27-33 Fuller St, Parkside: four demonstration houses built by the Duplex Building Block Company (c.1911)

Location

27-33 Fuller St, Parkside, SA

Construction Type

Concrete beams set on piers with walls constructed of pre-cast slabs stood up as blocks and a concrete ring beam poured at ceiling level.

History

In 1911 the newly formed ‘Duplex Building Block Company’ built four six-room houses on Robsart St in the Adelaide suburb of Parkside as a demonstration of their new concrete house building system. The original Robsart St houses do not appear to have survived but the company also built four identical houses nearby on Fuller Street. No. 29 is in almost original condition.

The structure is an early form of structural pre-cast panels and the construction method was described in newspaper reports as consisting:

throughout of cement concrete and was supported on piers, 3 ft. centres or less, which, according to the nature of the subsoil of the particular locality, were taken down to a solid bed, and surmounted with a continuous girder or plate reinforced with steel rods, which formed the setoff or bearing internally for floor joists.

The superstructure was composed of coupled cement concrete ribbed slabs 8 ft. long by about 2 ft. high with external and internal plates 2in thickness (reinforced with horizontal and vertical steel rods), forming a hollow wall, which were again strengthened- with cement concrete columns (starting from the floor plate – and finishing at the ceiling level), reinforced with vertical steel rods at all external angles, door and window openings, and elsewhere externally not less than 3 ft. 6 in. centres.

The internal walls were of similar construction, but the slabs were less in thickness and reinforced at all door openings.
“CHEAPER HOUSES.” Daily Herald (Adelaide, SA : 1910 – 1924) 10 October 1911: 6. Web. 4 Jul 2020 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article105193731>

The Duplex Building Block Company, of which the partners were Herbert Dennis, Charles Gilbert Sheppard and Robert Otto Watts, became insolvent in 1913 and the partnership ended acrimoniously.

In 1924, following his move to the railway town of Peterborough in South Australia’s mid-north, Herbert Dennis launched the Economic Duplex Building Block Company and recommenced the use of the method, building railway housing in Peterborough and Tailem Bend.