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CHARLES STEELE & CO. PRINTING FACTORY (FORMER)

Other Name

Gordon Brothers Refrigeration

Location

9-27 MICHAEL STREET,, BRUNSWICK VIC 3056 - Property No 5900

Level

Included in Heritage Overlay

[1/2]
Former Charles Steele &
[2/2]
Former Charles Steele &

Statement of Significance

What is significant?
This red brick Streamlined Moderne building comprises a two-storey hip-roofed office block with a single-storey sawtooth-roofed production area to the rear. Its street frontage is articulated by alternating band of graduated brown brickwork and strip windows with rendered spandrels, punctuated by a projecting and off-centre rendered bay with a recessed entry porch. Designed by industrial specialists Alder & Lacey, it was built in 1935 for Chas Steele & Company, a well-established printing firm that occupied the premises for the next 45 years.

How is it significant?
The former Chas Steele & Company factory is of aesthetic and architectural significance to the City of Moreland.

Why is it significant?
Aesthetically, the factory is significant as a particularly fine and intact example of the Streamlined Moderne style of the later 1930s, as applied to a large industrial/commercial building (AHC Criterion F.1). The articulation of the facade as series of horizontal bands, and the contrasting vertical element of the entry porch, are typical of that style; the deliberate laying of bricks to create a subtly graduated tone is more unusual, and imparts a particularly distinctive character to the facade. Although the facade has been altered by extensions to the east (in a matching style) and by replacement of original multi-paned windows with larger sashes, these changes are not unsympathetic. The building remains a prominent landmark in Michael Street (AHC Criterion E.1).

Architecturally, the building is significant as a fine example of the work of Alder & Lacey, architects and consulting engineers, who were one of Melbourne's leading designers of modern-style factory from the mid-1930s (AHC Criterion H.1). Although the firm designed numerous factories in the industrial inner suburbs (eg Carlton, South Melbourne and Richmond), only one other example has been identified in the City of Moreland: the slightly earlier Lattner Hat factory at 20 Dawson Street, Brunswick. Although similar in many ways, the latter's street frontage is rather less assured in its articulation and detailing, leaving the Chas Steele & Co building as the best recorded example of the work of Alder & Lacey in the municipality.

Group