Frankston State School No. 1464

1937-45 Wing, 36 Davey Street, Frankston

History
Mrs. Grace McComb, a Frankston pioneer having settled in the Frankston area in 1852, led residents in petitioning the Government for the grant of allotments 5, 6,7,8,9 and 10 pf section 4 of the village of Frankston, Port Phillip Bay, for state school purposes. The application for the 3 acres was made on October 28th, 1873.1 The land was gazetted as temporarily reserved for state school purposes on November 11th, 1873.2 By the end of October, 1874, a timber building large enough to accommodate 6- pupils was completed.3

Frankston State School opening on November 1st, 1874, with an enrolment of 45 children and Alexander Allan was Head Teacher and Augusta S. Petrie as Work Mistress.4 A three-roomed residence was attached to the school.

By mid-1889, because the school's enrolment had risen to 250, the residence had been converted into a classroom and brick classroom added.5 Extensive alterations and additions were made to the school between 1913 and 1924 and the names of former pupils who enlisted in World War 1 were inscribed on bronze plates around the War Memorial, which was erected in front of the school.

The school's enrolment continues to increase and by 1923 the Masonic Hall supper room had to be hires. Grade 7 & 8 transferred to the High School when it opened there in 1928. By 1929 enrolments had reached 350.6 In 1937 three new brick classrooms were erected some distance from the original buildings and these classrooms and the new office, staffrooms and a shelter shed then formed the nucleus of the future school.7 Increasing enrolments meant overcrowding continued to plague the school during the early 1940s, despite the addition of a forth brick building in 1941.8 A two-storied wing comprising six brick classrooms, built in 1945, relieved overcrowded conditions for a time, but Frankston continued to develop rapidly and by 1950 an enrolment of 905 meant overcrowding was again a problem, with halls and shelter sheds being utilizes as classrooms.9 The Education Department's policy in the 1950s of building new schools away from the business centre relived the situation.

In 1959 Frankston was proclaimed a training school for future teachers. A Rural Training Schools was established in 1962 to train teachers for small country schools. A central library was built and opened by the Hon. L.H.S. Thompson, MLC, on August 1st, 1969. Head teachers who served for long periods at Frankston State Schools include Alexander Allan (1847-77), Thomas S. Robinson (1882-92), William H. Richardson (1907-17), James P. Jennings (1917-28) and William A. Shakespeare (1961-68).

Description
The first wing appears to have been the central single-level face – brick and rendered building. Setting the streamlined Moderne stylism for the later stage, this building has sweeping curves, taking in the entry canopy, window hoods and end room bays.

Windows also have major and minor horizontal glazing bars and the rendered parapet deep horizontal grooves, accentuating the horizontality of the design.

The second stage is two- storey but takes on similar finishes and fenestrations to the first. Concrete hoods also cantilever over strategic windows. The form is stepped in height and plan, but provides rectangular counterpoint to the curve of the first stage. The mature cypress row at the yard boundary presumably was commenced with the first stage, if not earlier. The design compares with the Drouin government school and an earlier design of Seabrook and Fildes for the Mac Robertson Girls High School, Albert Park, 1934.

External Integrity
Generally Original

Context
As an isolated public building complex, this is made more distinguishable by its mature Cypress hedge row, so typical of the era.

Significance – Study Grading B
Architecturally, both stages of the school show a skillful Moderne/Modern design which utilizes both the functionalist arguments of the European Modernists and the more extravagant curved forms of Moderne practitioners: of regional importance.

Historically, like the earlier wing, it has formed an association with Frankston residents over three generations. The combined stages of a building provided an educational context for the city which spans over 120 years: of local importance.