Dwelling

History/Notes
Land now comprising 19 Stephen Street formed part of the 'Newtown Brae' Estate subdivision in 1912. In 1926, Lloyd Hooper sold the vacant land at 19 Stephen Street to Dr Albert Ernest Pillow. He appears to have engaged Harold Trigg, architect, to design a dwelling. Tenders had been called by Trigg for a timber dwelling erroneously addressed as Nantes Street in November 1925, however the dwelling was to be built of brick construction on the Stephen Street land by J.C. Taylor and Sons.

Dr Pillow was born in 1886 at Yarroweyah, the son of Henry and Harriet (nee Fairman) Pillow. He attended the Geelong College, becoming Dux in 1903. In 1908, Pillow obtained his Doctorate of Philosophy at the Berlin University, and he subsequently qualified as a mining engineer at the Mining Academy, Freilberg, Saxony. His mining career soon took him to Katanga in the Belgian Congo, Africa, where he married Miss Elizabeth Mary Fenton in 1915. Their first son, Albert Fenton Pillow, was born there in 1921. Dr Pillow later worked in South Africa and Rhodesia, his second son, Harry Vincent Pillow, appearing to have been born during this time. In 1924, before accepting a management position with the Australian Cement Limited's Fyansford works.

The original design of the dwelling is intact at the north end, comprising L- planned gabled roof form clad in corrugated sheet metal. The principal northern facade faces onto private open space and has a projecting faceted bay window. There is a flat-roofed verandah in the north-east corner. The rear of the dwelling fronts onto Stephen Street and there is a gabled addition constructed in 2007. The garage and fence have been introduced.

References:
Victorian Births, Deaths & Marriages Indexes, Dept of Justice.
Newtown Rate Books, 1926, 1927, 1929, 1950, Geelong Library & Heritage Centre.
Newtown Building Permit, 1926, City of Greater Geelong.
'PILLOW, Dr Albert Earnest (1886-1960), obituary, Geelong College online.
Geelong Advertiser, 25 November 1925, p.5.
Myheritage.com website.
Certificate of Title, vol. 3210 fol. 835.

Group

Residential buildings (private)

Category

House