Hamersley Road Group Heritage Area

Statement of Significance

The Hamersley Road Group heritage area is of cultural heritage significance within the City of Subiaco for the following reasons:
Aesthetic Value
• As an aesthetically pleasing streetscape with a strong identifiable character, featuring an avenue of mature street trees, which frame views of the largely intact Federation and Interwar residences;
• For its collection of many good, representative examples of Federation and Inter War cottages and villas which collectively illustrate a range and evolution of detailing between the 1890s and the 1940s; and
• For the cohesive streetscape created by a limited palette of materials and styles.
Historic Value
• As a representative collection of houses that illustrate the scale and standard of housing for the homes of unskilled workers to semi-professional and tradespeople, in the early twentieth century;
• For the evidence it provides about the manner in which the residences of semi-professional and tradespeople existed alongside the residences of working people and employees;
• For its association with the subdivision and rapid settlement of the area from the 1890s to the 1920s which demonstrates the rapid change of the district in the gold boom period and shortly thereafter; and
• For illustrating the major impact of the construction of the nearby Daglish Railway Station in 1922-24 on the consolidation of the western part of Subiaco.
Social Value
• Development within the area provides a contrast with the more elevated areas towards Kings Park (which attracted a more mixed development that included a significant number of larger villas suitable for the families of merchants, senior civil servants and professional men) and with the more low-lying areas towards the northern side of the suburb (which included a higher proportion of cottages occupied by the families of labourers and other low-skilled workers).