Photo - Ethnic Homes and Gardens.

The Brick Veneer Home: Emblematic of Southern European Assimilation.

Name: Thomas Salzano

Student number: 18499394

Narratives of migration and assimilation typically focus on the impact that migrants have on
culture and economics. Often overlooked is the migrant house, which is emblematic of these
narratives of migration and assimilation. The migrant home is pivotal to our understanding of
assimilation and migrant cultural influence, though it is often overlooked in historical
discourse.

When World War two came to an end, Australia’s population was mostly of British origin.
After the second world war, Australia commenced a policy of ‘populate or perish’. The below
newspaper clipping, from 1948, highlights Australia’s shift in attitude towards migration, from
a time shortly after the second world war were Australia first encouraged migrants to come
to Australia.
Photo: Trove

The government believed it had to populate the country in order to be able to compete in an
increasingly globalised world. According to the National Museum of Australia, between 1945
and 1965, two million immigrants arrived in Australia. i These migrants were incentivised to
travel to Australia by a series of migration schemes. Though Australia initially wanted to
populate the nation with British people, quotas could not be met. Subsequently, Australia
offered migration schemes to people of Southern European descent. Discussing the Italian-
Australian migration schemes, Maschietti asserts “The two countries now had common
destinies in relation to migration; Australia needed people to help build the country, whilst
Italy (but also Greece and to a lesser extent other Mediterranean countries) encouraged its
impoverished rural population to the distant and foreign land. A relationship was born. ii

By 1981, more than a quarter of Preston’s population and almost a third of Northcote’s
population was born overseas, or places other than Britain and Ireland.iii By this time,
Reservoir had one of the biggest Italian populations in Australian living in the suburb, as did
Carlton.iv The way in which migrants built their homes and urbanised Australia is critical to
our understanding of immigration history today.

Although the migrant home is scarcely considered influential in shaping contemporary,

multicultural Australia, it is very important. Lozanovska believes “A whole new aesthetic
appeared on the scene of the Australian landscape: cafes, ethnic clubs for playing cards,
reception centres for wedding dances, and parks for picnic gatherings. The very idea of
urban culture, of walking down the street and stopping at a cafe grew from these
communities”.v Therefore, the migrant home was pivotal in shaping contemporary,
multicultural Australia because these homes promoted an urban lifestyle. Homes were built
that spread across wider Melbourne and beyond. These homes were dispersed, but
orientated around urban dwelling, such as shops, restaurants and cafes. Subsequently,
migrants needed place to meet each other. The dispersed nature of the homes transformed
Australian culture as we know it today, by promoting urban culture.

During the post-war era, Melbourne complied with the nationwide trend of expanding
outward, not upward, unlike other cities in Europe.vi Many migrants built houses or renovated
existing Victorian or weatherboard houses. Though what defines a ‘migrant house’ is
refutable, a typical migrant house often bares a few notable characteristics. Within scholarly
literature, three architectural elements are frequently cited as being indicative of a migrant
house.vii These three characteristics are the facade, the terrace and the backyard.viii The
facade often encompasses large arch openings, balustrade and is built from brick veneer. It
is often double story. The terrace is key, with most migrant houses including a balcony or
terrace protruding from the front. Often, the terrace will encompass precast concrete or
baroque balusters. A southern European migrant backyard would often include a vegetable
patch, contrasting to Anglo-Australian lawns. Contrariwise, non-migrant houses built in the
50s and 60s are slightly different. Stereotypically, they do not have front verandas and may
encompass floor plans that comprise two identical blocks. ix Anglo Australian homes of the
era have a front yard, usually with flower beds and a grass lawn. A notable difference
between migrant and non-migrant houses of the era is the colour of the bricks. The Anglo
Saxons built their houses with cream bricks, whereas the migrants used red bricks. The two
different variations of the brick-veneer house can be seen pictured below.

Photos - Mirjana Lozanovska

Australia was in a housing crisis in the post war era. The labour government of the second
world war negotiated a Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA), in which the
Commonwealth offered states low interest loans, primarily for rental to low income families x.
Many migrants stayed in these homes when they first arrived in Australia. However,
government involvement in the housing market was failing to meet development quotas
being set by the Commonwealth.xi This issue is topical in the newspaper clipping below,
which discusses building a brick veneer housing estate in Glenroy in order to create more
homes for migrants who have just arrived.

Photo: newspapers.com

Housing affordability and accessibility was integral to then Prime Minister Menzies’ vision for
Australia. He believed that every family should have their own home and every family in
Australia had the right to become a property owner. Subsequently, Menzies redirected
CSHA funding. In 1956, Menzies allowed Commonwealth funding to be made available for
home lending, as well as the introduction of national housing insurance.xii Recognition of
private choice became the ideal of the day. In light of Australia’s abundance of space and
immigration schemes, a housing boom began.

