Four Monolyte houses, Torrensville (c.1920)

Location

11,13,15 & 17 Wainhouse St, Torrensville, SA

Construction Type

Monolyte method – cast in place concrete walls

History

Under the trade name ‘Monolyte’ Samuel Bowering Marchant built several houses around the Adelaide suburbs of Torrensville and Prospect. The four Torrensville houses, built about 1922, demonstrated the variety of house types available to a similar plan.

Subsequently his patented system was used experimentally for housing by the State Savings Bank of Victoria in 1924-25. Two of Marchant’s early houses survive at Balaklava, on the corner of Balaklava Rd and Higham Ave. Eleven of the state bank funded Victorian houses survive at the Concrete Housing Estate at Sunshine in the western suburbs of Melbourne.