Claud Hamilton’s Kings Cross Flat Buildings, 1920s and ’30s — Walk and Exhibition November 2011

An architecture exhibition with photos by Roslyn Sharp, talk by Anne Higham, architectural historian for the Institute of Architects on the Institute’s Significant Buildings Register, and Claud Hamilton walk.

Saturday 26 November 2011
Walk meet at The Cross Art Projects at 1.30pm.

There is nothing like this close abundance of neo-Classical and Art Deco architecture anywhere else in Australia. Architect Claud Hamilton designed and built many distinguished neo-classical dressed brick buildings in the Kings Cross area.

As the great apartment district on Darlinghurst Ridge in Sydney reaches 100 years of age, interest is growing about the building history, architects and inhabitants.

This is the first of a series of talks, exhibitions and public callouts by The Cross Art Projects on individual Kings Cross architects.

Claud Hamilton’s grandest buildings are Savoy (1919) and Byron Hall (1928) but there are many more to be discovered. They include Regents Court (1926) and Sandringham (1932) on Springfield Avenue; Wirringulla (1927) and Kaloola (1927) in St Neot Avenue; Lakemount (1933) in Roslyn Gardens and St Johns Flats (1916); Versailles (1929) and Normandy on Darlinghurst Road; and Tennyson House (c.1928) in Farrell Avenue.

Exhibition by Roslyn Sharp who is photographing the key building custodians and residents to document the significance of Hamilton’s magnificent dressed brick buildings. Other photographers are working on other architects.

Thank you: Anne Higham (Heritage Architect) of the Australian Institute of Architects, Tusculum House, 3 Manning Street Potts Point, for Claud Hamilton’s biography; to Jennifer Hill, heritage architect, for notes on some of Hamilton’s buildings, and to the Hamilton family. The photograph of Claud Hamilton is courtesy Don Hamilton.

Hamilton’s Byron Hall, 99 Macleay St in construction, 1928. Courtesy National Library of Australia.