Victoria Towers, 145 Victoria Street, Potts Point, dominates this southern section of Victoria Street on its western side

It incorporates 53 apartments, a ground floor cafe and offices within its nine-level twin towers.

The dramatic suspended accordion-style entrance canopy adds to its drama. Each level has recessed balconies with the whole facade cross-banded in light-coloured freckled brick. It was designed by Henry Kurzer and built 1966-1972.

Kurzer was born in Lwow, Poland, and emigrated to Australia in 1938, aged 18, one year before World War II began. Lwow was the subject of a bloody four-way tussle between Russia, Germany, Poland and the Ukraine.

Here in Sydney he earned a diploma in architecture from the Sydney Technical College and was registered as an architect  1946. Kurzer worked for the architectural division of the Housing Commission of NSW for two years (1946-48) before branching out on his own. In the 1950s, he designed a number of cafe and restaurant interiors. Probably Kurzer’s best known design was for the Latin Quarter cafe and restaurant at 250 Pitt Street, Sydney (1958), which included a dramatic mural by fellow Pole, Marion Pretzel, and fittings and furniture made by P E Kafka Modern Exclusive Furniture and M Gerstl Cabinet Works.

Kurzer was based in Sydney’s eastern suburbs but undertook work throughout the city. He worked in partnership with Polish architect Henry Haber from 1964 until the mid-1970s. Some of Kurzer’s later projects included the council chambers for the Municipality of Waverley, Waverley (1962); the Victoria Towers apartments at 145–53 Victoria Street, Potts Point; the Hakoah Club, Bondi; and numerous B’nai B’rith retirement villages and Bulkara Investments shopping centres according to the family archives of. Edie and Garry Kurzer.

His business offices were:

Nov 1949-Nov 1954: 25a Pitt Street Sydney

Nov 1955-May 1962: 149 Castlereagh Street Sydney
1963-Nov 1979: 79 Old South Head Road Bondi Junction (with Henry Haber)
1980-1985: 125 Bourke Street Woolloomooloo

post-1985: 3/1a Conway Avenue Rose Bay [(office and home)

The Latin Cafe was an uber-trendy Cabaret Restaurant and Espresso Bar, a novelty for Sydney in 1958. It had floor shows nightly and was one of the businesses owned and operated by the colourful Sydney identities, Sammy Lee and Reg Boom. The pair also opened the Kings Cross icon “Les Girls” in the 1960s. Infamously, the Latin Quarter was also where criminal Ray ‘Ducky’ O’Connor was shot by Lennie McPherson amongst patrons and in front of two Detectives on the 28th of May, 1967. It was located in The National Building, an eleven-storey building built in 1926.

His major apartment block at 145 Victoria Street is part of a living legacy of post-war mid-century works now gaining a wider appreciation for their style.

by Andrew Woodhouse

Heritage Solutions