Below is an excerpt from a survey and assessment report that was prepared for Boroondara Council by David Wixted and Michele Summerton in 2021 in regards to the Kaydon Flats at 1 Cooloongatta Rd, Camberwell.
Kaydon Flats History
Planning of the site
The layout appears to come from necessity, with buildings spread about on either side of the now-filled and undergrounded stream gully. However, this is different to many ‘court’ cottages from the period which run along the boundary of a property in uniform file, or down and back, with the cottages on either side of a central road. The northern part of the site, behind shops and houses, had once been a tennis court which faced onto Riversdale Road and hosted a copse of trees, including a surviving Peppercorn, along the south edge of the court in the gully. The oak may have been a planting from the 1950s, as the tree appears more like a 60 year-old than an earlier planting from about 1900 at the time of the formation of roads in the area (Pictured online in the Melbourne aerial of 1945).12
The flat construction commenced with a building application being made in February 1959 to the design of Mackay & Potter, Architects and Engineers. The first group of four two-bedroom flats were completed by 1960, as advertised in the Age newspaper in June that year. The features of the ‘Exclusive architect-designed superbly built Flats’ included a spacious combined lounge-dining room, 2 bedrooms with built-in robes, a well-fitted kitchen, beautiful, tiled bathroom, Venetian blinds, flywire screens and doors, and wiring for a phone and television. Ready for occupation they were priced at £6,350, and £6,500 with a lock-up garage. Prices for units had risen markedly during the 1950s as illustrated by Parklands flats, built in Power Street, Hawthorn in 1953 and advertised for sale in the range £4,900 to £6,700.13.
Description & Integrity
The complex comprises five blocks of 17 flats loosely arranged in a court setting either side of a curving concrete driveway with generous garden landscape surrounds. The blocks are two-storey in height and are constructed in sand-coloured brick with timber details for windows and doors. The roofs are either hipped or gabled and clad with glazed Marseille tile work. The earlier upper block closest to Cooloongatta Road includes flats 1 to 4; the next downhill, flats 5 and 6. These are followed by two linear blocks with hipped roofs each with four flats – numbers 7 to 10 and numbers 14 to 17.
The last block to be constructed, with flats 11 and 12, illustrate a variation of the form in their planning and materials. Unobtrusive carports and garages are located to the rear of the blocks.
The five blocks of flats are highly intact and remain unchanged due to their continued, single ownership. The degree of intactness extends to building form, fabric and external details, the landscaping, landform, driveway, carports and brick garages, and brick bank of letterboxes. In addition to the flats there is number 13, a house possibly built for the owner/developer. This is a substantially larger and later construction with darker brick walls and tiled roof. This building does not contribute to the significance of the blocks of flats and their setting.
Assessment Against Criteria
Criteria referred to in Practice Note 1: Applying the Heritage Overlay, Department of Planning and Community Development, September 2012, modified for the local context.
CRITERION A: Importance to the course, or pattern, of the City of Boroondara's cultural or natural history (historical significance). Kaydon Court Flats, built between 1960 and 1966, are historically significant for their association with the post-war boom in architect-designed flat construction throughout the metropolitan area, continuing its pre-war development pattern along tram and train routes. Kayden Court Flats are significant as a relatively early illustration of the extension of the post-war boom from Hawthorn to socially conservative Camberwell, where the community was highly protective of the suburb’s residential character. Kaydon Court Flats are historically important for demonstrating the growing demand for smaller size accommodation by couples and singles and the overemphasis placed on the single, free-standing house as an ideal, and the attention of architects and developers paid to this issue. Kaydon Court Flats illustrate an alternative to the standard form of housing usually associated with suburban living and are historically important as examples of the earlier tenant owned own-your-own system of accommodation, introduced c.1952-53.
CRITERION B: Possession of uncommon, rare or endangered aspects of the City of Boroondara's cultural or natural history (rarity). N/A
CRITERION C: Potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of the City of Boroondara's cultural or natural history (research potential). N/A
CRITERION D: Importance in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a class of cultural or natural places or environments (representativeness). Kaydon Court Flats is a representative example of a post-WWII complex of compact, grouped units in a high amenity suburban location in a garden setting. Designed in rectilinear styles generally influenced by the Modern movement, they demonstrate the principal characteristics of the easily recognised, functional two-storey blocks of brick units which proliferated as an evolving typology throughout Melbourne’s inner and middle-ring suburbs during these years.
