‘This is home’: The beautiful apartment buildings Leah had her heart set on

When Leah Grinter was hunting for an apartment to buy, it was art deco that had her heart.

She is one of the growing number of Melbourne buyers enamoured by the restrained elegance and generous proportions of the city’s suburban art deco apartments.

The hallmark architectural style of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, which shaped Melbourne’s earliest days of density living and social renewal after the Great Depression, is experiencing a renaissance.

Among Melbourne buyers, “art deco” was the second-most searched keyword on Domain.com.au last year, trumped only by “pool”, and up from eighth place in 2023.

For Grinter, who bought in Elwood, art deco is the gold standard for apartments, about a century since their construction.

“They have bigger bedrooms, good-sized living areas and decent kitchens,” the marketing director says.

“Art deco seems to encapsulate all of that.

“I am a big cook and the idea of having a galley kitchen, like you find in the modern builds, just did not appeal.

“These are smaller blocks with fewer owners and lower body corporate fees.

Grinter says her art deco apartment felt like home as soon as she saw it.Credit: Chris Hopkins

“And I think they are beautiful buildings. I had my heart set on art deco and it took a while to find. When I walked in the door, I thought, ‘This is home’.”

Art deco apartments were among Melbourne’s first apartments.

In lively, city-edge suburbs, from the bayside’s Elwood and St Kilda, to the east, including South Yarra and Toorak, they were a step up from the inner-city rooming houses of the early 1900s and geared towards a better standard of living.

Art deco is shorthand for desirable attributes, says Eliza Owen, head of residential research at CoreLogic.

“When you talk to people looking for art deco, it is a code or signifier of quality, resilience and being enjoyable to live in,” she says.

Those are superlatives that a spurt of mass-produced apartments in the past decade have fallen short of.

An off-the-plan apartment frenzy in the 2010s catered to investors, and these units’ abundance, compact features and depreciation benefits were not tailored to owner occupiers.

CoreLogic research identified 14 Melbourne suburbs with an influx of new apartments where median prices dipped between 17.2 to 4.2 per cent below their 2017 and 2018 peaks.

In the City of Melbourne local government area, 48.4 per cent of all units that sold in the December quarter traded at a loss, CoreLogic found.

“Because the nature of development was geared towards attracting investor interest, I think there was a bit of a deterioration in the quality and size of apartments to maximise the financial outcome for the developer and the investor,” Owen says. Examples of reduced quality include borrowed light in bedrooms, tight kitchens and no outdoor areas.

However, art deco is distinguished by thoughtful details, including glamorous but functional curves, entry foyers and corner windows.

Angie Zigomanis, head of data and insights at Quantify Strategic Insights, said art deco apartments were built in the image of houses – solid brick and made to last.

They are seen as appealing alternatives to a house, in what are now suburbs with seven-figure medians.

“With an art deco apartment, you know it has stood the test of time, but buying off-the-plan has risks, unless you have a reputable builder who is going to come back and fix defects,” Zigomanis says.

“There have been stories about all sorts of apartment buildings having issues. Even the best quality ones and the highest-end ones.”

Structural problems with modern builds come to light often due to the developer’s defect liability period, Zigomanis says, which can lead to a public spat.

Art deco is not perfect, but apartment owners are more likely to go through the rigmarole in private, which helps the reputation as unbreakable.

Interior designer and sustainable design consultant Megan Norgate, director of studio Brand New Eco, has transformed art deco properties for clients.

Coveted features include ornamental stained-glass that play with light, large windows relative to room size, and curves, which create a flow between rooms, and are a precursor to open plan.

The period translates well to modern life, Norgate says.

“It is easier to draw a contemporary experience out of an art deco building than it is, say, from an Edwardian or a Victorian, which had a formal programming of rooms, higher ceilings and smaller windows,” Norgate says.

“In smaller spaces, curves can be used to increase the circulation and remove any choke points between one space and another. That is something that started to happen during the art deco period, and is a useful spatial resolution tool.”

Norgate says art deco apartment renovations often reconfigure kitchens to allow for new appliances, improve thermal efficiency, upgrade old fireplaces and add storage.

“We would all love to see the proportions, quality of finish and intricate detail that you find in art deco apartments in newer builds, but with rising building costs, it is becoming harder to achieve that,” she says.

Agent Lauchlan Waterfield, of Belle Property, sells art deco apartments in South Yarra, Prahran, Armadale and Toorak.

He says first home buyers are nudged towards art deco by parents who are nostalgic but also recall their solidity and substance.

“Sometimes there are people at inspections just wanting a stickybeak, and they tell you, ‘I’ve always wanted to go through this building, it is so magnificent. I wanted to window shop more than purchase’,” Waterfield says.

Grinter’s investment in her apartment is emotional as well as financial.

Soon after moving in, a lady walked past the building and paused to recount a memory.

“She said, ‘I used to live there, in the one above, it was all Polish immigrants and we had a lot of fun – we were a community’,” Grinter says.

“I thought, ‘That is why these apartments feel so good’. There is so much history in the walls.”