By Cara Waters
Residents fear modernist mid-century homes in Melbourne’s bayside suburbs will be at risk of demolition if a bid for heritage protection is rejected on Tuesday night.
Bayside council will vote on permanently listing 59 postwar modernist homes and one group listing in Beaumaris, Brighton, Black Rock, Cheltenham and Sandringham in the heritage overlay of the Bayside Planning Scheme.
Fiona Austin, founder of Beaumaris Modern, at one of the Bayside homes she wants to see protected with heritage listing. Credit: Wayne Taylor
Fiona Austin, founder of heritage group Beaumaris Modern, said she was concerned the listing would not go ahead as the Bayside council had “form” and had watered down and abandoned many bids for heritage protection.
“It is heartbreaking to see how many significant houses we have lost in Beaumaris because of council inaction,” she said. “Several groups in the community, including Beaumaris Modern, are concerned that after all this effort and all this time, a small group of anti-heritage councillors will vote against the amendment.”
Councillors were due to vote on Tuesday night on a recommendation by council officers that the homes listed in the Post-War Modern Residential Heritage Study be permanently included in the heritage overlay.
Austin said the initial study recommended 159 properties for inclusion, but this list had been reduced to 59. Some of the properties were removed after owners lobbied councillors to withdraw their homes from the study.
Bayside City Council abandoned attempts to include properties in municipality-wide heritage studies in 2008 and 2018 after residents complained and “all hell broke loose”, according to the mayor at the time. The council was criticised by the National Trust for backing down.
Two significant postwar homes have since been demolished, including the award-winning Breedon House in Brighton, designed by architect Geoffrey Woodfall, and a home on Nautilus Street, Beaumaris, designed by Charles Bricknell.
In a submission to the council, Samantha Westbrooke, of the National Trust of Australia, said the proposed listing was an important and timely review of heritage protections for the residential buildings built in the modern style in the Bayside area between 1945 and 1975.
“Despite the historic importance of the postwar period, a time of transformation on a scale not seen since the gold rush, much of our postwar heritage remains vulnerable and without statutory protection,” she said.
A mid-century modern home in Beaumaris that could potentially be heritage protected. Credit: Beaumaris Modern
“With densification transforming our suburbs, it is becoming increasingly important to document, celebrate and protect significant postwar heritage, to recognise and protect these heritage values as such places develop and change.”
However, resident Darryl Behrendorff, whose home is one of the 59 properties set to be included in the heritage overlay, said he was opposed to the heritage listing.
“My house is the most modest house probably in Beaumaris,” he said. “I am in a street where no other house is identified and houses are demolished all the time. It’s hardly the MCG.”
Behrendorff said a heritage listing would affect the valuation of his home by 25 to 30 per cent, and questioned whether Bayside council would reduce his rates as a result.
“My house is a three-bedroom house. I did not buy it to leave it as it is,” he said. “I’ve got two kids who are going to grow up. If I do want to do some alterations, like add a garage or go up, all of a sudden, I need to go through a heritage consultant, and that is going to cost an enormous amount of money.”
Behrendorff said a heritage listing meant that other home owners in the street would be able to subdivide their blocks but he would not.
He also questioned whether postwar modernist homes were significant enough to have heritage listing.
“A lot [of the homes] were built really cheaply, as coming out of the war, people did not have any money,” he said. “I don’t have people coming to look at my house from a tourist attraction point of view.”
Bayside Mayor Fiona Stitfold said: “Bayside City Council is committed to protecting significant buildings and places that contribute to our municipality’s prized neighbourhood character.”
She said the council had recently focused on the Post-War Modern Residential Heritage Study, which would be considered at Tuesday’s council meeting.
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