Flats

278 Nepean Highway, Frankston

History
Built: 1954, 1960
Allan & Greta Woolcock built flats in 1954, on Lots 18 and 19 Nepean Highway, Seaford.1 They had owned the land with bay frontage and Kananook Creek at the rear since the early 1950s.2 In April, 1960, John Pennell, an investor, and Heather Pennell, of Barton Drive, Mt. Eliza, purchased the property and submitted a building application for seven extra flats in May, 1960.3 He was granted a permit for seven timber flats of 32.90 squares in the same month.4 Estimated to cost £10,000, the flats were designed by Bailey & Tilley Home Plan Service, built by Brighton builder, H. Dodd, and completed at the end of 1960.5

Description
Presumably designed to match the first two flats on the site (1954), the finished scheme has the late 1940s-early-1950s character of the stained vertical boarding, white-painted joinery and gently gabled roofline, clad with 'Super Six' corrugated cement sheeting. Built end-to-end, each had a bed-sitting room down one side and service areas (bathroom, kitchen) along the other. Following Modern orientation philosophies, seven of the unit's living areas faced north. Each had its own carport and three of the flats had extra bedrooms.

Not exceptional in their design, the flats do have a high integrity to the first construction date (1954), particularly because of the stained timbers, cement sheet roofing and gabled form.

External Integrity
Generally original

Context
Part of the new higher density development mid-evolved here after the Second War.

Significance – Study Grading C
Architecturally, the complex is typical of 1950s timber beachside flats and although not architecturally innovative, the flats represent well the diminishing building type/materials combination in this part of Frankston: of local importance and regional interest.

Historically, a rare example of 'holiday' flats built in Frankston during the 1950s, representing the fourth wave of building in the town6: of local importance.