Wylde Street apartment

Bolot was born in the Crimea (Russia) but came to Australia as a child in 1911 and studied architecture in Queensland. The building was completed in late 1951 and was one of six apartment blocks developed by a building society called Urban Cooperative Multi-Home Units. Bolot designed three of the six but his Wylde Street building was exceptional in its form, a creative design response to an unusual triangular shaped site so that the apartments form a prominent curve to Macleay Street with frontages to St Neots Avenue and Wylde Street. Bolot created a floor plan that maximised each apartment’s aspect and spaciousness. Kitchens and bathrooms were grouped on the southern side while living rooms and bedrooms faced the almost entirely glazed north side.

When the building was completed in 1951 Mr John G. Davis (1906-2008) the man responsible for the development, took up occupancy of the penthouse apartment and lived there until his death (although spending his winters in Cairns in far north Queensland). The apartment was photographed with Mr Davis in residence, aged 97.

17 Wylde Street is listed in the Australian Institute of Architects’ register of nationally significant Twentieth Century Architecture. It is also on the Register of the National Estate.

Photographer: Ross Heathcote

Date Photographed: February 2003

Original image format: transparency film: 6x6cms; 35mm mounted slides

Copyright: Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Photograph © Ross Heathcote

Further reading: “Tenant-ownership comes to Sydney” in Building & Engineering, September 1951 pp.20-22

Architecture, January-March 1952 pp.30-32

Caroline Butler-Bowdon and Charles Pickett, Homes in the sky: apartment living in Australia, Miegunyah Press, Carlton, Vic., 2007, pp.108-109