Hopkins House

648 Nepean Highway, Frankston

History
Built: 1949
Architect, Rhys Evan Hopkins, bought land from E.F. Billson, also an architect, of Collins Street, Melbourne, in 1947.1 A house, to Hopkins' design, was begun in 1948 and completed in 1949. 2 Hopkins owned and occupied the property until recently.3 On the 1954 Electoral Roll, he was described as an orchardist.

Hopkins designed many buildings in the Moderne/Modern style, in particular the Dr. Fenton Bowen house, Toorak Road, Toorak.

Description
Not unlike 50 Nepean Highway (q.v.), this house takes on the European Modernist manner fully. With its painted brickwork, rectangular forms, slit or slot windows, flat roofs and open terraces, it recalls a number of precedents (i.e., Le Corbusier's Second Citroham house, 1922) from the Continent. Window frames are currently of steel and where divisions exist they are horizontal to emphasize the horizontality of the architecture. Reputedly the original windows were constructed from timber and were the sash and type.4 A nice detail is the semi-cylinder rain water sump and its downpipe.

External Integrity
The upper level formerly open terrace has been altered (initially to a studio, later to a bedroom), carports and minor ground-level structures added. The garage has been widened by 1200mm and re-roofed.5

Context
One of a diminishing number of large houses from between the Wars, set in recently landscaped grounds along the sea's edge.

Significance – Study Grading C
Architecturally, the house is an accomplished, and externally near complete if late, design in the 'style' Hopkins chose for many of his successful projects and it is of special interest as his own home and part of a group of large and detached inter-War seaside houses built in this section of the Nepean Highway: of regional importance.

Historically, the house is of interest as the home of one of two well-known architects who adjoined one another (Hopkins and Edward Billson).