Repost 2019:

😮😮 what can you say ? The delightful and quite wacko #BeverleyHillsDarlingStreet #SouthYarra was built by architect-developer #HowardLawson in 1934-5, the largest of about 15 apartment projects in this immediate area. He took steep sites and piled up as much as he could, but often with views in mind. Like the later Stratton Heights you have to go up many steep stairs before even getting to this one ! It’s in a vaguely Spanish style, with lots of repeated prescast #stucco details, and hardly a right angle. Its 44 #companyshare flats, with only a few sale ads online, but doesn’t everyone know someone or want to be someone who lives here ? Even though there’s no lift.

Lawson called himself ‘the architect who builds’, though famously the architects registration board wouldn’t register him in 1923 because he was also a builder (a bit prissy of them) – but then there was no restriction on calling yourself an architect at at the time.

Repost 2019: More #BeverleyHillsSouthYarra deliciousness, the entry stair feature thing (which says ‘blocks 1,2,3’ but there’s only 2), then what you see as you go up (and up) to the main block 2 – yes there’s a pool, and it does have an underwater window ! Though not last week, no water at all. Lawson liked to recycle, he used cast iron and even a big stained glass window from demolished Victorian houses, certainly not fashionable in the 1930s, but he did it anyway.

4 August 2019:

Repost from 2019: The rather wild #StrattonHeights in #SouthYarra is perched on a rocky outcrop on #AlexandraAvenue – this is something I remember as a teenager spotting it from the freeway across the river, always thought it looked like a fantastical improbable place to live. Designed and built in about 1940 by #HowardLawson who had developed at least a dozen blocks around it in the 30s, they were all in Spanish style, but like this, all one bed #BachelorFlats. Great views, a LOT of stairs, and a lot of freeway noise I expect. Interior photos real estate sites.

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