In this track, listen to descriptions and interviews about three very different houses sitting side-by-side: a grand Victorian home, an Art Deco block of flats, and an architect-designed house from the 1980s.

Download this audio file and head to St Kilda to do the walk.

Further Information

Audio Transcript for Stop 3

You should now be standing in front of the flats at 14 – 20 Victoria Street. This is stop number 3 on our tour.

Look at the three buildings across the road, which present an unusual sequence in building styles and periods.

The middle house, number 19, is a Victorian home, probably built around 1880. A classical late Victorian building, this represents the first main era of stand-alone family homes in St Kilda in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Next door at number 17, Valma illustrates the subsequent building period in St Kilda - the inter-war block of flats, which often replaced Victorian homes or were built in the subdivided grounds of former mansions.

On the other side of the Victorian, at number 21, is Crigan House a post-modern reinvention of the St Kilda home dating from 1989 and heralding the beginning of the suburb’s latest wave of gentrification.

Together these three buildings tell a profound, if simplified, story of St Kilda’s residential development.

Crigan House was designed by Melbourne architect Allan Powell:

ALLAN POWELL: It was an attempt to bring together the meanings that I found in St.Kilda – a really very self-conscious attempt. The first thing was an obvious allusion there to a ship and to decks and to climbing a narrow stair.

Crigan House has both modernist and post-modernist tendencies. Modernism was all about clean lines and a lack of decoration and is expressed here through the cylindrical concrete columns and the exposed stairways. Post-modernism is a self-conscious, ironic style which eclectically samples elements of much older periods, but subverts and plays with them.

ALLAN POWELL: I’ve intentionally exploited the idea of a beachside playfulness, exemplified by the Brighton Pavilion in England – it’s a kind of playful carnival type of architecture by the sea. I like the metaphysical idea that it’s not building-like – that you’re forced into something more abstract. So, in fact the thing is a giant stair that goes up. At the same time as being contained in a house and having a domestic quality, you’re contained in a giant stair.

The post-modern influence on this house can be seen in the cutback, sliced front wall which references shapes of a doorway and window, echoing those of its neighbour, the late Victorian at number 19.

ALLAN POWELL: On a drawing it looks like a Victorian House, and I had to that to get it through town planning.

What I was conscious of was the juxtaposition of styles. It did all meld together and you really did have completely incompatible styles simply connected.

What I like is admitting that you can’t find resolution. Admitting that all your states of mind won’t go together. You push them together and if it’s ironic, well, that’s one way of putting it, but, really, it’s just plain irresolvable!

Architect Alan Powell, designer of Crigan House.

Now let’s turn our attention to Valma at number 17.

Valma was given live in 1936 by the architect W H Merritt, who designed some of the most distinctive inter-war flats and houses in the Moderne style, mostly in St Kilda and Elwood.

ROBIN GROW: Generally what appeals to me are the clear, simple, elegant lines, compared to Victoriana. Some buildings of the deco style do have ornamentation but generally they’re quite clean and smooth, with little fussiness on the facades.

Robin Grow, President of the Art Deco and Modernism Society of Australia.

ROBIN GROW: Overall, we’ve got a combination of developers wanting to build blocks of flats and rent them out. We’ve got architectural styling that was coming from Europe, and we’ve got new materials able to be used in the buildings, such as steel frames and counter-levered balconies. It’s a combination of these things that leads to the development of blocks of flats like Valma.

The emergence of blocks of flats like Valma also reflected social changes in the 1930s:

ROBIN GROW: Most of the flats that were built down here were tenanted within a month or so of completion.

It was people who were looking for a social time, but it was also people who were down-sizing from bigger houses. Some of them had been through financial reversals during the depression years and they could no longer maintain a big house. They were also people who were committed to having the latest facilities in their blocks of flats. All of the things that constituted “modern living” as it was in the 1930s were very important, so architects changed the way that they fitted these places out.

Robin Grow, President of the Art Deco and Modernism Society of Australia.

Now let's cross the road – don't forget to look out for cars – and stand by the fire hydrant outside Valma.