More Beautiful Buildings.....

I thought some photographs of great mid century architecture were long overdue on my blog. I had a scrounge through my files and found some wonderful buildings that I have not shared with you before, and I thought you may like a little snippet of structural inspiration......

This first house looks like a rental property of sorts as it doesnt seem to be in a brilliant state of repair and frequently has cars parked all over the place, but I did manage to catch a photo on a rare occasion when it was car free. I would love to get my hands on this little treasure in the town where I now live !! There is another wing behind the tree and it actually goes back a fair way too, so it appears to be quite a reasonable size. LOVE the chimney, the angled roof and the symmetry of the two wings with the entree doors in the middle. If only I could get into that garden and make it a real early 60's showpiece !!! It's on a lovely size block with some nice established trees too.......anyone want to come and live in Cohuna with me????

These few shots were from a day trip to the towns of St Arnoud and Ararat. Isnt "Brays" the most adorable shop out???? Located in the darling little town of St Arnoud I adore the art deco shop front, the Bray's tile work at the entree and the superb script sign writing.....everything about it is so perfect !! I day dream about finding a township full of shops like this one, simply waiting to be discovered and revitalised somehow !! Instead I tend to see them being modernised (like the horrific vandalism performed on the now Dale Spinks Chemist in Kerang - it used to look exactly like this shop and is now unrecognisable !! SACRILEGE !!!) or else I find shops like this one exploding with garish coca cola or tattslotto signage and junked up windows that the entire shop front effect is invisible. There you go, that is my complaint for the day !! I cant deny it, I am a heritage architecture lover !!!

Isnt it just too divine for words? Ooooo, lets make an entire mid century town and all live there together in our beautiful, quaint mid century aesthetic world !!!

The photographs below are from the township of Ararat in Victoria. Check out this classic old cinema complex. I couldnt ascertain if it was still being run as a cinema, but seeing as there was no advertising, I assumed not. This is one thing the area where I live really needs - a good classic cinema. We must travel up to an hour for a night at the movies, and anyone living in Swan Hill, a further hour up river from me, has either a 3 hour trip to Mildura, a 2.5 hour trip to Bendigo or a 2 hour trip to Echuca to enjoy the flicks. As you can see there is a real opening for a visionary in this region - you would have a clientele of aprox 50,000 people to draw from....but you can only come if you play art house and classic films too !!! (Smile !!)

Anyhow, that bit of promo has nothing to do with the Ararat cinema !!!

And finally, the Ararat Hotel. What a lovely treasure !! Looks like they are revamping it tastefully too !!! (Hmmm, except for the tabcorp signage out the front !! Can someone please tell Tabcorp to restructure their signage to be sympathetic to Heritage Planning controls ?!!!)

Well, as you can see there are some real treasures around. That is the undeniably lovely thing about country towns, because progress moves much slower, a huge number of these darling old buildings are retained and are ripe for the restoring !!! They can often be picked up for a song too. Sooner or later 'normal people' are going to be priced well out of the housing market in the cities, and who knows, maybe then focus will turn to our beautiful country towns and we will see them thrive with art and culture again, and buildings such as these will have the chance to really live once more.