CRITERION E: Importance in exhibiting particular aesthetic characteristics (aesthetic significance). Kaydon Court Flats are aesthetically significant as an architecturally competent and intact complex of post-WWII units purposefully designed for a garden setting by accomplished modernist architects, Keith McKay and Charles Potter, whose larger commercial buildings share certain stylistic features with the domestic scale, suburban Kaydon Court flats in their restrained use of brick pattern-work, window walls and an interest in balanced rectilinear geometry of horizontal and vertical elements in their overall structure. The flats are aesthetically important for their ability to demonstrate a planned design that is contextually sensitive to acceptable levels of density for a middle-ring, suburb typified by free-standing houses, family living, gardens and privacy. The design of the complex contributes to the domestic character of Camberwell as a successful compromise between the ideal of individual suburban housing (and owning a house) and multi-flat blocks. Kaydon Court Flats are aesthetically significant as a development which anticipates the large ambitious cluster style housing projects in the outer eastern suburbs designed and constructed by Merchant Builders from 1968.
CRITERION F: Importance in demonstrating a high degree of creative or technical achievement at a particular period (technical significance). N/A
CRITERION G: Strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons. This includes the significance of a place to Indigenous peoples as part of their continuing and developing cultural traditions (social significance). N/A
CRITERION H: Special association with the life or works of a person, or group of persons, of importance in the City of Boroondara's history (associative significance). N/A
Statement of Significance
What is Significant?
Kaydon Court Flats, 1 Cooloongatta Road, Camberwell, are significant to the City of Boroondara. The complex comprises five blocks of 17 flats loosely arranged in a court setting either side of a curving concrete driveway with generous garden landscape surrounds. The blocks are two-storey in height and are constructed in sand-coloured brick with timber details for windows and doors. The roofs are either hipped or gabled and clad with glazed Marseille tile work. The earlier upper block closest to Cooloongatta Road includes flats 1 to 4; the next downhill, flats 5 and 6. These are followed by two linear blocks with hipped roofs each with four flats – numbers 7 to 10 and numbers 14 to 17. The last block to be constructed, with flats 11 and 12, illustrate a variation of the form in their planning and materials. Unobtrusive carports and garages are located to the rear of the blocks.
In addition to the flats there is number 13, a house possibly built for the owner/developer. This is a substantially larger and later construction with darker brick walls and tiled roof. This building does not contribute to the significance of the blocks of flats and their setting.
How is it significant?
The whole of the site, excluding the free-standing house, is of local historical, architectural (representative) and aesthetic significance to the City of Boroondara.
Why is it significant?
Kaydon Court Flats, built between 1960 and 1966, are historically significant for their association with the post-war boom in architect-designed flat construction throughout the metropolitan area, continuing its pre-war development pattern along tram and train routes. The flats are important as a relatively early illustration of the extension of the post-war boom from Hawthorn to socially conservative Camberwell, where the community was highly protective of the suburb’s residential character. (Criterion A)
Kaydon Court Flats are historically significant for demonstrating the growing demand for smaller size accommodation by couples and singles and the overemphasis placed on the single, free-standing house as an ideal; importantly they illustrate the attention that architects and developers paid to this issue. The flats are historically important as examples of the earlier tenant owned own-your-own system of accommodation, introduced c.1952-53 which introduced an alternative to the standard form of housing usually associated with suburban living. (Criterion A)
Kaydon Court Flats is a representative example of a post-WWII complex of compact, grouped units in a high amenity suburban location in a garden setting. Designed in rectilinear styles generally influenced by the Modern movement, they demonstrate the principal characteristics of the easily recognised, functional two-storey blocks of brick units which proliferated as an evolving typology throughout Melbourne’s inner and middle-ring suburbs during these years. (Criterion D)
Kaydon Court Flats are aesthetically significant as an architecturally competent and intact complex of post-WWII units purposefully designed for a garden setting by accomplished modernist architects, Keith McKay and Charles Potter, whose larger commercial buildings share certain stylistic features with the domestic scale, suburban
Kaydon Court flats in their restrained use of brick pattern-work, window walls and an interest in balanced rectilinear geometry of horizontal and vertical elements in their overall structure. (Criterion E)
The flats are aesthetically important for their ability to demonstrate a planned design that is contextually sensitive to acceptable levels of density for a middle-ring, suburb typified by free-standing houses, 12 family living, gardens and privacy. The design of the complex contributes to the domestic character of Camberwell as a successful compromise between the ideal of individual suburban housing (and owning a house) and multi-flat blocks. (Criterion E)
Kaydon Court Flats are aesthetically significant as a development which anticipates the large ambitious cluster style housing projects in the outer eastern suburbs designed and constructed by Merchant Builders from 1968. (Criterion E).
Grading and Recommendations
Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay of the Boroondara Planning Scheme as an individually Significant place.
