Deauville Architectural Trail Walk (Beamaris)

Walk Summary:

Start: 1 Cromer Road, Beaumaris
Distance: 2.6 kilometres
Walking Time: About 45 minutes
Undulations: The trail path has moderate to occasionally steep undulations

Trail directions:

1. Residence
Address: 1 Cromer Rd, Beaumaris (cnr Ray St)
Style: Neo Modern
Architect: Jeremy Wolveridge
Date: 2005

This large house sits on a prominent triangular corner site. Unlike many recent buildings along Beach Road, the house doesn't try to hide behind a tall concrete fence. In fact, the feeling of being exposed to the southerly gales and sea breeze is heightened by large windows that face the Bay. There is a nice balance between cement-rendered sections of the building and the vertical timber cladding, with all windows cut precisely into these various surfaces. The entrance is enclosed behind staggered walls, creating a transition between interior and exterior.

2. Residence
Address: 5 Bellaire Court, Beaumaris
Style: Neo Modern
Architects: Austin Design Associates
Date: 2009

Set in a court becoming renowned for the modernist architecture of Beaumaris, this house is a fine example of the best of the 1960's architecture.

While the original footprint of the house has been maintained, the renovations are sympathetic to both the house and the mid century streetscape.

Citation - "The property represented a very well mannered, respectful first floor addition to a 1960 Beaumaris house. This design nonetheless projects its own contemporary integrity through well crafted modelling, clean detailing and well modulated and proportioned elevational treatments. The result feels almost as timeless as the original house and provides a comfortable yet interesting presence to the neighbourhood."

3. Residence
Address: 74 Cromer Ave, Beaumaris
Style: Modernist
Architect: Unknown
Date: c.1965

This house is a piece of purist pre-World War II European Modernism dropped into suburbia. Its dramatic lines now hidden by garden, it is a white rectangular box, with side walls, floor and relentlessly flat roof all the same thickness, set on a recessed brick base on an elevated site. The north-facing main wall, glazed for its entire length, is set back from the front of the box, which then provides both sunshading and a balcony. When first built, the house must have looked like a giant, long TV set.

Even when it is compared with other architect designed houses of the period, this example is starkly modern.

4. Residence
Address: 15 Mariemont Ave, Beaumaris
Style: Modernist
Architect: John Baird
Date: c.1960

Yet another of the many Modernist houses that were such a feature of Beaumaris in the 1950s and 1960s, this prominent house features clean, simple lines. Cream brick wing walls support a box-like house with a single long, low gable roof, and a front facade entirely of glass. The walls also lift the main floor high up above the crest of the hill, providing carport space, and taking full advantage of the sea views.

The house is symmetrical, with a central steel post, access stairs tucked into the front balcony, and a stylish front door placed squarely in the middle.

5. Residence
Address: 23 Mariemont Ave, Beaumaris
Style: Modernist
Architects: Cocks & Carmichael
Date: 2002

This is a very transparent house set into a sloping site on a neutral planar base, with two levels of highly articulated glass, metal, louvres and pergola, and a tall chimney above. It presents a robust yet crafted presence to the street and obvious orientation to distant water views. The plan facilitates cross-ventilation, bringing in the cooling sea breezes, and emphasis has been given to sustainable design and living.

The back of the house faces due north, where windows and eaves are positioned to control direct sunlight. The two Moreton Bay figs (Ficus macrophylla) remaining in the backyard were on the grounds of the area's original homestead and the new house has been positioned to respect these trees.

6. Residence
Address: 27 Mariemont Ave, Beaumaris
Style: Modernist
Architects: Chancellor & Patrick
Date: 1962

The house was built for an air-conditioning manufacturer and needed to accommodate a large unit underneath, resulting in the main floor being raised. There is immaculate timber detailing throughout, including the internal fittings, and this attention to detail is a signature of Chancellor & Patrick's work.

The steep driveway leads the eye to the prominent roof forms, consisting of two stacked gabled roofs, the top one flanked by flat roofs to either side. This house hides beautiful private spaces, which flow out to the north-facing rear garden.

