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HOUSE

Other Name

Individual, Front fence

Location

120 STEWART STREET,, BRUNSWICK VIC 3056 - Property No 11457

Level

Included in Heritage Overlay

Statement of Significance

The house at 120 Stewart Street is of aesthetic and historic significance to the State of Victoria.

The house is aesthetically important for its decorated interior which is remarkably ornate for a domestic building of this size, and reflects the late nineteenth century preoccupation with elaborate finishes more usually associated with grander residences. The decorative scheme in the parlour (now lounge) with its coved plaster ceiling, ornate plaster mouldings covered in gold leaf, six landscape panels, and green painted finish, is exceptionally detailed and intact above the cornice line, and is representative of the skill, knowledge and spirit of late Victorian decorators and designs. The scheme in the bedroom, also decorated with six landscape panels, is less embellished, but shows the same degree of skill. The painted scenes are significant for their artistic qualities as well as for their potential to yield information on their locations which appear to be 'postcard' views of travel destinations, notably Melbourne's Botanic Gardens and Government House, and the the the well-known nineteenth-century view to Hobart and Mt Wellington from Bellerive. The lower walls of these rooms, and the more simply decorated entrance hall have been overpainted, but importantly have the potential to reveal more of the original scheme underneath the surface.

The interior is historically important for its associations with Melbourne's lively, late nineteenth-century network of highly skilled crafts and tradesmen, amongst whom the artist and first owner of this house, Cornelius Crow, can be included.

Group