SA’s most spectacular art deco house
When former Labor candidate for Adelaide David O’Loughlin and his wife Alison bought their spectacular art deco house in Prospect, they had no idea just how exceptional it was.
After living in it for a year, the couple had plans to make significant renovations to the house, but were stopped in their tracks when, on a whim, they attended a global conference of art deco experts and enthusiasts in Melbourne.
“We showed them our photos [of the house],” David recalls, “and people from around the world looked at them and said: ‘Whose house is this?’.”
As it turned out, they had bought one of the finest art deco homes in South Australia.
It had been the personal home of architect Christopher A Smith, who was responsible for some of the state’s iconic landmarks, including the Capri and Chelsea theatres.
The house is now state heritage-listed inside and out.
Smith had no formal training as an architect, but learnt on the job to become a prolific art deco pioneer for the state, specialising in picture theatres, town halls – including those in Clare and Peterborough – and municipal chambers.
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The two-storey house now owned by the O’Loughlins served as Smith’s home, practice and showroom.
Originally, the house had only low walls and no trees, making it a monolithic advertisement for Smith’s skill.
The foyer at the front of the home features cinema-style terrazzo flooring with the Ozone theatre emblem included, as a nod to a good client. The terrazzo is so complicated that no living tradesperson has yet been found with the skills to work on it.
The exterior of the room has a sweeping, bowed front with horizontal lines for added … speed. The “streamline” style complemented the fashionable automobiles, trains and ships of the day, with broad, horizontal lines and a curvaceous form.
Above the foyer’s three wide windows is an imposing balcony that hints at a ship’s bridge. It features Smith’s trademark curved fin feature.
Back inside the house, every room besides one has windows on two walls, flooding the house with natural light.
Each room also features built-in cupboards and dressers designed by the architect.
The living room – with its spectacular cornices and massive art deco, cinema-style, stepped light feature – is a tapestry of colour and texture. It is furnished it with period furniture and modern art.
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On the wall above the fireplace is an art deco plaster feature identical to that which can be seen in the Capri Theatre.
The dining room shows off Smith’s understanding of the paradox of the art deco style. The genre aimed to be ultra-modern – to eschew the “old” Victorian and Tudor styles proliferating at the time – but it also took inspiration from sources far older than its opposing contemporaries.
This small but elaborate room draws from Aztec and Egyptian forms, which exploded onto the design scene with the discovery of Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 and the declaration of the Aztec Ruins as a US National Monument in 1923. Gold-painted, triple-step, curved cornices give way to deep purple walls and ceiling, with a stunning golden ceiling feature.
The nearly seamless joinery around the room and across the house is extraordinary: triple-fluted oak architraves follow into skirting boards and back up on every wall.
The kitchen blends eras, with its booth seating reminiscent of a ’60s US diner. Black handles on the built-in oak cupboards are askew, in the zig-zag style. The previous owner of the house installed a modern, stainless-steel kitchen bench with built-in appliances.
Climbing the stairs, you are surrounded by the modern art which occupied the creative world just before the art deco craze struck.
The third small bedroom upstairs is indicative of Smith’s intention for the house to be a “show-pony”.
“This ceiling is just completely over-the-top for a third small bedroom,” Alison says, chuckling.
The ceiling rose in the second room is of an earlier, art nouveau style. It looks like a stylised silver football oval with abstract flower shapes at every corner.
“You notice, it’s not as hard-edge geometric,” David explains.
The master bedroom’s built-in wardrobes, curve-fronted dresser, bedside cupboards and walk-in robe are each a testament to Smith’s earlier career as a carpenter. It even had a built-in bed, originally.
A two-levelled coffer ceiling in the bedroom is the same ceiling rose as in the dining room – the only example of such repetition in the house.
The rarest feature of the house is the original-condition upstairs bathroom, with its castellated skirting, five-colour terrazzo flooring, sunrise-themed wall vents and zig-zag freeze tiling with oranges and browns which foreshadow design themes that would later grace the ’70s.
Living in a house like this does come with its downsides – notably, problems with plumbing and electricity which haunt all old houses – but for David and Alison, it’s hard to understate the joy that comes from living in a work of art.
