The Californian ‘Bungalow
Court’ and the English
‘cul-de-sac’ were first derided in Australia
as ‘dead ends’.
A design for a bungalow court by John Gawler
was published in the Australian Home Builder in February 1923. It has a
gated entry flanked by rockeries and a further rockery within a turning circle.
Garages are grouped at the end, separated by a fashionable pergola. Presumably
it was never built. It took a swish name like ‘Los
Angeles Court’ with its
whiff of recently fashionable Hollywood
glamour, to lure homebuyers in 1927. This estate was laid out on the site of G.
Brunning & Son’s St Kilda Nurseries, one of Australia’s
most important plant nurseries and seed merchants.
George Brunning
(1830-93), was born at Lowestoft,
Suffolk
and established his nursery initially at the corner of Argyle and
Inkerman Streets in 1860. In 1862 he moved to a far
larger site in Brighton Road
next to the Grosvenor Hotel, until this was subdivided for housing in 1884. He
moved the nursery further south again between Albion
and Maryville Streets and on 1.6 hectares on his old site. It was developed as
a generous Victorian house with outbuildings and a series of gabled glasshouses.
His brother and three sons joined the business.
In 1889, he acquired William Adamson’s
extremely popular The Australian Gardener, first published in 1854 and
revised over a hundred years in 34 editions, thereafter by George’s son, Leslie,
who wrote many other gardening books.
George was unusually fussy about correct
botanical nomenclature. He brought the Schinus
molle (Pepper tree) to Australia,
popular in St Kilda and promoted Cupressus
macrocarpa (Monterey Cypress). In 1927 the Argus claimed that the
Cypress
hedge around Brunning’s Nursery was the largest in
Victoria.
Brunning’s
Nursery was sold for £26,000.00 in 1926. The Brunnings
Estate was then surveyed and subdivided by the Brunnings
Subdivisional Coy, of 96 High Street,
St Kilda in 1927 into 53 blocks. 13 blocks are in Los Angeles Court and six in
Brighton Road, with others in Somers Street, part of Albion and Maryville
Streets, and Moores Street (west side).
In Los Angeles Court
and Brighton Road
alone, at least 17 comfortable and stylish houses were built over the next 11
years, including 48, 50, 52, 58, 64 and 66 Brighton Road;
4, 5, 8, 10 & 15 Los Angeles Court,
and 17, 19, 20, 22 & 23 Monkstadt Avenue.
It is hardly a true court, but rather a partial closure of its east end, with a
low brick wall and landscaping, barring all but pedestrian traffic through into
Monkstadt
Avenue. This was actually
a traditional practice in more urban contexts. Queen Anne’s Gate in London,
was once similarly divided, presumably to reduce traffic noise, early in the
eighteenth century.
Los Angeles Court
is the first known cul-de-sac in Melbourne
and probably Australia.
Others followed: Rothesay Avenue, Brighton;
Torrington Avenue, Canterbury, Bruce Court, Elsternwick and
Sidwell Court, Hawthorn (1932) and SaxilTuxen’s ‘glorious garden subdivision’ of
Corsewell Close, Hawthorn (1938). All these were on
the estates of large nineteenth century mansions, broken up for sale. They had
concrete roads, lamp standards and underground power.
But the houses in Los Angeles Court
were targeted at comfortably middle (if not upper middle) class people. In
1933, real estate agent Albert Victor Jennings launched his completely serviced
Hillcrest Estate in Caulfield, for more ordinary people. His
Beauville Estate, Murrumbeena (1934-35); Beaumont
(1937) and Beauview (1939) estates in Ivanhoe
followed, before World War II. At Beaumont,
there are actually five cul-de-sacs, but these avoided the necessity otherwise
for wastefully deep blocks.
But built ten years earlier, Los Angeles Court
was pitched a cut above these, and for wealthier owners. Five of the houses in
Brighton Road and in the Court are with low front brick walls, fully serviced
and individually designed by fashionable architects: Leslie J.W. Reed (48
Brighton Road, commenced 1937, a rare semi-detached in this estate), Arthur W.
Plaisted, no 58 (1927-28); G.W.
Vanheems, (no 66, 1920-21); Schreiber & Johnson (4 Los Angeles Court,
1930-31); and H. Geoffrey Bottoms (Besanoo, no 5,
1932-33).
