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Former Fire Station & Flats

Location

164 - 166 Albert Street,, WINDSOR VIC 3181 - Property No B6651

File Number

B6651

Level

Demolished/Removed

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B6651 Fire station & Flats

Statement of Significance

Statement of Singificance: The Windsor Fire Station and Flats are architecturally significant at a State level as a fine example and one of the largest from the innovative series of fire station designs of the 1930s by the architects Seabrook and Fildes, who are acknowledged as having brought modern European architecture to Victoria in the form of Norman Seabrook's 1934 design for the MacPherson Robertson Girls High School. Designed in 1939 and officially opened in 1941, the complex of fire station, flats above and adjacent maisonettes comprises a massive three storey U-shaped cream brick block and an adjacent two storey block separated by a steeped pedestrian walkway. The larger block houses the fire engines at ground level and presents a monumental face to Albert Street. With its flat parapet, off-centre flagpole, porthole windows, projecting entry front and second floor cantilevering balcony, the additive cubistic vocabulary inspired by Dutch modernist Willem Dudok has been accentuated by decorative highlights of bold red lettering above the entry doors and blue tile piers on the upper floors. Remarkable inclusions are the central pair of fluted columns at the entry doors and the white Metropolitan Fire Brigade medallion mounted just above ground level which perhaps refer to earlier more formally inspired fire station designs of the 1920s. One of twelve metropolitan fire stations designed by this firm of architects, the Windsor complex differs from their other significant stations, Brunswick (1937); Camberwell (1938); and Brighton (1939) in that its constricted urban-scaled site dictated a three storey design and that its decoration was more formally based than its counterparts whose vocabulary and emphatic horizontality were more directly derived from Dudok's cream brick modernism. Of the four best known stations, the Windsor example is, with the earlier Brunswick complex, still in active use as a fire station.
Classified: 05/12/1994

Group