Beverley Hills Apartment Block, Art Deco residential complex in South Yarra, Victoria, Australia.
Beverley Hills Apartment Block is an Art Deco residential complex with two buildings rising up to seven stories located at 65 Darling Street in South Yarra. The structures feature grey stucco walls topped with red tile roofs, and residents have access to one and two-bedroom apartments with balconies plus a shared swimming pool on the grounds.
Howard Ratcliff Lawson built the two blocks in 1935–36 with his business partner Reginald Biffen, part of a precinct of at least 15 Lawson-developed apartment buildings in South Yarra. Their seven-storey height caused a stir among nearby residents, and Lawson's later work on the site was restricted to three storeys. Lawson advertised himself as 'the architect who builds', though his 1923 application to the architects registration board had been rejected.
The name nods to upscale Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, and the styling is Spanish Mission rather than Colonial: rough grey stucco, barley-sugar-twist columns, patterned window cills and steep red tiled roofs, with Old English lettering and diamond leadlight windows. The circle-and-cross motif recurs in the balustrading.
The property sits on a sloped site with the swimming pool integrated into the complex grounds. Multiple staircases and pathways connect the different levels of the terrain, and balconies on the units offer views across the area.
An underwater window looks into the swimming pool, part of Lawson's Hollywood-inspired staging of the complex. The circle-and-cross motif recurs in the balustrading and detailing, a signature found across much of his work.
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