Colonial (1800-1845) |
Early Victorian (1845-1865)
The architecture of these periods were very simple, restrained, and heavily symmetrical. Rooflines were very simple, and eaves were small and boxed or completely absent. Colonial roofs were shingle; then came corrugated iron or slate. Colonial houses were often red face brick; Victorian buildings were almost always rendered, at very least on the front facades. Walls were very thick, giving the doors and windows a deep-set appearance. The windows and doors sometimes lacked arches, and the sills were very simple blocklike forms. Windows featured fine, dark-painted frames with multiple panes. Louvred window shutters were the norm. The doors often featured six panels and elaborate fanlights above them. Verandahs were stone-flagged with square posts or turned columns. Colours were restrained and elegant, becoming more adventurous later on. You may hear labels such as Georgian (1800-1850) and Colonial Regency (1830-1860) applied to buildings in this period.
Mid Victorian (1865-1880) |
Late Victorian (1880-1900)
During this time, Australians had one of the highest standards of living in the world. The designs became much more complex, highly decorative, asymmetrical and rooflines quite elaborate.
Buildings with Gothic influences were more popular in the mid-Victorian times, with steep pitched roofs and Gothic, churchlike windows and features, and elaborate wooden fretted (cutout) bargeboards (wooden boards at the edge of the roofline). This overlapped with, and eventually gave way to, what is called the Italianate style, with Greco-Roman motifs such as garlands, arches, scrolls, urns, fluted columns and pilasters and everything else they could think of. In the most prosperous times architecture reached its most abundant heights with the Boom Style (1885-1895) and a more sophisticated version called Queen Anne.
 Victorian brick buildings were almost always rendered, with ashlar coursing (fine lines scribed in the render) to simulate a stone construction called ashlar. Windows lost their multiple panes; the standard Victorian window was double-paned, double-hung. Doors were four-panelled with finely detailed etch leadlight decoration, which often extended to narrow sidelights (small windows either side of the door). The arched tops of the doors' fanlights and windows were sometimes completely semi-circular, usually with elaborate surrounding detail. The windows usually featured a decorative moulded sill. Chimneys were also rendered and decorated with moulded straps (vertical "rods" down the sides) and elaborate top mouldings and terracotta pots. The wonderfully fussy cast iron balustrade also made its appearance during this time. Colours depended on the scale of the building but usually engaged three, maybe four shades in rich, elaborate and imaginative schemes. The delicately detailed "wedding cake" city terrace and the elaborate shop facade with verandah, garlands, mouldings and urns are two of the most popular mid/late Victorian examples.
In the late Victorian period the weatherboard cottage proliferated throughout the country. This was either a symmetrical single-fronted affair with verandah across the entire width or a larger L-shaped version with verandah over the front door and window. A large feature window, often a bay (projecting, usually three-sided) window was centred in the front wing. Roofs were often corrugated iron. The picket fence reached its zenith during this time, with triangular or fancy acorn-topped pickets and ball-topped posts.
Edwardian (1900-1918)
 This architecture was a cleaner, simpler version of Victoriana. During this time, rendered walls and chimneys gave way to the beautiful colours and tones of the local quarried stone, though the moulded details were still painted in two or three colours.
Descended from the Queen Anne style was the distinctively Australian Federation style (1895-1910) with strong red brick walls, wooden turnings, jagged terracotta rooflines, prominent window awnings, dormer windows and Australiana motifs. Windows often featured decorative frames panels of coloured ripple glass at top and bottom.The use of cast iron decoration continued but with less presence. At the same time, English Vernacular Revival (1890-1920) featured the simpler, more cottage-like design, painted rough-cast walls (with a stubble-like effect) and the feminine, organic forms of Art Nouveau as decoration. This style produced very attractive shopfronts and public buildings, including many rural post offices.
Edwardian rooflines could be very complex, including the brokenback (a sudden change in roof pitch to become shallower over the verandah) and large eaves with exposed timbers. The diamond slate roof tile was a feature of this time, as were large, boldly decorative front gables, and elaborate timberwork. Stained glass leadlights in front doors became more prominent and highly detailed, as did the sidelights, which were often asymmetrical. The picket fence became geometrical, lacking the acorn-tops of Victorian times.
The 1920s (1918-1930)
 Any traces of Victorian naivete were eradicated with the Great War, and buildings became very masculine, tailored and modern by comparison. The most popular domestic building style was Californian Bungalow (1918-1930), which, as the name suggests, originated in the USA. It featured low-pitched roofs with very broad eaves, low, wide gables with shingles or brackets, plain chimneys and prominent windows. The skirts (lower portions) of bay windows were clad in shingles. Window leading (stained or textured glass) became more geometric. Shops and public buildings featured similar window treatment, and the bricks were often dark or the wall was rendered, sometimes in roughcast. Pale schemes of blue-grey and ivory with black trim, or the Edwardian traffic green and cream schemes were common.
