ABOUT

Franconia: the epitome of Potts Point history and style

Distinctive, elegant and captivating, Franconia is one of the most admired buildings in Potts Point and an architectural landmark inspired by New York’s Art Deco structures.

The company-title apartment complex, situated opposite the El Alamein Fountain on vibrant Macleay Street, was designed by Australian architect Walter Leslie Nielsen in 1928.

The couple who commissioned and named the building are thought to have honeymooned on the RMS Franconia, of the Cunard Line.

The building features a majestic, double-gated street entrance and an impressive timber-panelled foyer with an impeccably accurate clock and ribbed vaults reminiscent of a gothic cathedral. Two lifts carry residents up to each of 9 storeys and on to sunny rooftop terraces that offer breathtaking views over Sydney, from The Heads to the Harbour Bridge.

The ‘residential flats’ at 123–125 Macleay Street welcomed their first residents in late 1929 or 1930. Rents started at £4 per week, and occupants enjoyed ‘central heating, refrigerators, hot water service, sound-proof floors, [and] incinerators’. (The hot water supply depended on the live-in caretaker waking multiple times through the night to shovel coal into the basement boiler.[i])

Many of the apartments have been renovated over the years, some retaining the original interior features and others making changes sympathetic to Franconia’s history. In the late 1990s the building received an interior fire compliance upgrade at the expert hands of Iain Halliday, director of renowned Sydney architectural and interior design practice Burley Katon Halliday.

Franconia is listed in the Australian Institute of Architects’ Register of Significant Buildings in New South Wales.

 

Architectural features

  • Franconia’s façade displays hallmarks of Neo-Gothic architectural style: a dramatic gated entrance, carved gargoyles above wrought iron lanterns, coats of arms and intricate detailing, leadlight and brass doors.

  • Other Neo-Gothic signatures include the font chosen for the building’s nameplate and the use of brass French fleurs-de-lis.

  • The base of the building is made from cast or synthetic stone, which enjoyed a revival in the US around the turn of the century but was only introduced into Australia around 1927 or 1928.

  • Franconia originally boasted a textured exterior finish to the top floors as well as fleur-de-lis finials, which were removed at some point as a safety precaution after one fell.

  • Tiles used in the building, particularly in the foyers on each level, the stairwell and bathrooms, are said to have been specially sourced from Prague.

The architect: Walter Leslie Nielsen

Walter Leslie Nielsen was born in 1899 in Young, New South Wales, to Walter, aged 23, and Hannah, 22. He studied at Sydney Technical College from 1916 to 1918, later setting up an architectural practice at Ocean House in Martin Place.

In 1926 Nielsen married Gertrude Lillian Gardiner in Randwick, and the couple lived in Franconia once completed.

Nielsen designed several significant apartment buildings in the Potts Point area, including Carisbrooke (1920), Kentwood Court (1923) and Carinthia (1925) in Springfield Avenue and Franconia. He perhaps played a larger role in the Potts Point streetscape than any other architect.

Nielsen lived in Franconia for around 50 years and died here on 17 November 1982, aged 83.

Further reading about Franconia

[i] Source: Susan Wellings, ‘Blast from the past’, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 April 2007