23 February 2025

Some delicious Mock Tudor in Toorak, you’ve probably whizzed by on Williams Road, near Toorak. It’s got all the bits, some half-timbering, with complex brickwork in the gables, diamond page windows, tall chimneys, and a turret to boot.

Looking a bit like a large house, it was built in 1933, designed PJ O’Connor, as ‘luxury flats’, only four, each with lounge, dining, 3 beds, servants quarters, ‘all modern lighting’, in the Flemish style, with gardens, ‘maintaining the dignity of a select quarter’. I could only find a few rental ads, so it might well still be one owner. It’s set back round a corner garden just like another Tudor block only a few doors up Williams Road (last pic), but that one’s maisonettes, which I’ll cover tomorrow.cġ

Park Manor, another Tudor style block arranged around a corner garden on Williams Road Toorak, one door up from yesterday’s version. This one is six maisonettes rather than flats, and was built a couple of years later in 1935. It was designed by EF Billson, who did the very Modern Sanitarium Factory in Warburton a few years later.

Described as ‘Modern but Mellow’, you can see here how he’s stylised the Tudor, creating more of a general impression than a clear style, with just some gables, arches, bay windows and interesting brickwork, while the little central balconies are quite Art Deco, and the windows divided horizontally for a bit of streamlining. Originally they looked into a fountain. There don’t seem to be any notable features inside (one’s for rent if anyone’s interested). The development made the news in early 1935, when the builder successfully sued the site owner, a Dr from Northcote, for breach of contract for dumping them in late 1933. The Dr must have meanwhile gone with someone else, because this was finished at the same time.

29 August 2025

Denby Dale in Glenferrie Road near Kooyong Station is not only a charming example of the Old English style, but probably the most spacious interwar flat complex in the city – it’s got a huge central garden, with a semi-circular drive (garages out back), and the flats are in three separate blocks, the central one different from the flanking ones, and all the flats are big two beds plus study, with dining room, sun room, fire places, built ins, and maids room.

It was designed by Robert Hamilton, who specialised in this style in this area, and built in 1938.

I remember it as half hidden behind huge trees, which seem to have gone by 2020 (they were probably damaging the fence, part of which is now in pieces, or maybe that was a car). They don’t come up for sale often, maybe staying in a family like a free standing house would, and from the few ads in the last decade, some still had intact kitchens and bathrooms.

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