IDENTIFIER CARRINGTON PARK CLUB Other Names Moran Residence; Carrington Park Address 40-52 Elizabeth Drive, Rosebud
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IDENTIFIER CARRINGTON PARK CLUB Other Names Moran Residence; Carrington Park Address 40-52 Elizabeth Drive, Rosebud Photographed March 2010 Extent of Listing House and curtilage to street frontage Designer/architect Best Overend Style Inter-War Functionalist Maker/builder - Constructed 1941 Her Act Category Heritage place Current Use Social club premises Her Item Group Residential Buildings (Private) Condition Good (minor repairs/maintenance) Her Item Category House Intactness Good (minor external alterations) Significance LOCAL Assessed by Simon Reeves Recommendation Local HO schedule (internal controls) Assessment date 4 April 2010; revised 23 Aug 2010 Statement of Significance What is Significant? Carrington Park at 40-52 Elizabeth Street, Rosebud, is a double-storey hip-roofed clinker brick Functionalist-style house, dominated by a projecting upper level with continuous window wall opening onto a narrow balcony with canted sunroom at the corner. The house was built in 1941 for Leonard & Muriel Moran (of the Moran & Cato retail empire) to the design of noted modernist architect Best Overend. Since 1964, the property has operated as the Carrington Park Club. How is it Significant? The house is of architectural, aesthetic and historical significance to the Shire of Mornington Peninsula Why is it Significant? Architecturally, Carrington Park is significant as a noted example of the work of Best Overend, Victoria's leading champion of the 1930s modernist movement. This house, which represents the architect's largest single residential commission, typifies his earnest (but never entirely successful) attempts to adapt pure modernism to the Australian context. Architecturally, the house is also of note as one of the last grand “country seat” residences, with lavish reception rooms and servants' quarters, to be built in Victoria before the Second World War. Aesthetically, the house is significant as a notable and substantial (if idiosyncratic) example of the inter-war Functionalist style. The upper floor, with its continuous glazing, narrow balcony with ship-like pipe handrails, and canted sunroom with curved promenade deck, is particularly evocative of European precedents (eg Mendelssohn), and contrasts with the more traditional elements such as the hipped roof and timber-framed double-hung windows. Historically, the house is significant for associations with original owners, Leonard E P Moran, one of the heirs to the prominent and successful Moran & Cato retail empire, who built this house in 1941 as a retirement residence for himself and his second wife, Muriel. S H I R E O F M O R N I N G T O N P E N I N S U L A H E R I T A G E R E V I E W 2 0 1 0 1 History The building that now operates as the Carrington Park Club was originally a private house erected in 1941 on one of Rosebud's largest single land holdings. This vast 200-acre site, designated as Crown Allotment 31E (Parish of Wannaeue, County of Mornington) was originally granted to William John Peatey, a local fisherman, on 3 September 1930. Within a week, the title had been transferred to Melbourne businessman Leonard Edwin Pankhurst Moran, one of the heirs to the Moran & Cato retail empire. His father, Thomas Edwin Moran (1860-90) opened his first shop in 1881 and was duly approached by a cousin, Frederick John Cato (1858-1935) to form a partnership. Their business, styled as “wholesale and retail cash grocers'”, flourished and, at the time of Moran's early death from consumption, had 35 branches across Victoria. Under the joint control of F J Cato and Moran's widow, Elizabeth (1851-1932), the chain expanded thence into Tasmania and New South Wales. When Moran & Cato became a public company in 1912, the Morans' two eldest sons, Leonard Edwin (1878-1965) and Arthur Leslie (1882-1966) were included as shareholders; both would eventually rise to the position of Senior Director. At the time of the deaths of Elizabeth Moran and Frederick Cato in the mid-1930s, the chain comprised 120 outlets in Victoria and Tasmania, with a further 40 in New South Wales. The firm thrived thereafter until 1969, when it was absorbed by long-time rivals Permewan Wright Ltd. Leonard Moran married Evelyn Sarah Taylor in 1903; the couple subsequently lived in a modest house in Winter Street, Malvern, where they raised a son and two daughters. By the late 1920s, the family had moved to a more prestigious inner city address: a grand Victorian mansion (since demolished) at 57 Queens Road. Leonard Moran's purchase of 200 acres at Rosebud in 1930 (followed by his acquisition of two smaller contiguous Crown Allotments in 1932 and 1937) culminated in his proposal to build a lavish seaside residence. It would appear that the project was spurred also by