Original post 18 January 2018:

Tsoshaan Mansions, #ArthurPurnell, 1917, cnr Malvern rd & Irving Road, Toorak. Only real estate photos, but I wanted to see what Purnells other ‘Chinese’ style design apart from his own house was like. The lychgate has a definite oriental feel, with that outer lower pitched roof, with very deep eaves, and angled walls, but otherwise it’s more typically Arts&Crafts / #CalifornianBungalow. The main building, with roughcast, slightly sloping base walls, and lots of timber, is also Arts & Crafts, but it has those very deep eaves too – you can’t see the roof for all the trees but the booklet on Purnell by Derham Groves says the outer edge roof is concave (double pitched- and satellite view shows the main roof is behind that), and there’s a third floor ‘hovering like a Chinese pavilion’ – and flat 5 has a third floor master bed, but there’s no exterior pics, and has an added balcony roof anyway. Groves also says Tsaoshaan is meant to be Cantonese for ‘house on the hill’.

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