Salmon Brick, Hexagons, and a Games Mystery: The Buildings That Taught Perth to Live in Flats

Drive the inner-city corridor and the same buildings keep appearing: three-storey salmon brick walk-ups behind tidy lawns, cream brick towers of eight or so floors, and, if you know where to look, a family of strange and wonderful hexagon-shaped complexes. None of them are accidents. They are the physical record of the era when Perth first learned to live in flats, and they are still some of the most practical, solidly built strata stock in the city.

The Krantz and Sheldon era

According to the Museum of Perth, it is believed that around ninety per cent of the flats built in Perth between the 1930s and the 1960s were designed by one architect, Harold Krantz, who practised with Robert Sheldon as Krantz and Sheldon from 1946 to 1972. Their philosophy was simple: build flats people could actually afford, with honest materials and no wasted space. The salmon and cream brick that defines the era was exactly that, durable, cheap to maintain, and never needing paint.

You can read the era on almost any street in the corridor. Classic salmon and cream brick walk-ups stand at 33 Third Avenue in Mount Lawley, 99 Herdsman Parade in Wembley, 551 William Street in Mount Lawley, and Vasto Gardens at 738 Beaufort Street in Mount Lawley. The high-rise versions of the same idea include 50 Kirkham Hill Terrace in Maylands, 537 William Street in Mount Lawley, 53 and 69 Leonard Street in Victoria Park, and 227 Vincent Street in West Perth. And then there are the hexagons: the three-storey walk-up complexes at 1, 19, 25, 47 and 49 Herdsman Parade in Wembley, 81 King William Street in Bayswater, 31 First Avenue in Mount Lawley, and 2 Bennelong Place in Leederville, their angled wings wrapped around lush central courtyards that few modern developments can match.

Inside the towers

The strata plans, which KPR has now pulled from Landgate, put registered names and dates to all of this. Hyde Park Court at 537 William Street was strata titled on 18 April 1980 as a pair of buildings: a nine storey main tower with six 39 square metre studio apartments per floor from the ground to the seventh floor and three 79 square metre 2-bedroom units across the eighth, plus a five storey rear tower of two 1-bedroom units per floor, 61 lots in all. That is almost exactly how Director James Yeoman remembered it, floor by floor, before we opened the plan.

Trelawney at 580 Newcastle Street, an eight storey brick block, was strata titled on 8 June 1976, and its plan carries a second chapter: a re-subdivision registered on 3 September 1998 carved the original lower lots into new ones, including the large commercial lot that is now the ground floor medical centre. Beatty Park Apartments at 227 Vincent Street, three storey and ten storey buildings totalling 119 lots with frontages to both Vincent Street and 128 Carr Street, was titled on 31 January 1978 with both buildings already standing.

The Games question

Here is the local mystery. The 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games transformed Perth, giving the city Perry Lakes Stadium, Beatty Park Pool, and the Games Village at City Beach, which is now a heritage precinct. Local memory, including in our office, holds that several of the inner-city blocks of this era, 580 Newcastle Street, 227 Vincent Street (a short walk from Beatty Park, built as the Games pool), and 537 William Street among them, went up with Games visitors in mind. We have not been able to find records that confirm it, and the sources we can find date 537 William Street, Hyde Park Court, to a 1968 Krantz and Sheldon design, after the Games. The strata plans do not settle it either way, because they record titling rather than construction, but they add one delicious detail: when 227 Vincent Street was strata titled in 1978, it was registered under the name Beatty Park Apartments, wearing the name of the Games pool across the road on its title to this day. The definitive answer sits in the City of Vincent building permit archives, and we are calling it what it is until then: an open question. If you have records, photographs, or memories of these buildings in the early 1960s, we would love to hear from you.

What the titles say

One caution before the list: a strata plan records when a building was divided into lots, not when it was built. Plenty of these blocks stood for years as rental buildings under a single owner before anyone strata titled them. With that said, the registered names alone are worth the search fees. Two of the Herdsman Parade complexes are literally registered as Hexagons No. 1 and Hexagons No. 2. Property records date the hexagon complexes to 1976 and 1977, which makes the point neatly: the Moondyne pair at 47 and 49 Herdsman Parade stood for more than a decade as rental buildings before they were strata titled in 1988.

• Amelia Court, 53 Leonard Street, Victoria Park: strata titled 13 November 1975
• Aquila, 551 William Street, Mount Lawley: 31 May 1976
• Trelawney, 580 Newcastle Street, West Perth: 8 June 1976, re-subdivided 3 September 1998
• Leonard Heights, 69-75 Leonard Street, Victoria Park: 22 April 1977
• Beatty Park Apartments, 227 Vincent Street and 128 Carr Street, West Perth: 31 January 1978
• Hexagons No. 1, 19 Herdsman Parade, Wembley: 16 August 1979
• Hexagons No. 2, 25 Herdsman Parade, Wembley: 11 September 1979
• Iona, 33 Third Avenue, Mount Lawley: 1 October 1979
• Hyde Park Court, 537 William Street, Mount Lawley: 18 April 1980
• Parkside Gardens, 1 Herdsman Parade, Wembley: 17 November 1980
• Peninsula Close, 50 Kirkham Hill Terrace, Maylands: 10 April 1981. The building is signed Kirkham Heights today, and originally had an entrance on Peninsula Road, a neat example of how registered names and street identities drift apart over the decades.
• Ascot Park, 81 King William Street, Bayswater: 21 August 1987
• Moondyne Gardens, 47 Herdsman Parade, Wembley: 1 August 1988
• Moondyne, 49 Herdsman Parade, Wembley: 17 October 1988

Why any of this matters when you buy

Beyond the history, this stock has real advantages. Double brick construction that has already stood for sixty years, generous room sizes by modern standards, small self-managed or low-cost strata schemes, and courtyards and outlooks that new builds rarely match. It is also the purest cycle stock in Perth, which cuts both ways, as we explain in forty years of Perth unit prices. Tired examples are the raw material of the renovation opportunity we cover in tired units, cheap rent, and the $150,000 difference. If you are looking to buy one, start with our First Home Buyers or Investment Buyers guides, or contact us to join our buyer database, because this stock often sells before it reaches the portals.

This article is general information and local history, not financial, legal, or tax advice. Building histories are as accurate as available records allow; corrections are welcome.