages are narrow and most of the focus architecturally is on the roof, in particular the blade style party walls which protrude above the slate tiles culminating in a moulded chimney for each house giving the row a picturesque quality.

Terrace Houses: 56-58 Wellington Street, St Kilda. Melbourne, Victoria

It a bit stunned me to discover that this pair of large unnamed but seemingly well kept double storey terraces has never featured in a heritage study or been included in a heritage overlay. Considering the huge amount of redevelopment that Wellington Street has seen since the 1960s it is remarkable that they remain a feature of this area.  Read more... (468 words, 7 images, estimated 1:52 mins reading time)

Photo by Michael Gardner. All rights reserved. Used with permission

 

Terrace Houses: 13-33 Louis Street, ("The Block"), Redfern. Sydney, NSW

Gentrification of terraces has come so far in Australia that it is sometimes easy to forget that just a couple of decades ago most were the forgotten and neglected homes of the working classes. However this is still very much true in pockets of Sydney and to a lesser extent Melbourne where terraces remain low cost rentals bordering on ghettos and slums. Here is a notorious such one known as the “Louis Street row”.

 Read more... (407 words, 7 images, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

Terrace Houses: 2-4 Collett Street, Kensington. Melbourne, Victoria

This little pair of Italianate terraces attempts a sense of grandeur with its richly decorative parapet which is at once distinguishing each house and having a composition which gives it the appearance of a single larger home.

The rendered parapet above each house features a central shell motif in a semicircular arch which is crowned and flanked by detailed finials sitting on decorated piers. There is an unexpected relationship of scrolls on either side sitting atop a balustrade. At either end, there is a pineapple finial. There is a frieze of festoons above a heavy cornice which has clusters of twin brakets and helps to visually divide the heavy top with the verandah below.  Read more... (331 words, 7 images, estimated 1:19 mins reading time)

Terrace Houses: 4-6 Longmore Street, St Kilda West. Melbourne, Victoria

This pair of narrow cottage sized single storey Italianate terrace houses feature a dainty design of intricate mouldings and a brickwork. The colour schemes of the symmetrical facades are a contrast in tastes, with 4 being restored to sympathetically reveal original tuckpointed brickwork and tile patterns while 6 is completely painted white, the trademark of the middle classes contrasted with black painted iron lace.  Read more... (381 words, 7 images, estimated 1:31 mins reading time)