37 Chrystobel Crescent

1. One of the earliest houses to be constructed in the garden suburb of Grace Park, influential in reinforcing the garden dominated character through built form.

2. A relatively early example of the use of red brick in a bichromatic scheme for suburban houses.

3. Associated with the notable legal figure sir Owen Dixon.

HO152 Grace Park and Hawthorn Grove Precincts, Hawthorn

The Grace Park and Hawthorn Grove Precincts, Hawthorn, are of heritage significance for the following reasons:

- The place is a concentrated and relatively intact precinct of generally high quality residential buildings of the later Victorian and Federation periods.

- Hilda Crescent has an unbroken set of highly distinctive Federation house designs, and the mode continues in the adjacent streets.

- The area is characterised by mature gardens and street trees, filtering the light in the more southern streets, south of Kinkora Road, and giving the area a distinctive shaded character.

- The diagonal house compositions and curving streets in the Grace Park Precinct combine to create an informal and picturesque character.

- The northern section - Kinkora Road and Hawthorn Grove - has a large concentration of 1880s housing in tighter patterns that are similarly characteristic of that earlier era, and is relatively intact. These streets were the first typically-scaled suburban development in Hawthorn, in contrast to the St James Park area which began as a mansion group.

- The Barkers Road section is more heterogeneous, but does incorporate several notable Federation and Bungalow designs. Clovelly Court is an impressive apartment group utilising garden villa forms, comparing with both the courtyard flats in the Fairview Park Precinct (HO148) and the more similar Corsewall Close (HO149).

- Located at the southern end of the precinct, the Michael Tuck Stand at the Glenferrie Oval is striking both for the way it draws on its red-brick domestic surroundings as it is for its 1938 modernity.

- The precinct is visually unified by the shared, curving park based around the former Kew Railway line, that runs though the entire precinct from south to north and reads as a reminder of the precinct's early popularity as a commuter suburb.

Group

Residential buildings (private)

Category

House