Summerland Mansions (Extant) 17-27 Fitzroy Street

Summerland Mansions (boldly embossed on the second floor balustrade), could not be anywhere in Victoria, but St Kilda.  It is a type of building that gives St Kilda its unique character: mansion-flats, built in 1920 and 1921 right on the street frontage, with shops at ground level and initially with shared, serviced facilities and sweeping views.  It is a type of urbanity, there generally higher rise, which is common in European cities such as London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna or Milan and in Sydney, but rare in Melbourne.  St Kilda has long been the place in Melbourne most associated with high density apartment living, particularly in the period after World War I, but these spacious mansion-flats were built for a wealthy clientele.  They have mixed use, including street-level shops with welcoming plate-glass windows for the use of residents, locals and tourists.

For the first residents at Summerland its large rooms must have offered a sense of secure privacy, with views across the bay and the gardens.  Each flat had a screened porch, fully glazed sleep-out and balcony.  Communal spaces such as a large accessible roof-top over the Acland Street section, for recreational, and clothes- drying use and the restaurant/dining room for residents’ use over Fitzroy Street.  Flats had maid’s and service rooms accessed by their own tradesmen’s entrance and stair at the rear.

The accessible roof may have even been influenced by Le Corbusier’s Dom-ino system with its accessible roof of 1913-15, which was well-publicised, but it is particularly early example for Australia, even if it resulted from the Council’s requirement for 50% open space on a fully built-up site.  The restaurant/dining room was directly accessible to all residents from two internal stairs.  Diners overlooked Fitzroy Street through large plate-glass windows.  This meant the apartments needed only a small kitchenette.  Again this anticipated today’s expectations, when so many apartments offer small kitchens, in assuming frequent dining-out.

Many Summerland flats still have original design features: airing cupboards in the hall, built-in dressers dividing kitchen and dining room, hatches for milk and bread deliveries, kitchen servery hatches, tiled fireplaces, letterboxes and inset door-mats proclaiming ‘Summerland Mansions’.  Stair-halls have small-paned glazed screen walls to flats and matching timber panelling and are lit by lantern skylights in the ceilings: distinctly Japanese influences. A feature was large flyscreened balconies for sleep-outs, at the rear of each block. Gradually and haphazardly these were enclosed to create additional bedrooms.

The market for Summerland apartments seems to have been for tenants who would have expected a butler and maid in their own house and continued to expect this level of service in a more urban context.