The first built, Nos 50 and 52 Brighton Road
were completed in 1927, for Los Angeles Court Pty. Ltd. Two further houses were
built in that year (Nos 8 and 10), but then the Great Depression set in and only
one further house (no 4 in 1930) was built over the next five years, apart from
two smaller houses in Monkstadt Avenue (no 22, 1929
and no 20, 1931), where development of three further houses continued until
1938. More modest houses were built in Albion
and Maryville Streets.
Architectural styles are generally quite
eclectic in their sources and stylistically diverse: no 52 Brighton Road
and no 9 (1932) are Old English, with black and white timbered gables. Nos 8
and 10 and no 50 Brighton Road (all 1927) and no 5 (1932) are a kind of Colonial
Bungalow with Georgian columns and small-paned windows; no 4 (1930) has the
Hispanic Baroque of the Spanish Mission manner and the two latest, no 48
Brighton Road and no 15 in the Court (1938) are sleekly
Moderne, the former with interestingly patterned brickwork and the
latter, smooth rendered and white painted.
Even before the First World War in 1913, house
plans were first published for the delectation and interest of the general
public in The Real Property Annual (1913-21) and The Salon
(1913-37), then between the wars in the Home (1920-42), Australian
Homes, and particularly successfully in The Australian Home
Beautiful (1926-
). These were the organs which first popularised the continuing weekend sport
of house style-spotting and plan-hunting by the general public.
Already, home buyers were aware of the two
West Coast American styles: Californian Bungalow and Spanish Mission.
Bungalows boasted natural materials: stained timbers and shingles, natural
stone, massive timbers and low pitched nesting roofs, with deep, shady eaves, so
appropriate for Australian conditions. Mission
was rendered, with Cordoba
tiles, parapets and arcades with twisted columns, Hispanic Baroque details and
wrought iron, set in gardens of cactus and pampas grass. Limerick Lodge, no
58 Brighton Road
(by designed by architect Arthur Plaisted in 1927)
is a very fine example of this style.
From England came Moderne,
whether Jazz or Streamlined, with smooth white render, steel windows, shiny dark
Manganese bricks, nautical touches like round corners and portholes,
cantilevered slabs, flat roofs and parapets, with geometric Art Deco decorative
elements. In its purist form, this became European Modernism, first at
WoyWoy flats in 1935-36
(42), but this severe style was not yet popular for family houses and
there is none of that in Los Angeles Court.
A Los Angeles Court
residence, 2002
Interestingly, all of the Los Angeles Court
houses are detached: there are no flats, or even town-houses. It is important
that this character, unusual for St Kilda be maintained and pressure to allow
the intrusion of multi-unit development be resisted. Several have attics, but
only one is full-blown two-storied. The impression is of the classic Los Angeles
bungalow court transposed direct to Brighton Road.
In Europe, one family, one house could mean
pairs, groups, or rows, but despite the popularity of flats in St Kilda a
kilometre away, here it was felt that family houses needed to be set in their
own separate garden. Even the great father of Australian planning, Sir John
Sulman regarded the two-storied pairs and row houses
in Hampstead Garden Suburb, north London
as ‘hardly desirable’. In 1913, the leading German planner, Werner
Hegemann was shown terraced houses in Sydney
regarded as needing demolition. His guide, John Garlick
later remarked that ‘the very type of house I was condemning was...the ideal
that the German town-improvers were striving to reach’.
Setbacks from the street, behind (unlike
America)
the security of a front fence, were codified in Uniform Building Regulations
throughout Victoria
in 1946. For Australians, front gardens were essential and the real, domestic
showcase, in a quiet street safe from traffic. This ideal was first most fully
expressed in Victoria
at Los Angeles Court.
References
Aitken,
Richard. ‘George Brunning’ in
Richard Aitken & Michael Looker,
Eds.The Oxford
Companion to AustralianGardens.OxfordUniversity
Press.
South Melbourne 2002. pp 111 & 112.
Bick,
David with Wilson Sayer Core Pty.Ltd.
St Kilda Conservation Study.Area 2.Vol.1. (Undated).
Freestone,
Robert. Model Communities, The Garden City
Movement in
Australia.
Nelson.
Melbourne
1989. pp 90 & 193.
Garden,
Don.
Builders to the Nation.the A.V. Jennings
Story.MelbourneUniversity
Press.
Melbourne
1992. pp 38 & 39.
Miletic,
Daniella. ‘Unearthing a Rich History. A Suburban
Planning Dispute has helped a Community Discover its Past’. The Emerald Hill Times.pp 1, 8 & 9.