Now for those keen students of Sydney suburban architecture, here is a true classic of the very late
sixties and early seventies. What is more it looks to be pretty much intact as originally designed
except for the terra cotta tile roof which might just have been replaced with a concrete tile one at
some point. Come to think of it that roof over the verandah may not have been there at the start or
else have been a pergola.

This is almost certainly a "Davis Home" which was built thousands of times around the suburbs
between about 1966 and 1974 or so. As well as helping to affirm the "luxury of texture brick" this
simple basic design really established two other fundamental ideas - brick veneer (as opposed to
"full brick") for a construction method and "project building" as a marketing principle. Davis wasn't the only
builder doing this but most of the other locals had copied his idea. He only had pretty much ONE design
with or without a garage) the component frames, roof trusses, windows, door jambs etc etc were manufactured
thousands of times over, stockpiled and delivered to site where they were erected and completed in
short order. An important part of the innovation was that you visited a completed "showhome" where
one could "pick out the colours" and see what the whole thing would look like when completed

Heaven only knows how many texture bricks were manufactured for this sort of dwelling over the period
but the number must have run into the billions. Davis was better than most. His houses had a reputation
for good honest no frills features, generous spaces and good finishes. They had one bathroom, one big kitchen
with adjoining eating area, a "lounge room", three bedrooms and a good big linen cupboard. I almost bought
one myself. They could be had (with generous allowance for foundations) for the princely sum of $8,900.
Even then, that represented extraordinary value and helped to meet the explosion of demand that
came when the first of the "baby boomers" (such as myself) were looking to purchase new homes and
establish families of their own.