HARLEY is a rare suite of apartments in a blonde brick boutique block at 1 Birtley Place, Elizabeth Bay. Set on a quiet corner it can easily be missed by residents as they rush to and from nearby buses and trains to work and nearby pocket parks such as McElhone Reserve and Rushcutters Bay Park.

Its slightly recessed porch shades entrances to its eleven apartments with the top floor apartment enjoying a handsome outdoor patio.

It is unusual because it incorporates a full-width plaster frieze above the chrome and gloss-black doors and rare, coloured panels in the entrance porch. It was built in the late 1930 in the Art Déco “style”, an avant-garde movement of the period. Art Déco, a term coined retrospectively only in the 1960s, revelled in the shock of the new. It used new materials such a industrial, expensive electro-plated chrome for exterior and interiors. Interior materials also included rare, exotic finishes such as shagreen (shark or stingray skin).

Art Déco design spread world-wide after the famous Parisian 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. Its influence was seen and felt everywhere in design, jazz, cars, bars, ships, men’s and women’s fashion, skyscrapers, vases, even household cutlery.

Harley’s entrance porch panels are believed to be rare Vitrolite, a special pigmented coloured glass which uses a process first developed in the United States in 1900. The glass is very strong, with a compressive strength about 40 percent greater than marble. When affixed to another surface such as exteriors of buildings one side of the slab was grooved before the glass hardened. The exposed side of the Vitrolite was flame polished leaving it highly reflective and brilliantine.
It is very rare to find intact structural glass surviving in this sort of application in Sydney, let alone three different colours together.

The building makes a positive contribution to its streetscape and is part of the interesting electric nature of the area.

By Andrew Woodhouse Director, Heritage Solutions

Image: Harley, a rare façade contributing to the streetscape