Westella

Boundary Street began to attract residents and small business people in the 1870s. The farming community that West End was at this time gradually evolved into a residential area, and various stores appeared to service this clientele. Horse-drawn trams ran from the Boundary Hotel to Breakfast Creek in the 1880s, providing an impetus for both residential and commercial development. The number of shops and houses constructed in this area in the late 1870s and 1880s is indicative of the rapid growth of Boundary Street and the surrounding areas at this time.

John Wilson, a local landowner and entrepreneur acquired 22.5 perches of land on the corner of Boundary and Jane Streets in 1877. Wilson owned a great deal of land in West End, and he was the proprietor of the Boundary Hotel, directly opposite this block of land. Numerous fruiterers, grocers and other storekeepers traded from premises built on Wilson’s land from the 1880s into the 1920s. The premises, a mixed shop and dwelling, burned down in August 1928. 

Wilson’s estate was subdivided in the late 1930s and Thomas Halbert acquired 14.2 perches of this land in October 1938. He paid £350 for the corner block. Halbert was manager of the West End Lyric Theatre and resided on Boundary Street, close to the theatre and not far from this site. Shortly after purchasing the Boundary and Jane Streets block, he engaged architect George Rae to design a shop and block of flats for the site.

George Rae was one of Brisbane's most successful young architects. He had established his own architectural practice in Brisbane in 1933, after partnerships with Atkinson, Powell and Conrad (1927-31) and Lange L Powell (1931-33). These were among the most prominent architectural firms of the day. Rae designed a variety of buildings, and specialised in new forms of architectural construction to Brisbane including picture theatres and residential flats. His more substantial purpose-designed flat buildings are amongst the most important of their type and their period in Brisbane. They include: Carrington (corner of Warry Street and Gregory Terrace, Spring Hill) erected in 1933; Highview (on Dornoch Terrace, Highgate Hill) designed in 1933-34; Casa del Mar (44 Moray Street, New Farm) erected in 1934; Greystaines (240 Hamilton Road, Hamilton) constructed in 1934; and Green Gables [601895] (corner of Julius and Moray streets, New Farm) erected in 1935. He also designed a similar shop-flat combination of buildings on Sandgate Road, Clayfield, in 1938. 

Further, Rae had worked for Halbert before, as Rae designed alterations to the West End Lyric Theatre in the 1930s.

Halbert received building approval for the shop and tenements in January 1939, and a small feature article on the flats appeared in the Telegraph at the end of the month. The flats were intended as ‘bachelor’ flats for either women or men, to be supervised from the shop on Boundary Street. Purpose-built flats were a relatively new concept for Brisbane. Initial doubts of the propriety of flat living were overcome by increased demands for dwellings in inner-city suburbs, which rose dramatically in the interwar period.

The establishment of higher-density residential living in inner-city areas was in response to a number of diverse factors impacting upon cities at this time. The increasing value of inner-city property, suburbanisation, and changing residential patterns within cities facilitated the construction of dwellings designed for living of a higher density than that of the family home. The greater South Brisbane region contains a number of purpose-built apartment blocks, and nineteenth century residences which were divided into flats in the 1920s. Brisbane City Council ordinances in the late 1930s enforced certain specifications on these buildings. The use of materials, height levels, site coverage, and frontage were regulated. The drafting of Council ordinances sought to preclude the possible eventuality of the creation of slum conditions within inner-city Brisbane.

This building is representative of a particular social and architectural phenomenon that occurred in inner-city areas like South Brisbane and West End in the mid to late 1930s. Contemporaneous with this apartment construction was the division into flats of many of the grand nineteenth century residences in the area.

Advertisements for ‘Westella’ appeared in the Brisbane Courier in June 1939. Halbert and wife Sarah relocated into the new flats.

Thomas Halbert owned the property into the 1950s. It has had numerous owners in the intervening decades. The present owners acquired the property in 1978. The corner section of this building is now used as business premises, which obviously has necessitated some internal alterations. 

1. Brisbane City Council City Architecture and Heritage Team, citations

2. Brisbane City Council aerial photographs, 1946, 2012

3. Brisbane City Council, Water Supply and Sewerage Detail Plans, 1927

4. Brisbane City Council, Properties on the Web, Building Cards

5. Brisbane City Council Building Register Index 1939

6. Department of Natural Resources, Certificates of Title

7. Brisbane City Council Minutes, 1935-36, p.1828

8. The Architectural and Building Journal of Queensland, March 1936

9. National Library of Australia, Trove digitised newspapers, Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Week, Brisbane Courier, Courier Mail, Daily Standard, Worker

10. Queensland Post Office Directories, 1868-1949