Workers' Dwelling No.1 is a heritage-listed

detached house A single-family detached home, also called a single-detached dwelling, single-family residence (SFR) or separate house is a free-standing residential building. It is defined in opposition to a multi-family residential dwelling. Definitions ...

at 35 Surrey Street,

Nundah Nundah (previously called German Station) is an inner suburb in the City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It contains the neighbourhood of Toombul. In the , Nundah had a population of 13,098 people. Prior to European settlement, Nundah was ...

City of Brisbane The City of Brisbane is a local government area (LGA) which comprises the inner portion of Greater Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, Australia. Its governing body is the Brisbane City Council. The LGAs in the other mainland state capitals ...

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, Australia. It was built in 1910. It was added to the

Queensland Heritage Register The Queensland Heritage Register is a heritage register, a statutory list of places in Queensland, Australia that are protected by Queensland legislation, the Queensland Heritage Act 1992. It is maintained by the Queensland Heritage Council. As ...

on 21 October 1992.

History

This house was constructed in 1910 for Caroline and Otto Gustav Weissner, and was the first home constructed under the provisions of the Queensland Worker's Dwelling Act of 1909. The Weissners acquired the Nundah site in June 1909, and on 14 March 1910 they made the first application for housing assistance under the new Act. The result was a mortgage of £190 to the Worker's Dwelling Board, and construction of the house at a total cost of £220. The mortgage was released in August 1925, when the property changed ownership. The design - which probably emanated from the architectural office of the Worker's Dwelling Scheme - was conservative, economical, and typical of Queensland vernacular working class housing of the period. The Worker's Dwelling Act, administered as the Worker's Dwelling Scheme, provided for persons whose income was less than £400 per annum, and who owned a suitable site but no house, to be advanced up to two-thirds of the total value of the site plus the proposed dwelling, to the maximum of £300. Loans were to be repaid over twenty years at 5% interest. The scheme was an early

Queensland Government The Queensland Government is the state government of Queensland, Australia, a Parliament, parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Government is formed by the party or coalition that has gained a majority in the Queensland Legislative Assembly, ...

initiative to assist working-class families to build and purchase their own homes, and was the precursor to the

Queensland Housing Commission The Queensland Housing Commission was a Queensland Government agency which was established in 1945 under the ''State Housing Act 1945''. The agency aimed to improve the lives of individuals and families by providing access to secure, affordable a ...

. During the three decades in which the Worker's Dwelling Scheme was in operation, government assistance provided for the construction of 23,515 houses throughout Queensland, and largely created

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

's suburban sprawl of the 1920s and 1930s. The popularity of the "workers dwelling" and later the " Queenslander" is directly attributable to the success of the Worker's Dwelling Scheme.

Description

This is a small high-set

weatherboard Clapboard (), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of those terms, is wooden siding (construction), siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping. ''Cla ...

house with a short ridge

corrugated iron Corrugated galvanised iron (CGI) or steel, colloquially corrugated iron (near universal), wriggly tin (taken from UK military slang), pailing (in Caribbean English), corrugated sheet metal (in North America), zinc (in Cyprus and Nigeria) or ...

roof, a full width front

verandah A veranda (also spelled verandah in Australian and New Zealand English) is a roofed, open-air hallway or porch, attached to the outside of a building. A veranda is often partly enclosed by a railing and frequently extends across the front an ...

with a convex iron roof which is now enclosed, and a half -width rear verandah, also enclosed. Scalloped galvanised iron window shades enhance the side windows, which are sash type. The interior of the core consists of a central hallway and four rooms, with a hipped-roof kitchen projecting at the rear. Exterior modifications have detracted from the building's decorative appeal. In the process of enclosing the front verandah with timber cladding and aluminium windows, a dowelled

balustrade A baluster () is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its ...

, verandah gate and decorative timber posts with

capitals Capital and its variations may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** Capital region, a metropolitan region containing the capital ** List of national capitals * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Econom ...

and

fretwork Fretwork is an interlaced decorative design that is either carved in low relief on a solid background, or cut out with a fretsaw, coping saw, jigsaw or scroll saw. Most fretwork patterns are geometric in design. The materials most commonly u ...

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

have been lost. Modern quad guttering has replaced the original

ogee An ogee ( ) is an object, element, or curve—often seen in architecture and building trades—that has a serpentine- or extended S-shape (Sigmoid curve, sigmoid). Ogees consist of a "double curve", the combination of two semicircle, semicircula ...

profile and

acroteria An acroterion, acroterium, (pl. akroteria) is an architectural ornament placed on a flat pedestal called the ''acroter'' or plinth, and mounted at the apex or corner of the pediment of a building in the classical style. An acroterion placed ...

. Timber stumps have been supplanted by concrete and the front fence has been replaced.

Heritage listing

Workers' Dwelling No.1 was listed on the

on 21 October 1992 having satisfied the following criteria. The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history. Worker's Dwelling No.1, erected in 1910, is significant as the first house to be constructed under the provisions of the influential Worker's Dwelling Act of 1909. The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places. It is representative of the "timber and tin" housing which predominated in Queensland prior to the Second World War, as a direct result of the Worker's Dwelling Scheme.

References

Attribution

External links

{{Commons category-inline, Workers' Dwelling No.1 Queensland Heritage Register Heritage of Brisbane Nundah, Queensland Houses in Brisbane Articles incorporating text from the Queensland Heritage Register Houses completed in 1910 1910 establishments in Australia