'KAIAPOI'

'Kaiapoi', at 35 Chatham Road, Canterbury, is significant. It was constructed in 1889 by local builder, John Werlich, as his home on the newly subdivided Shrublands Estate. For a decade it was one of just two houses on Chatham Road, due to the difficulty in crossing a creek at the south end of the street.

It is a single-storey polychrome brick house in the Italianate style, reputedly constructed of bricks from the nearby Canterbury Brickworks.

The house is significant to the extent of its nineteenth-century fabric. The front picket fence, garage and additions to the rear and north sides are not significant.

How is it significant?

'Kaiapoi' is of local architectural and aesthetic significance to the City of Boroondara.

Why is it significant?

Architecturally, 'Kaiapoi' is a fine and intact representative example of a single-storey Italianate villa, of the sort that characterised the earliest suburban development of Canterbury following the coming of the railway and major subdivisions in the 1880s. The villa exhibits characteristic features of this type, including the symmetrical plan form, M-profile hipped roof with bracketed eaves, chimneys with moulded cornices, and a return verandah with cast-iron columns, and compound frieze and brackets. (Criterion D)

Aesthetically, 'Kaiapoi' exhibits a high level of intact decorative detail, including polychrome brickwork banding and patterning to the eaves, octagonal roofing slates, bichrome chimneys embellished with cast brackets and terracotta pots, and curved bluestone front steps that project well forward of the verandah, mirroring the inset front entrance. (Criterion E)

Group

Residential buildings (private)

Category

House