Sydney Art Deco Heritage

The Parker Pen Factory was located in the Art Deco style building at 159-163 Cleveland Street in Redfern. In the Darlington Conservation Area report (CA17) the façade of this old factory "... also makes a contribution to the streetscape of Cleveland street as a remnant Interwar element, and is considered worthy of retention". Hopefully it is retained if the Major Project Application which has been lodged with the Department of Planning for a mixed commercial & residential development goes ahead. Facade detail A redevelopment of the site was proposed in 2011. "The proposal was for a 5-storey, 461 bed student accommodation facility with ground floor communal recreation spaces organised around a large landscaped courtyard. The building is entered off the corner of Cleveland and Abercrombie Street with student lounge, meeting and communal laundry located along Cleveland Street and accessed directly of the courtyard". Part of the proposal was that the C...

Also known as the Vita-Weat building this heritage landmark located at 476 Parramatta Road in Ashfield was the Peek Frean Biscuit factory from 1935 to 1975. Vita-Weat crispbreads were first produced by Peek Frean in the UK and were the foundation product when the biscuit company opened its Australian subsidiary at a factory in Camperdown in 1932. At that time, Australia was an important export market for Peek Frean and setting up a manufacturing operation here allowed them to avoid import tariffs. Vita-Weat was their best-known product at the time. The land where the factory now stands belonged to the Ashfield Children’s Home. They sold the northern portion of the land fronting Parramatta Road on the 6th of October 1935 to Peak Freans (Australia) Ltd Biscuit Manufacturers, who constructed a biscuit factory on the site. This land had never been developed. The company engaged well-known Sydney architects Ross & Rowe to design their factory which opened in 1936. The building w...