his second marriage, in 1938, to the former Muriel Wither Robson (1889-1983). The Morans entrusted the commission to one of Melbourne's most prominent modern architects of the day, Best Overend. Described by Philip Goad as “the charismatic personality of Modernism”, Best Overend (1909-1977) began his career in 1926 as an articled pupil of H Vivian Taylor, an acoustics expert who specialised in cinema design, while studying at Swinburne Technical College and the Melbourne University Architectural Atelier. Travelling to London in 1931, Overend worked for two leading modernists: a brief stint with well-known Australian expatriate Raymond McGrath, followed by 18 months as Chief Draftsman for the more notable Wells Coates. Returning to Melbourne in 1933, Overend became a partner in his old firm, thence known as H VivianTaylor, Soilleux & Overend. His most famous project was Cairo in Fitzroy (1935), an innovative block of 40 minimum-dwelling units that strongly reflected overseas influences. During this time, he also became an arch-publicist for modernism, writing a weekly column in the Argus that championed flat roofs, open planning, metal-framed windows and the use of steel, glass and reinforced concrete. In 1937, he resigned from Taylor's practice to travel overseas; after working briefly in China and London (for Well Coates, as well as Serge Chermayeff and Erich Mendelssohn), he returned to open his own Melbourne office in 1938. The buildings (mostly houses) that he designed over the next few years represented a bold attempt to adapt European modernism to the Australian context. Unfortunately, it proved to be a short-lived phase; as Goad has noted, Overend's work after World War II never reached the same level of skill, innovation and excitement, and he entirely lost his passion for publicity. The house that Overend designed for the Moran family represented one of the architect's largest single residential commissions. Rate cards reveal that the building was completed between 1941 and 1942, when the Net Annual Value of Leonard Moran's Rosebud properties (more than 450 acres in total) doubled, from £100 in £200. His new double-storey dwelling comprised an imposing entrance hall with billiard room and den on the ground floor and the principal living areas above, dominated by a glass-walled lounge area with circular observation deck, plus a music room, dining room, kitchen and three bedrooms with bathrooms. There was self-contained servants' accommodation (two bedrooms, bathrooms and sitting room), a four-car garage with chauffeur's flat, facilities for electric generation and pumping fresh water from the nearby creek, and even a private boat-shed and bathing box on the beach itself. Although it has been asserted that the house was built solely as a holiday dwelling, these lavish appointments would suggest that it was intended as a semi-permanent residence. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that the couple's names are recorded in local electoral rolls; in 1943, listings for the Subdivision of Dromana included Leonard Edward Pankhurst Moran (“director”) and Muriel Wither Moran (“home duties”) as residents of Carrington Park, Rosebud – one of the first recorded uses of the estate's title. The name was clearly inspired by Carrington, Thomas and Elizabeth Moran's original city residence in Kooyong Road, Malvern, a large Victorian mansion that the family occupied from 1886 until 1929. 2 S H I R E O F M O R N I N G T O N P E N I N S U L A H E R I T A G E R E V I E W 2 0 1 0 As it turned out, Leonard and Muriel Moran owned Carrington Park for only a few years before offering it for auction in 1945. A lengthy Argus advert described it as a “most imposing brick seaside residence... built to provide the maximum of comfort, and its interior designed with thought and quality”. Special attention was drawn to the “magnificent lounge with circular observation lounge, beautifully panelled dining room, music room and all-glass sun deck”. After the property was sold, the Morans retired quietly to Melbourne, where they lived in Ringwood. The new owners of Carrington Park were Ralph Archibald Webb, a farmer, and his wife Stella. The couple remained there for a decade, during which time two images of the house were published in Robin Boyd's seminal book, Victorian Modern (1947) as a key example of Best Overend's work. The photographs, carefully composed to highlight the Functionalist balconies and sunroom without showing the hipped roof, were captioned as follows: “Catwalks on two sides of this 1941 Overend house on Arthur's Seat [sic] lead to a circular observation room which overlooks the silver stretch of the Bay”. In 1955, the property was acquired by Phillip Patrick McLaren (1914-2003), a prominent local businessman who had, since the 1940s, worked as a general carrier, with a depot in Normanby Street, South Melbourne, and an office in Dromana.