Houses

2. Mid to Late -Victoria Period (c1875-1900)

Reference examples:

• Simple face-brick Italianate Style: 31 Williams St; 10 Lewis St.
• Simple Italianate Style timber: West Oaks, Baxter-Tooradin Road.
• Simple Gothic Revival Style: 652 Nepean Highway (1898).

As elsewhere in the colony, the onslaught of detached suburban housing of timber, meant brick and stucco villa in the Italianate style were erected in large numbers. They were detached and either in the double-fronted mode, in the better estates, or single-fronted in the more cramped private subdivisions (refer Nathanial Billing's designs for the Universal Building Society published in the Sands and McDougall Melbourne Directory 1884). The Italian influence had permeated both residential and commercial architecture form the late 1860s and became more floris in its treatment as the century progressed. Frankston has few representatives from this type and period.

14. 31 Williams Street: has coloured and patterned brickwork, the conservative Italianate hipped and verandahed form and the cast iron ornamented timber verandah (missing column capitals).

Siting
Given a suburban site, front wall set­backs commonly allowed for a verandah of c1200-1500 mm width and a front garden of between 6 and 9m depth, larger residential sites allowed more extensive front gardens, geometrically divided around a central path with gravel, cream and red terra­cotta quarries, or slate and marble tiles set in a diaper pattern as paving. encaustic mosaic paving was used on verandahs and pathways. Terra-cotta edge tiles, slate or stone verandah stairs and cast cement urns to stair side-walls might be used to create the Italian Renaissance villa theme pursued in this period. Asphalt path paving became common late in the 19th Century and is commonly seen in old Melbourne block plans,1 presumably replacing the gravel of earlier times.

Walls

Timber Wall Cladding
Timber was more common than brick in Frankston in this era but examples are rare. Typically the 'block-fronted' ashlar-pattern; shiplapped board‑cladding, painted and designed to represent stone (white courses, sandstone coloured blocks and possibly brown or red granite coloured quoins) had been added to the square-edge weather board as an option. Block sizes approximated 520 x 250 mm with a 30 joint and a 150 mm high chamfered plinth or skirting at the floor line. The side walls of these houses were still the square edge 150mm weatherboards.

Brick Wall Cladding
The combined influence of the Italian Romanesque and Renaissance created a proliferation of coloured or 'fancy' bricks, mainly in the 'Hoffman' pressed format, but also in the old 'slop' or handmade English sizes (refer Early to Mid-Victorian era). Joints now were likely to be tuck-pointed on the facade where the lime-sand mortar was raked out, a coloured mortar facing placed in the joint and the result precisely tooled with a white cement joint to demarcate what were, by now, more uniformly sized bricks. Side or rear walls were plain reds with flush joints.

Fancy whites or creams might be used against a red, dark red or brown body brick, as quoins at the, opening edges and the building facade corners. Moulded terra-cotta was used, in a similar manner to stucco, to create compound cornice or string moulds. Stucco and pressed cement were still used as ornament, particularly at the parapet (if there was one) this was generally left unpainted or, at the most, colour-washed using pigmented linseed oil.

Stuccoed Masonry Wall Cladding
Whether as 'cementing' over old or new face-brick walls, the stucco work became more decorative and parapeted rooflines which supported this decoration emerged in the inner suburbs. However, not so much in Frankston where detached housing was still the rule with some exceptions (see 7-9 Broadway). Stucco wall facing of this period was always ruled into ashlar or stone sizes of approximately 500 x 250mm.

Roofing
Corrugated galvanised iron and imported slates were used on the generally hipped roof forms, used for the Italianate villa styles. Typically, the roof followed an asymmetrical (L-shape) or symmetrical rectangular plan, but was now built as an 'M-hip' where internal valleys would allow a constant ridge line to be seen on most elevations. Eaves were now only wide enough to accommodate a carved timber or cast terra-cotta (brick houses) eaves brackets with ventilation holes between. Guttering where exposed (refer Early to Mid-Victorian era) was ogee profile and fixed to the fascia. Roof gables, transverse or facing the street were uncommon (see 652 Nepean Highway), hips were the rule.