Chancellor & Patrick designed many public and private buildings in the City of Bayside during the 1950s and 1960s. They were largely influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright and the contemporary architecture of America's west coast.

7. Iggulden House
Address: 50 Wells St, Beaumaris
Style: Modernist
Architects: Chancellor & Patrick
Date: 1957

Although its most dramatic features are hard to see from the street, this house is one of the most significant of the many post-World War II 'Beaumaris Moderns'. The main house is composed as a long east-west structure with massive brick pylons at each end; a lightweight timber and glass structure between takes advantage of the views north and south from the elevated site. Another pylon in the centre acts as a three-storey light well, and is topped by a small glass studio with a butterfly roof, which is not only a signature of the era, but perhaps also a reference to the original owner's occupation as an aviation historian.

A planned squash court to the north was never built, but later owners added a billiard room and then more bedrooms above to create a large flat roofed extension, which is now the most visible portion from the street.

8. Residence
Address: 18 Deauville St, Beaumaris
Style: English Revival
Architect: Unknown
Date: c.1935

'The Castle', as it is known locally, has a very ambiguous beginning. In 1940 it was not recorded in the Council rate books, but by 1950 there were a number of buildings listed on the street. The street curves around the property, evidence perhaps that the building existed earlier than the other properties in the estate. On the other hand the fence along the street boundary matches the house, and houses in the English Domestic Revival style continued to be built in the 1950s.

The house is asymmetrical in plan, with steeply pitched gabled roofs, clinker brick walls to both house and garden, and leadlight glazing in timberframed windows. There is a circular corner turret topped by a 'candle-snuffer' roof of terracotta shingles.

It is strange that the turret was not situated to benefit from the views across the Bay, but the house was probably designed to impress.

A. Johnson House
Address: 451 Beach Rd, Beaumaris
Style: Modernist
Architects: Mockridge, Stahle & Mitchell
Date: 1956

One of the most prominent and striking of the post-World War II Modern houses that mushroomed in Beaumaris, this house combines a number of the innovations of the era in the one design. It has an expressed timber frame, large areas of glazing, a living area opening onto a balcony, and is raised up on stilted legs to allow car parking underneath, taking advantage of the bay view. The 'butterfly'-shaped roof, which projects over the front to provide sunshading and wraps over each end, gives the house an unusually dynamic form.

In 2006, heritage controls ensured that the house was not demolished. These controls were flexible enough to allow it to be raised up to provide extra space at ground level, retaining the set back to keep its stilted quality intact.

A 1950s colour scheme, highlighting the frame against darker period wall colours, completes the revitalisation.

B. Residence
Address: 7 Tramway Pde, Beaumaris
Style: Neo Modern
Architects: Piotrowski, Brand & Partners
Date: 1955, 2003

This building is a strikingly contemporary design with small shots of colour. Located high above the street, it takes full advantage of views with a series of balconies and large windows. The original 1955 house still exists at the rear, and a central core, which contains all the services and the stairwell, links the old and the new buildings.

Two glass pods to the east and west enhance the sunlight in the living areas in both the morning and the afternoon. The lower level is designed as an entertaining area with an indoor pool and games area. The architect, Andre Piotrowski, emphasised the importance of retaining the original trees and creating a low-maintenance garden. It is interesting to follow the architecture of this company and the progression of style from their first house at 1 Olinda Avenue (1982-85), where a Brutalist approach was taken, through to larger and more contemporary designs such as this one.

C. French House
Address: 22 Alfred St, Beaumaris
Style: Brutalist, Modern
Architects: John Baird, Cuthbert & Partners
Date: 1973

Designed for artist Leonard French as his residence and studio, this Brutalist concrete block construction is a long rectangle with two main areas. It has steep skillion roofs and contains a central passage, designed as a gallery on two levels with a courtyard to either side. This splits the front living section from the studio and bedroom area.

The house was in its original unpainted form when it won the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Bronze Medal in 1973 for House of the Year. Leonard French is best known for his stained glass ceiling in the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria (1968).