Chateau Nous is a heritage-listed villa at 1 Rupert Terrace, Ascot, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Douglas Francis and Woodcraft Roberts. It was built from to 1940s. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
History
Chateau Nous is a two-storeyed rendered masonry house with a flat sheet metal roof concealed behind a parapet wall. An earlier house on the site was relocated in 1937 when the property was purchased by Brisbane dentist George Stewart and his wife Eileen.
They employed architect Douglas Francis Woodcraft Roberts to design the building. Roberts had travelled, worked and studied in the United States and designed the building from a Functionalist approach. His design was considered ultra modern for Brisbane in 1938, and incorporated many of the latest architectural trends and materials with a strong Art Deco influence to the interiors.
The house was noted for its all electric kitchen with appliances arranged in one line, and an electric dumb waiter servicing an upstairs breakfast room. The Stewarts employed four full-time staff; two maids, a nurse and a gardener.
Additions to the building started within two years of its completion, with the enclosure of the dining room, and of the balcony over the servants quarters for a billiard room. During the Second World War a reinforced concrete air raid shelter, which the Stewarts shared with their neighbours, was constructed.
After Dr Stewarts death in 1962 the building was rented until Brisbane architect Noel Robinson purchased it in 1979. An inground swimming pool was added and in 1985 an adjoining block of land was purchased. The following year a large extension in keeping with the architecture of the building and consisting of a family room, remodelled kitchen, terrace, garage, master bedroom and ensuite was added to the north, as well as a grass tennis court.
Description
This two-storeyed rendered masonry house, with a flat sheet metal roof concealed behind a parapet wall, sits on a level southeast corner site in Ascot. The building shows a strong Functionalist approach in its design, with architectural and decorative elements including brick banding, which is now painted over, curved corner walls and windows, glass bricks and contrasting vertical and horizontal elements.
The entrance is on the south, recessed below a flat concrete awning supported by large concrete brackets. Directly above is a projecting angled alcove, with windows to the first floor, which culminates at the parapet. The building has terracotta tiled roofdecks with solid upstands and metal tubular railings to the southeast and northwest. The north side of the building sits on a face brick base with a dining terrace on the northeast, below the main bedroom, which overlooks the lawn tennis court to the north. The entrance to the subfloor air-raid shelter is located on the east below a projecting rounded pediment.
The building has metal framed casement windows, some of which have geometric leadlight panels with some windows set in curved walls. French doors, of both metal and timber frames, open onto decks which are shaded by recent metal framed canvas awnings. Awnings also shade windows to the west on the first floor. A recent timber framed carport with brick bases is attached to the western face, and trellises built in the same style are located at the south entry and at the north overlooking the tennis court.
Internally, walls are plastered and most rooms have decorative plaster ceilings. An Art Deco influence is evident with a nautical design, consisting of three concentric circles with intersecting rippled or straight lines, which is used in the wrought iron stair railing and repeated in the leadlight French doors opening off the foyer, is outlined in brass strips in the main bathroom's aggregate floor and is depicted on the chrome hood of the fireplace.
The foyer has a marble tiled floor which continues into the lounge and dining rooms and borders the carpeted stair. The foyer and stair walls are panelled with timber veneer to first floor height and the door into the kitchen has a glass porthole. The entrance door has a sandblasted panel with the inscription CHATEAU NOUS, and all doors and architraves are stained timber with chrome door hardware.