17. Shaped posts for matching picket heads (F), (M) and (K) in Fig. 13 and picket carriage gates (Perry Bird catalogue].

Verandahs
Most villas had a verandah across the front facade with a convex, skillion, ogee or concave (now rare) corrugated iron roof profile and, unlike the early houses, with battens and rafters shaped to the roof profile which were generally also stop-chamfered at the edges. Cast-iron became more dominant as the period progressed, with friezes and brackets attached to most verandahs and iron posts, with stylised Corinthian or Composite capitals where needed, replacing timber. However, the more modest verandah was still timber- framed with generally round-section tapered timber columns, given a pressed zinc Corinthian capital to stimulate cast-iron.

Ground-level verandah flooring of brick houses was of diaper patterned cream and red quarry tiles or grey slate and white marble or encaustic mosaic tiles set in intricate bordered geometric patterns (see diagram). The coping or verandah edging might be of basalt or slate and the plinth of basalt as Section One. Upper-level verandah flooring was tongue and grooved, often softwood flooring with a radiused edge overlapping the gutter. In Frankston, timber floored verandahs were more likely (often replaced today with T & G jarrah).

Openings
Windows were still double-hung soft wood (refer Early to Mid-Victorian era), but likely to be one-light glazing in main windows and cheaper multi-pane in secondary windows such as those facing light courts, or in rear rooms. Openings were symmetrically arranged, but now decorated externally with stucco architraves or pediments or terra-cotta mouldings, if a face-brick house, and compound moulded timber architraves, if a timber house. Four-panel front doors were normal, but with deeper border mouldings to the panels and bold 'cricket bat' mouldings to the panels themselves for front doors. Doors were sometimes used for upper-level verandah access (but usually by period top-lights took on a Jacobean flavour with borders and central painted or transfer scenes depicting nature or the house name.

18. Chimneys from the Victorian and Edwardian eras [Stapleton]

Chimneys
Possessed heavy stucco compound moulded cornices, with sometimes panelled or vermiculated shafts and small brackets to the underside of the cornice. Face brick chimneys with similar compound moulded cornices were used with late Victorian face brick villas but not always with face brick row-houses where a cemented parapet, face and chimney combination was used. (see Fig. 18).

Fences
Generally still of timber picket with more ornate picket head and post profiles, also more complex in outline, unlike the either single or double palisade iron pickets more commonly used in Melbourne's inner suburbs (ie. one or two levels of cast fleur-de-lis or palmette-shaped heads, set by means of lead packing into a dressed, chamfered-edge basalt plinth). Gates were identical to the fence with a variety of lever type latches. Massive gate posts in brick with stucco cornices or all stucco, or of cast-iron were also used in conjunction with shaped garden dividing walls for inner metropolitan row houses. These are uncommon in Frankston, ornamental posts being more likely of timber with cast-iron cappings. A typical late Victorian period example has 70 x 15 pickets, posts 120 x 120 x 1100 high, rails 65 x 45mm and plinth 150 x 37mm.

Ornament
(Refer Early to Mid-Victorian era) Profusion of cement or stucco ornament reached a height in the period 1885-90, particularly in row houses. This included balustrading at the parapet, a central raised entablature with a crowning pediment and orbs or urns placed on symmetrically positioned piers. Secondary and primary horizontal mouldings with brackets or dentilation were common, whilst openings were surrounded with moulded and keystoned architraves, with brackets under the sills. Most stucco ornament was taken often out of context from their various sources which arose generally from the Renaissance in Europe.

Colours
(Refer Early to Mid-Victorian era) Given a greater prevalence of stucco finish the external colours revolve around a light natural cement colour for walls or cement oil-washed to resemble a stone colour.