Recognising heritage housing styles in Brisbane
Have you ever noticed the beauty and diversity of Brisbane’s historical houses? The Brisbane City Councils website offers a number of excellent resources for information on heritage style homes and their history in the Brisbane City Council area.
Brisbane character houses represent a wide variety of styles spanning more than a century and reflect the visual quality of suburban Brisbane.
These guidelines provide a historic framework and some examples of common housing styles in local neighbourhoods of Brisbane’s older suburbs. Source: Brisbane City Council
Late Colonial period 1870s-1880s
M-roof cottage
Features of the M-roof Cottage include:
- Twin, side to side ridge roofs
- A separate veranda roof
- Simple timber dowel balustrade
- Is low-set on stumps
- Chamfer board cladding
- Simple picket fence
Pyramid roof
Features of the pyramid style roof cottage include:
- Decorated galvanized ridge ventilators
- Pyramidal roof
- Separate veranda roof
- Roll-down blinds
- Lattice front doors
- Chamfer board cladding
- Simple picket fence
- Is low-set on stumps
- can have simple hoods over side windows
Short-ridge roof with encircling verandahs
The features of the Short-ridge roof with encircling verandas (Queenslander style) include:
- Main pyramid roof with separate roof over verandah
- Fretwork pediment over entry
- Verandah post decoration of capital and astragal styling
- Dowel balustrades
- Symetrical stairs
- Simple picket fence
Federation period 1890s-1910s
Bungalow
Features of a Bungalow include:
- Integrated veranda and main roofs
- Chamfer board wall cladding
- Timber supported window hood
- Dowel balustrades
- Straight-run stair handrails
Asymmetrical bungalow
Features of an Asymmetrical bungalow include:
- Glazed brickwork, quoining on corners
- Paired posts, tapering corner chamfers
- Dowel balustrades
- Brick piers
- Gable finial
- Fretwork gable decoration
- Generous hoods over outer windows
Queen Anne
The features of Queen Anne include:
- steep pitched roofs
- simple capped chimney stack
- decorated gables, open battens
- Bay windows
- Chamfer wall cladding
- Dowel veranda balustrading
- Brick fence piers
- Finials on roofs
Interwar period 1920s-1930s
Porch-and-gable
The Porch and Gable housing style includes features such as:
- Low pitched roof, wide eaves, shaped ends to barge boards, battened gable end walls
- Lead light casement bay with flat roof over, shingle decoration below sill level
- Shaped sub-floor batten screens
- Stepped stair balustrade
- Asymmetrical entrance veranda porch
- Also art nou-veau influenced veranda post brackets
Multi-gable
The Multi-gable style housing includes features such as:
- Low roof pitch, wide eaves
- Paired posts on piers, in this case piers are weatherboard and house is highset
- Decorative cut barge board ends and rafter ends exposed
- Batten balustrades
- Decoratively shaped sub-floor batten screens
- Double top rail, battened timber fence
- Decorated gables
- asymmetrical front
Californian bungalow
Features of a Californian bungalow include:
- Corrugated iron roof low pitch with wide eaves
- Decorative gable beams
- Battened gable end walls
- Battened balustrade heavy section handrail
- Lowset
- Decoratively shaped barge board ends
The Brisbane City Council website has many more resources available for research into heritage home styles in the Brisbane area. They also offer the above information with a few more house styles and types as a word document for you to download. Find more here.
