November 2025

Rather nice Edwardian spotted in Munro Street Armadale, with excellent layered gables, shingled walls, and diagonal projecting circular bay/porch, and lovely interiors – I thought must be by one of leaders in the style like Ussher & Kemp, but turns out to be 1914, by Arthur Purnell, who had a very long and varied career. This was his own house, and named Shameen, after the place where he first practiced architecture- in China !

Age 25 he set up in Canton (Guangzhou), and that’s him on the left having tea at the Canton Club in 1906. He designed quite a lot for the expatriates, such as the rather grand Arnhold Karburg bldg of 1907. There was a small island in the river that was for the Westerners called Shameen (now Shamian), hence the name of his house. Only a few years later he built a new one nearby on Malvern Road in a completely different style (sadly demolished in the 1990s for Lauriston). He did a few overtly oriental designs like the house on Punt Road with a Chinese roof.

Later he went on to things like Michael’s Camera Store in Elizabeth St 1915, and Patersons Store in Bourke Street in Art Deco in 1934, and much later the Olympic Stand at the MCG in 1955.

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