Art Deco (1925-1940)
Between the Great Depression and World War II Art Deco had a widespread, but understated, impact all over Australia. Technological developments and social changes meant that houses were smaller. Roofs were almost exclusively terracotta. Exterior walls were usually dark brown brick; austerity made rendered walls very rare. Window leading was subdued in colour and very geometric. Working class houses built in this time usually featured reduced detail on front gables and verandahs deeply set behind a heavy bricked balustrade and pillars of brick in an ornamental pattern. The green and cream scheme continued from before WWI was still in vogue. As the decade continued, textured bricks began to make an appearance in small touches of decorative colour, usually set slightly out from, or indented into, the walls of houses and shops. Front fences were also thick, low walls or dark brick.
This was also the age of the great escape: the cinema, a fairly modest affair until the Depression and the expansion of Hollywood, became an architectural fantasy, as did public houses. Many Victorian pubs were redone in this period and the lower facade covered in tiles of bright, pleasing designs in Zig Zag Deco patterns. This and then the futuristically streamlined Nautical Deco (aka P&O Style) conquered the huge cinema edifices. Spanish Mission style adorned not only many cinemas but also some grander homes with stucco rendered walls, semi-tubular terracotta tiles and coat-of-arms emblem motifs.
Post War (1940-1965)
 After World War II the futuristic optimism of Art Deco was left in tatters, and its remnants combined with the Space Age influence to create streamlined, simplified buildings. In shops and houses, windows remained double hung, but their panes were often framed horizontally, creating a pleasing four-layered effect. Otherwise the double-hung window was single paned. Domestic front doors divided into completely glassless or became completely glassed with either rippled or striped glass for privacy. In place of the verandah, the unroofed "crazy-paved" concrete patio was now little more than a landing for the doorstep, and wrought iron was employed to give this a fine trellis-like or geometric fence or a railing for the stairs, and was often painted black. Domestic roofs remained terracotta, with some bright colour variations like dark blue; corrugated asbestos was also common as a utilitarian roofing material for both shops and homes. Asbestos-laden fibro became the new budget building material, and the triple-fronted fibro or brick-veneered home with patio comprised the vast new urban sprawl – even in country towns, which were just beginning to die as television and the modern car made them seem unecessary, and city life seem more attractive.
 As home design became more dependent upon colour and texture than decorative detail, older homes were often renovated ruthlessly, often left devoid of all features. On old and new structures, exterior woodwork such as windows were almost uniformly white. Fences were removed to leave front yards open to the street. Home ownership by European migrants hastened this process as they emulated the spartan structures of their heritage. Beige-coloured, then densely red, textured face brick replaced the dark reddish and blueish bricks of pre-war times.
Like the Laminex and vinyl inside the houses, exterior colours were bright and new. Adventurous colour schemes had exterior walls of curved weatherboards with pastel exteriors in primary and secondary shades, white windows and brightly coloured or black trim. Wooden side fences were sometimes painted in a rainbow of modern shades, resembling the plastic fly-blinds that covered shop doors.
Late Twentieth Century (1955-present)
 The divergence of styles in all the arts during the latter half of the 20th century was also evident in architecture. This is the era of the latter-day skyscraper in Australia, and the rise of the domestic aluminium window, resulting in a comparatively "blind" look to suburban facades.
Colour schemes began as white with the introduction of Mission Brown, used everywhere on the new Cape Cod conversions with high, steep terracotta rooflines, dormer windows and/or indented verandahs. Shops and similar buildings were sometimes subjected to unusual treatments - the gull-wing roof was popular in the 1960s and '70s for banks (shown here) and service stations alike. On more upmarket homes, A-line chimneys descended down the entire side of the house in a veneer of rustic stone. The '70s saw a flirtation with high-maintenance white brick, which became pale beige in the 1980s. Cement render became popular in the 1990s, when much architect-designed medium density housing, especially in inner-city Sydney, began to rely heavily on strong, pleasing colour combinations, often with dark untextured bricks as a texture contrast.
A new respect for the heritage of older buildings began in the cities with the Australian "cultural renaissance" of the '70s, typified by the Green Bans on development in The Rocks in Sydney. By the 1980s this awareness had filtered through to country towns which, through the drain of younger generations to the cities and the demise of the functioning family farm, were often in marked and extended decay. Re-evaluation of the tourism value of their heritage saved many beautiful buildings from the "knock 'em down" mentality of previous decades.
In the 1990s this translated to revivalist Federation-styled detail on new "McMansion" houses comprising some basic stained glass in the windows and some decorative woodwork and moulding on the front gable. On these and older houses traffic green and cream or yellow again became popular. In an ironic reversal of the practice 50 years prior, many bland houses from previous decades were given new cast aluminium reproduction Victorian "lace" detail.
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