Bennett House

30 Gould Street, Frankston

History
Most of Long Island, an area of waterfront between the bay and Kananook Creek, was sold in the 1870-72 period when Frankston was depressed and desperate to attract settlers.1 This area close to the central areas and bounded by the bay on one side and the creek on the other was crammed with houses wanting to be close to town and the sea.2 Dr. Gershon Bennett, a well known dentist, and his wife, Bertha (nee Monash), had bought a house on Long Island in the late 1920s.3 In 1952 the Bennetts purchased Long Island land with beach frontage on the corner of Gould Street and Allawah Avenue, possibly from Christopher Proctor.4 At that time the Bennetts lived at Iona, 33 St. Georges Road, Toorak, a property Bertha Bennett had inherited from her father, Sir John Monash.5 Sir John Monash was one of Australia's greatest soldiers and a pioneer of reinforced concrete construction in Australia.

In 1953, Dr. Bennett had what is described in the rate books as a `bungalow and garage' built on their land.6 Gershon Bennett died in 1955.7 Mrs. Bertha Bennett applied for a building permit to
erect a residence at this address in 1956.8 Designed by Frankston architects, Chancellor & Patrick, the residence was estimated to cost £9,850.9 Arthur Moore, a Frankston builder who later built Trade Winds in Canadian Bay Road, constructed the dwelling.10 Mrs. Bertha Bennett owned and occupied the property until after 1967.11 She died in 1979, after a life of public service.12

Gershon Bennett (1892-1955) married Bertha Monash (1893-1979), the only child of the nationally known Sir John Monash. Both were close to Monash up until his death in 1931, when Bertha was bequeathed most of his estate.13 Paralleling with the construction of this house and the death of Gershon Bennett, the Monash family home, Iona, was demolished in 1955, with Bertha living on at St. Georges Road, Toorak, for another 24 years, `...after a life of widespread public service.'14
Bertha's son, Colin Bennett, would have been 27 when the house was built and it is assumed he also spent summers in there. Colin was for a long time film critic for `The Age' and cited as instrumental in promoting the Australian film industry to its rebirth in the 1960s.15

Description
Distinctively Chancellor & Patrick in design, the house's gentle gabled roof sails out well beyond the window wall, achieving support from exposed timber purlins. Whether conscious or not, this roof form suggests Burley Griffin's house designs, such as the Carter house (Illinois, 1920), Ricker house (Iowa, 1911), Griffin house (Illinois, 1909) and Hurd Comstock house (Illinois, 1912).15 Another possible inspiration is the Japanese house form which had inspired Griffin and Wright originally.

Most of the firm's houses followed this form into early 1960s, arising in c1954 with the Kiddle house, Harleston Road (q.v.).17 They were not the only architects to adopt this form, as demonstrated by overseas publications on `vacation architecture': George V. Russell and George Matsumoto were among them.18 The Chancellor & Patrick ouvre set a fashion among young architects and promoted a peninsula style which is unmatched by other beach house styles (if they exist) from any other seaside area or era in the State. The walls are in cream brick and expressed as piers on the west (seaward) elevation. From the piers, the outrigger purlins cantilever for the deep roof overhangs and, between the piers, window walls fill the trapezoidal voids. The familiar wide horizontal boarding acts as both walling and balustrading on an upper level projecting room, which rests miraculously on slim rectangular columns, over a ground-level terrace adjoining full- height glazing.

External Integrity
Generally original

Context
Viewed from the beach, the house's extended cantilevering roofline appears to hover over surrounding dense planting (`Coprosma repens') and hence evokes its seaside siting. The house is perhaps the best of the many 1950s-60s houses on Long Island, an area noted for this era of holiday house development.

Significance
Architecturally, the house is a near original and successfully designed example of the highly distinctive era of Wright/Griffin- influenced Chancellor & Patrick peninsula houses and, with its beach frontage, particularly suited to its environs also a contributing part of the Long Island precinct which has achieved fame for its `contemporary' beach housing (although this character has been since depleted by recent unrelated development): of Regional importance.

Historically, the house was closely associated over a long period with the nationally famous Monash and Bennett names and, apart from lifestyle expression, is of interest for its location, use and choice of architect, an aspect which distinguished Frankston from other established seaside suburbs in the 1950s: of regional importance and national interest.