Not only are the houses today a reminder of Menzies policy, they are also a reminder of
house successful migrants were in assimilating within Australia. Irving and Reynolds explain
that the migrant house was actually intent on distinguishing itself from its non-migrant
counterpart.xiii Accordingly, the migrant house endeavoured to say two things, “the fact that
they had ‘made’ it in a new country and a recollection of the culture from which they had
come”.xiv Migrant homes are often double story, a luxury that was not available to migrants in
urban European cities. The houses often included distinguishing features that paid homage
to their home country, such as the arches in house in the image below. The below photo of
my grandfather and my father is a good example of this. My grandfather built a home in
reservoir and sent this picture back to his family in Italy. They would have been envious of
the space that he had, no doubt. He sent this picture back to demonstrate how he had
‘made’ it within Australia, with his son and his big new home.

Picture: Thomas Salzano

As such, the migrant home today is one of the few tangible things surviving today that is
emblematic of successful migration narratives and assimilation. These houses are scattered
everywhere across the northern suburbs especially but also in wider Melbourne and across
Australia. Their presence today is a reminder of the Australian dream to be a property owner
and the success the country had in encouraging migrants to travel here after the second
world war. Their presence is symbolic of Robert Menzies promise that you could buy a home
if you came to Australia.xv

The migrant style of architecture has long been the subject of unjustified derision.xvi Take the
resistance to the ‘mediterranisation’ in Earlwood, for example. Earlwood is a suburb in South
West Sydney. Anglo community members of this suburb resisted hybrid and new styles of
architecture being introduced to the community, in particular that people of Mediterranean
origin.xvii Older residents within the area believed the style was ‘inappropriate’ and
‘unsympathetic’ to the cultural heritage of the area. xviii cement-rendering the brick facade,
removal of leadlight windows as well as the addition of balustrades allegedly undermine the
cultural integrity of the area. Residents went as far as to form an action group called REVUE
(Residents Environmental Vision for Undercliffe and Earlwood) to counteract the
developments in the area that were not favourable to them.xix The animosity towards this
style of architecture was enhanced by John Howard, Australia’s Prime Minister of the day. In
public forum over the years, Howard has spoke of the ‘egalitarian innocence’ he had growing
up in Earlwood.xx He regularly romanticised his childhood growing up in Earlwood, a suburb
of sameness, were Australians ‘knew their place’.xxi Howard was resentful of the impact of
multiculturalism on the area. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald read:

“A jarring, attractive and totally incomprehensible result of multiculturalism for John Howard
is the way the charming 1920s homes of his childhood were previously disfigured with the
help of aluminium windows and cement”.

These aluminium windows and cement were also lamented in Melbourne. Some heritage
purists go as far to say this brick Veneer house of the 1960s are a form of cultural
vandalism. xxii Brick veneer home’s have long been criticised for being ugly, glary and
simplistic. Concrete front yards have long been ridiculed for lacking grass and generally
being ugly. However, the brick veneer is now an iconic, glorious piece of Australian
architectural history, widely loved by the community and celebrated today. The brick veneer
home is an iconic part of Melbourne and the way it has assimilated into Australian urban
architecture is synonymous with how Italian migrants assimilated within Australia. The
facebook page Ethnic Homes and Gardens affirms how the style is celebrated today.

The facebook page is one in which people can send photos into the administrators to be
published. Generally, people send in Brick Veneer, Southern European style homes. The
Administrator will usually post the photo with a comical, satirical caption, such as the below:

As such, the page is especially interesting in light of this public history because it sheds light
on the wider community's attitude towards this style of home. Though some posts are
notably satirical, the comment section is filled with people making nostalgic comments about
the homes that their parents and grandparents built. The page is a forum for people to bring
stories of their childhoods together, with people regularly using the comment section to
reveal nostalgic stories of migration and assimilation within. This page on Facebook page
demonstrates how the brick veneer home is emblematic of assimilation and the success of
post war migration to Australia.
Pictures - Ethnic Homes and Gardens Facebook Page

Benedict Anderson argued the nation is an ‘imagined community’, a geographically and

culturally dispersed entity upheld by a collection of narratives and identities.xxiii These homes,
scattered around Australia are emblematic of narratives and identities of Southern European
Migrants who came to Australia after the second world war. As such, these homes are
pivotal to our understanding of immigration history in contemporary Australia.

