Camberwell Conservation Study 1991 Vol 3 - City of Boroondara

Few places portray the ideals of Australian suburban life as clearly as
CamberweU. For better or worse, the suburb lies at the heart of Australian
life, and Camberwell is the classic suburb. It has been populated by the
middling and upper social strata, living in detached single-family dwellings set
amidst gardens and trees. Camberwell is tied to the city by public transport
yet apart from it, having successfully excluded the dirty, nasty and dangerous
elements of urban life. Only churches and shops were welcomed as
appropriate additions to its domestic landscape. More successfully than most
other Australian municipalities, Camberwell has created the suburban ideal of
country in the city and deliberately maintained this character for more than
one hundred years.
All of the most desirable suburban characteristics of the period between 1860
and 1960 are expressed in the buildings and streets of Camberwell. Most
importantly Camberwell clearly displays the aspirations and the material
forms of the suburban world created between the First and Second World
Wars.
The historic significance of Camberwell lies in the quality, variety and
completeness of the municipality's essentially suburban appearance.
Individual buildings and areas within the suburb clearly register the key
aspects of this suburban form. Most important amongst these are:
1. Large, often multi-storeyed mansions build prior to the railway boom of
the 1880s and established with their own work force, gardens, orchards and
livestock just beyond what was then the boundary of the Melbourne
metropolitan area.
2. Detached villas, often architect-designed, and built for upper middle
clients between 1880 and 1914. These are clustered around public transport
routes, particularly the east-west railway link to the city.
3. The estates of detached middle-class housing created between the wars
and essentially tied to fixed-rail transport. These houses include superior
examples of the whole range of exotic and nostalgic styles which coloured
Australian suburbia during the period.
4. Modernist houses, especially prominent in the north of the suburb, often
designed by architects and built for the new professional and managerial elite
of the 1950's boom.
5. The public space of the suburb includes important elements of public
transport systems, especially the railways and tramways which were intrinsic to
suburban development. This is especially true of the electric tramways of the
inter-war era. Routes through Camberwell were often seen as test cases for
the ability of electric trams and trains to promote suburban growth.
6. Camberwell is shaped today by embryonic town planning attempts. These
were carried out through: (1) By-law planning which clustered shops into