Italianate Style in Australia
See also: Australian residential architectural styles#ItalianateThe Italianate style proved to be immensely popular in Australia as a domestic style. The architect William Wardell designed Government House in Melbourne — now the official residence of the Governor of Victoria — as an example of his "newly discovered love for Italianate, Palladian and Venetian architecture." Cream-colored, with many Palladian features; except for its machicolated signorial tower that Wardell crowned with a belvedere—it would not be out of place among the unified streets and squares in Thomas Cubitt's Belgravia, London.
The hipped roof is concealed by a balustraded parapet. The principal block is flanked by two lower asymmetrical secondary wings that contribute picturesque massing, best appreciated from an angled view. The larger of these being divided from the principal block by the belvedere tower. The smaller, the ballroom block, is entered through a columned porte-cochere designed as a single storey prostyle portico.
The Italianate style of architecture continued to be built in outposts of the British Empire long after it had ceased to be in fashion in Britain itself. The Railway station of Albury, New South Wales, completed in 1881, is an example of this further evolution of the style.
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