Terrace houses in Australia are mostly Victorian and Edwardian era terraced houses or replicas, almost always found in the older, inner city areas of the major cities, mainly Sydney and Melbourne. Terraced housing was introduced to Australia in the 19th century. Their architectural work was based on those in London and Paris, which had the style a century earlier.
Large numbers of terraced houses were built in the inner suburbs of large Australian cities, particularly Sydney and Melbourne, mainly between the 1850s and the 1890s. The beginning of this period coincided with a population boom caused by the Victorian and New South Wales Gold Rushes of the 1850s and finished with an economic depression in the early 1890s. Detached housing became the popular style of housing in Australia following Federation in 1901.
With artificial urban boundaries, new townhouse type developments—often nostalgically evoking old style terraces in a modern style—returned to the favour of local planning offices in many suburban areas. The modern suburban versions of this style of housing are referred to as "town houses". Terraced houses in Australian cities are highly sought after, and due to their proximity to the CBD of the major cities they are often expensive, much like terraces in New York City.
History and description
Terraced housing in Australia ranged from expensive middle-class houses of three, four and five storeys down to single-storey cottages in working-class suburbs. The most common building material used was brick, often covered with stucco.
Many terraces were built in the "Filigree" style, distinguished through heavy use of cast iron ornament, on balconies and verandahs, sometimes depicting native Australian flora. As many terraces were built speculatively, there are examples of "freestanding" and "semi-detached" terraces which were either intended to have adjoining terraces added.
In the first half of the twentieth-century, terraced houses in Australia fell into disfavour and many became considered slums. In the 1950s, urban renewal programs were often aimed at eradicating them entirely, not infrequently in favour of high-rise development. In recent decades, there has been a very strong revival of interest in terraced houses in inner-city areas, with many examples having been gentrified.
Origins
While the practice of building attached houses that share a common wall is not a new one – and can be seen in Pompeii and in walled Medieval cities in Europe – the combining of these separate dwellings into a single, unified row of houses is a modern concept. Early examples include Gothic ecclesiastical accommodation, such as Vicars' Close, Wells, and early European instances of town planning, such as the Place des Vosges, Paris. The canal houses of 16th-17th century Dutch and Belgian cities were often built uniformly to the property line. As with Australian terraces, frontages were narrow, allowing as many houses as possible to cram along the banks of the canal. When the first owner of the house had more houses built by the same carpenter or contractor and using the same or mirrored design these were called twin or triplet houses.