Thomas Salzano

18499394
Bibliography

Photos

Images from newspaper articles are out of copyright:

<https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/249760932?searchTerm=MIGRANT%20SETTLE
%20BRICK%20HOME&searchLimits=l-state=Victoria|||l-category=Article|||l-australian=y|||l-
illustrated=true>

<https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3889320/the_age/>

Image of my father is from my family. Permission granted from family to use (22/10/19)

Permission granted from ‘Ethnic Homes and Garden’s’ Administrators (21/10/19)

Lozanovska, Mirjana. Migrant Housing : Architecture, Dwelling, Migration, Routledge, 2019,

p71, 716

Secondary Sources

Allon, Fiona (2002) Translated spaces/translated identities: The production of place, culture and
memory in an Australian suburb, Journal of Australian Studies, 26:72, 97

Darebin City Council, City of Darebin Heritage Study, Draft Thematic Environmental History, Stage 2
report, August 2008.

Davison, Graeme and Dingle, Tony “The View from the Ming Wing” The Cream Brick Frontier,
Histories of Australian Suburbia (Clayton, Victoria, Monash Publications in History, 1995) p61.

Lozanovska, Mirjana. Migrant Housing : Architecture, Dwelling, Migration, Routledge, 2019, p323.

Lozanovska, M., Levin, I., Gantala, M. V. (2013), Is the migrant house in Australia an Australian
vernacular architecture? Traditional Settlement and Dwellings Review, XXIV:II, pp. 66

Maschietti, Bruno ‘Italy and Australia, a relationship made and unmade by immigration’ Australian
Journal of of International Affairs, Vol 6.9 (2015) p 344.

National Museum of Australia, ‘Postwar immigration Drive’ nma.gov,

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/postwar-immigration-drive accessed 13/010/19.

Strangio, Paul, The pivot of Power, Australian Prime Ministers and Political Leadership, 1949-2016,
(Melbourne University Press, Melbourne) p61
Willingham, A 2004, ‘Immigrant transformations: the Mediterranean idiom’, in Yule, p. 473

i National Museum of Australia, ‘Postwar immigration Drive’ nma.gov,

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/postwar-immigration-drive accessed 13/010/19.
ii Bruno Maschietti ‘Italy and Australia, a relationship made and unmade by immigration’ Australian
Journal of of International Affairs, Vol 6.9 (2015) p 344.
iii Darebin City Council, City of Darebin Heritage Study, Draft Thematic Environmental History, Stage
2 report, August 2008.
iv Ibid.
v Mirjana Lozanovska,. Migrant Housing : Architecture, Dwelling, Migration, Routledge, 2019, p323.
vi M., Lozanovska Levin, I., Gantala, M. V. (2013), Is the migrant house in Australia an Australian
vernacular architecture? Traditional Settlement and Dwellings Review, XXIV:II, pp. 66
vii ibid.
viii Ibid.
ix ibid, p69.
x Paul trangio, The pivot of Power, Australian Prime Ministers and Political Leadership, 1949-2016,
(Melbourne University Press, Melbourne) p61
xi Ibid.
xii Ibid.
xiii Fiona Allon (2002) Translated spaces/translated identities: The production of place, culture and
memory in an Australian suburb, Journal of Australian Studies, 26:72, 97
xiv Davison, Graeme and Dingle, Tony “The View from the Ming Wing” The Cream Brick Frontier,
Histories of Australian Suburbia (Clayton, Victoria, Monash Publications in History, 1995) p61.
xv Photinopolous, Chris, Demolishing History, abc, 29 September 2010
<https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-08-04/29554> accessed 12/10/19.
xvi Willingham, A 2004, ‘Immigrant transformations: the Mediterranean idiom’, in Yule, p. 473
xvii Fiona Allon (2002) Translated spaces/translated identities: The production of place, culture and
memory in an Australian suburb, Journal of Australian Studies, 26:72, 97
xviii M. Lozanovska, Levin, I., Gantala, M. V. (2013), Is the migrant house in Australia an Australian
vernacular architecture? Traditional Settlement and Dwellings Review, XXIV:II, pp. 66
xix Fiona Allon (2002) Translated spaces/translated identities: The production of place, culture and
memory in an Australian suburb, Journal of Australian Studies, 26:72, 97
xx Ibid.
xxi ibid.
xxii Photinopolous, Chris, Demolishing History, abc, 29 September 2010
<https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-08-04/29554> accessed 12/10/19.
xxiii Fiona Allon (2002) Translated spaces/translated identities: The production of place, culture and
memory in an Australian suburb, Journal of Australian Studies, 26:72, 97