former Melbourne Butter Supply, South Melbourne

The inner suburbs of Melbourne are dotted with former dairies and stables dating from a time when family run companies produced dairy products for their immediate neighbourhood.

This building is the former Melbourne Butter Supply building in South Melbourne which given the size of the building must have served a much wider area than the few nearby streets as the smaller dairies would have done.

The building is not overly decorated but the stylised lettering on the company name is marvelous.

Dane Taylor & Co Pty Ltd, South Melbourne

I used to go past this charming little deco factory on my way into the city. I still go past this spot, often, but the area is unrecognisable with the Melbourne Exhibition Centre and now the new Convention Centre and Hilton Hotel filling the space.

I guess this building was demolished in the mid-1990s but I can't remember exactly. I don't even know if I knew it was art deco but it interested me enough to take a picture of it.

Looking at the picture now, I am drawn to the fabulous stepped roofline with the rounded ends and horizontal lines capped off by a pattern of vertical lines employing the rule of three.

My photo shows Dane Taylor during its final months. The buildings on the near side of the road had already been demolished so I was able to get far enough away to get a half-decent picture. You can see an out-of-focus mound of builders sand in the bottom left foreground.

Park Gate, South Melbourne

Park Gate apartments sit on the corner of Cecil St and Albert Rd, South Melbourne overlooking Albert Park Reserve. The block was designed by architect I G Anderson around the mid 1930s.

The photo on the right shows the view from Albert Rd, with the curved stepped back facade and small private balconies.

Along Cecil St, the building is more rectangular with communal walkways providing access to the apartments on the upper floors, their metal balustrades reminiscent of the railings on a ship.

This facade does also have curves in the private balconies at the rear of the building and the curved rooms and windows of the apartments themselves.

There are also the curved landings on the main staircase toward the front of the building. The lower level of the stairs is finished in terazzo where the upper storeys employ plain concrete.

At the foot of the stairs there is a fabulous wall light and the name "Park Gate" in relief higher on the wall. It is nice to see that the lettering has been painted in the last few months (between my photos) but the tree has grown very quickly and is already starting to block the name.

From this angle you get a good view of the unusual window treatment where reversed 'L' tetris block of bricks take up the bottom right portion of the opening.

At ground level, behind the new tree, the brickwork is extended to additional 'step' to the pattern while the window has been simplified as a small rectangle.

The apartments have been refurbished but the fireplaces have been retained. There appears to be a few standard layouts with a couple of different but similar style fireplaces.

The upper storey offers a great view of the park to the South and the city of Melbourne to the North.

Park Gate is currently run as Serviced Apartments which can be leased by the day, week or month. I can think of worst places to stay.

Russell & Russell, South Melbourne

With Russell & Russell's workshop in South Melbourne, small is beautiful.

Constructed of cream bricks with a shallow concrete eyebrow over the windows and small wooden door.

The stepped curved symetrical roofline is bordered in dark bricks as contrast.

Dark bricks also provide the outline square containing the Russell & Russell name and the decorative element centered against the sky.

Town Hall Hotel, South Melbourne

The Town Hall Hotel in Bank St, South Melbourne is another Melbourne pub that received a deco make-over in the 1930s.

According to Pots, Punks & Punters, the St Kilda Historical Society's excellent history of St Kilda and South Melbourne pubs by Becky Aizen, the Cosmopolitan Hotel was in operation here in 1868.

It was renamed the Town Hall Hotel in 1881, probably as a result of the construction of the magnificent South Melbourne Town Hall a year or so earlier. The town hall is also located in Bank Street but it is almost two blocks from the hotel so to me it is not an obvious name to choose.

The art deco re-modelling was undertaken by architect, F Morsby in 1936.

The central section is topped by two flagpoles and features a fin with three chrevrons just above a recessed band decorated with vertical ridges.

A small curved balcony is also decorated with a variation on the chrevron theme in the form of a shield.

There are no art deco details inside the Town Hall Hotel but it may be worth a visit on a Tuesday evening to sample their $12 chicken parma.

South Melbourne Art Deco Walk

One of my photos was published in The Age newspaper last Saturday. It was the size of a postage stamp but it was still give me a quite thrill to see it. It wasn't credited because it wasn't that sort of item. It was a promo for an Art Deco walk in South Melbourne organised by the Art Deco Society and the local Port Phillip Council.

The walk was very popular with over 70 people attending so while it is a bit too many for a walk it does show the popularity art deco is gaining. Of course it could be that it was reasonable autumn weather and there wasn't much else to do on a boring Melbourne Sunday. I prefer to believe the former.

Getting back to the picture. It shows a beautiful antelope which is part of the fence at the former Army Band Building in Albert Park. It is pure deco and an ideal way to promote the walk. I was happy to send one of my photos with the press release and even more happy when they printed it.