2.0 Agriculture Industry Housing

Agriculture and Housing
Frankston was for many decades an important centre for orchards. There are still some buildings from this period of the city's history surviving particularly in the eastern areas, and as well other buildings which reflect the pastoral era in the district and the later more scientific approach to rural business. Frankston sustained many small industries in the later nineteenth century. Since the Second World War it has been a favoured site for larger industrial concerns and for a large industrial workforce. While few of the industrial structures from earlier years have survived, the role of industry must be noted in any environmental history.

Housing
Much of the housing in Frankston is similar to suburban housing anywhere in Melbourne. But Frankston does have an interesting and distinctive building history. The shape of the present town has been in part determined by a succession of building waves. In the first of these small shacks for fishermen and scrub-cutters were built. To the east of Frankston, there are surviving farm houses and an orchard house or two from the Selection era. They were followed by the mansions of Melbourne's wealthy, men and women wanting a retreat away from the city but within reach of the busy streets of the centre of Melbourne.

At the same time the quality of many of the houses in Frankston (especially those architect-designed holiday homes in the south of the present city) have given the place a distinctive character. More extensive and innovative holiday designs followed the building of holiday mansions. These later designs were often shaped by the principles of the modern school of architects.

After the Second World War an expanse of cheap housing for commuters was built in Frankston, especially in the area to the north of the commercial centre. The fine houses were often restricted to the heights of Oliver's Hill and Mt. Eliza. In the north of the present city, holiday accommodation often meant cheap shacks, many of them condemned by health inspectors. These were often surrounded by equally cheap and rough permanent housing especially after 1945. Eventually in the later 1950s and 1960s some more regulated, and from a planning perspective, more innovative estates were built in the east of the city, in the growth areas of Langwarrin and Carrum Downs.

3 One of the many modern houses illustrated in home journals of the 1940s-60s: this was Bruce Sutherland's nine-square design to house six persons and one car (under): all overlooking the bay. Flat roofing, use of local rubble stone in chimneys and a modular light-weight structure were all very modern concepts for their time and were used many times in following years. ['The Australian Home Beautiful' 11/1946, p. 27]