Norwood Terrace

Location

209-217 Auburn Road HAWTHORN, BOROONDARA CITY

Level

Incl in HO area indiv sig

Statement of Significance

What is Significant?

Norwood Terrace, at 209-217 Auburn Road, Hawthorn, is significant. It is a two-storey Italianate terrace row of five two-storey attached dwellings, built in 1883-84 for owner Emily Morkham and rented to a variety of tenants.

The terraced houses are built of brick, with rendered front facades. The roof is a continuous transverse gable with parapeted end walls. Each house has a two-storey front verandah, all of which retain the original cast-iron detail. The houses retain rendered chimneys with a cornice to the front wings, some shared between houses some not, as well as corbelled face-brick chimneys to the lower rear wings. Only No. 215 retains its original slate roof cladding.

The terrace is significant to its 1880s fabric. Later alterations such as extensions to the rear, the dormers to No. 217, and the high brick front fences are not significant.

How is it significant?

Norwood Terrace is of local architectural significance and rarity value to the City of Boroondara.

Why is it significant?

As terraced houses, both rows and semi-detached pairs, are an uncommon building type in the City of Boroondara and most commonly seen in the western parts of Hawthorn and Kew, Norwood Terrace is one of a relatively small number of terrace-type houses in Boroondara, and one of the most easterly located examples. It is of even greater rarity as one of a very small number of terraced houses in Boroondara that were built prior to bylaws that required new attached dwellings to have party walls that extend above the roofs and front verandahs. With the change in regulations, the design of Italianate terraced houses changed, from front facades with exposed eaves to those finished with parapets. Norwood Terrace is one of a very small number of the earlier type, with exposed eaves. (Criterion B)

Norwood Terrace is a fine representative example of an Italianate terrace of the type that pre-dates the late 1880s boom. As such, it is simpler in its decorative detailing and use of render, and retains exposed bracketed eaves in keeping with Italianate villas of the 1870s and early 1880s. Other characteristic features of the Victorian Italianate are the rendered and corniced chimneys, front verandahs with cast-iron columns, balustrades and combined frieze and brackets, also six-panelled front doors with fielded panels and bolection mouldings (and original ruby-flashed lights at Nos. 211 and 215). (Criterion D)

Group

Residential buildings (private)

Category

Residence