| Urban Pioneers: Apartment Architects of Kings Cross, 1909 to 2000 — 23 October 2010 |
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Apartment Architects of Kings Cross is a document and exhibition project profiling the contribution by important and well-known architects, from Emil Sodersten and Aaron Bolot to Harry Siedler, to designing Australia’s first high-density urban experiment. But the focus is on revealing exciting less known architects.
Kingsclere (1912), built in a boom period and designed for the exclusive tenant market, ignited the era of flat construction in Potts Point. But the distinctive tower designed by Halligan and Wilton was a solitary landmark on the skyline until recovery from the Great War in the booming 1920s. Kingsclere’s Edwardian decorum contrasts with new neighbour Byron Hall’s (1929) combing of elements of related architectural styles such as Georgian windows and Classical pediments.
They also experimented with unique ownership systems. Most of the best loved and best cared for buildings, from Macleay Regis and Franconia in Potts Point to Mont Claire and Beaufort Court in Darlinghurst and Mewdon, Ashdown and Oceania in Elizabeth Bay are Company Title. This distinctive form of shareholding in buildings, contributes greatly to the area’s unique and diverse communities. To a limited extent these ideas about vital mixed communities extended into public housing like the winning design for City Council’s model workmen’s dwellings, a 30-flat building in Dowling Street by Peddle, of Peddle, Thorpe and Walker, whose ideas were also influenced by the progressive US-based Church of Christ.
Kings Cross is world-renowned for its Art Deco and Modern architecture. Emil Sodersten is the leading Australian architect working in the Art Deco style whose imaginative planning and massing and lavish brickwork earned him 'the contemporary appellation of a modern Horbury Hunt'. Sodersten’s flat buildings include the nine-storey marvel Birtley Towers (1934), Twenty Apartments (1930), Cheddington (1930), Kingsley Hall, (1925-completed 1931), Werrington and Wychbury Towers (1934, side-by-side on Manning St) and the supremely elegant Marlborough Hall (1938) on Ward Ave. Often overlooked is the texture and often thoughtful contribution by the 3 storey walk up flats in this 'middle third' architectural period of the 1930s and 1940s, that contribute much to the diversity of the area.
Others looked to European experiments, like Dudley Ward’s influential buildings The Wroxton (1936, Roslyn Gardens) and Gowrie Gate (1938, Macleay Street) that picked up on innovations in public housing in Germany and Holland and John R. Brogan and William Crowle’s Wyldefel Gardens (1936) with its stepped communal gardens down a hillside, is based on a housing scheme outside of Oberammergau in Germany. Some of these innovators have “dropped between the cracks” says architectural historian Charles Pickett. But Charles Pickett and Caroline Butler-Bowden’s ground-breaking exhibition and book, Homes in the Sky: Apartment Living in Australia (2007), did much to redress these successful transformations.
William Street was widened in 1916 and Darlinghurst Road became chic, but the final subdivisions and building didn’t start until after the Great War. Thanks to John Sulman Darlinghurst Rd remains an intact inter-war heritage streetscape of predominantly 3-storey City Beautiful buildings.
Garden Island’s expansion post-war saw Macleay St extended at Wylde St, finally linking the toffs of the point to Woolloomooloo wharves. Until recently the area was well served with public transport: trams then bus services moved freely around 20 metres wide Darlinghurst Rd and Macleay Street to William Street (and the legendary 311 route) and then Sydney CBD. In Darlinghurst the local 389 bus route follows the old tramline. Most other roads with distinctive flat developments are elegantly wide: Greenknowe Ave, Roslyn Gardens and Ward Ave, Elizabeth Bay Rd and Craigend St, Victoria St and Challis Ave. The railway extension then Eastern Distributor and, finally, the notorious road closures and obstructions for the Cross City Tunnel fragmented and congested many points in the area.
Another cautionary lesson is that scale is the key to successful urban areas. Tower type development, from the mid-1990s contributed to a loss of scale. True to form, Seidler’s 43-storey Horizon Tower made a statement by casting its legendary sundial shadow over Darlingurst. But most of Seidler’s buildings are conforming and widely accepted from his earliest residential design Ithaca Gardens in 1960, to Ercildoune (1965), Victoria Point, Aquarius (former Florida Tower Hotel, 1965) and 50 Roslyn Gardens. The commercial success of Horizon Tower and its gated community ushered in the era of architect or designer “branded” developments.
Shadowing and bulkiness has affected the streetscape of Macleay St where the Landmark Hotel and Rockwall apartments, between Manning Street and Tusculum Ave, now dominate (reaching a height of 70 metres.) On the eastern side of Macleay St between Fitzroy Gardens and Wylde St, the built scale is from two to twelve storeys (9 to 36 metres). On the western side of Macleay Street, 9-storey flat buildings are randomly interspersed with 2-storey commercial/retail buildings plus the odd recent 20 storey numbers (a range from 8 to 70 metres). This happened when hotels were re-zoned to residential giving a windfall. Darlinghurst Road, because of its sub-division into small narrow lots, has retained its unique streetscape.
Kings Cross has always thrived on co-existence and change but keeps its high and low character.
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