FORMER DEPUTY MANAGER'S RESIDENCE, NEWPORT RAILWAY WORKSHOPS

The houses at 57 and 59 Champion Road were built c1915 as residences for the Manager and the Deputy Manager of the Newport Railway Workshops. They were built by AJ Maddock under Victorian Railways Contract 29407, signed 29 September 1915. They replaced two timber double-storey houses built c1889 at the eastern end of the main Workshops site. 

The two matching Federation style, single-storey brick houses with tiled roofs are set on large blocks of land on the south side of Champion Road, opposite the Newport Railway Workshops. The houses have been privately owned since c1982.

The residence at 57 Champion Road is of historical and architectural significance to the state of Victoria.

The residence at 57 Champion Road is of historical significance for its strong associations with the Newport Railway Workshops, one of the most important surviving 19th century railway workshops in the world. They were the main workshops of the Victorian Railways for over a century and were one of Victoria's largest and best equipped engineering establishments. The workshops were so important to the Railways and to the Victorian economy that it was considered necessary to provide official railway residences near the complex.

The residence at 57 Champion Road is of architectural importance as an intact example of a Bungalow style suburban villa of the late Federation/Edwardian period. The refined design displays Californian and Craftsman Bungalow influences, as well as remnants of Melbourne’s Queen Anne. It shows treatments of planning and circulation, dominant ridge and gable with projecting secondary gables, and relation of roofs to the plan, which are typical of the Bungalow of this period. Other typical features are window bays with lead-lights, red brick, Marseilles tile, expressed structural timber-work, roughcast and shingles in the gables, and abstracted brackets to the eaves, porches and verandahs. The hierarchy of spaces and related hierarchy of finishes and materials are demonstrative of the type of lifestyle considered appropriate for an occupant of the status of the railway yards deputy manager. At the same time, the plan and form are well adapted to the orientation of the site.