In February 1940 the Burt Estate, originally called ‘Strawberry Hill’, in Terrace Road, East Perth, was subdivided and put up for sale by the owner, Archibald Francis Gustavi Burt. He was the grandson of Western Australia’s first Chief Justice, Sir Archibald Paull Burt, and son of Septimus Burt, a leading legal light and politician who oversaw Western Australia’s move into self-government in 1890. The land which extended from Adelaide Terrace southward to Terrace Drive, and lay between Bennett and Hill Streets had been in the family’s possession since their arrival in Perth in the 1860s.
In the 1940s Harold Krantz designed a series of ten medium-sized, low-cost brick and tile apartment blocks in Burtway. They featured single bedrooms and shared laundry facilities consistent with Krantz’s desire to limit costs by providing communal amenities. The first tenders for constructing the Burtway flats were advertised in August 1941, however building restrictions enforced during the WWII period saw expenditure on flats curtailed to £3,000 per building with only two flats per block permitted. Krantz continued to design and build flats during this period however they were done by converting existing residences and semi-detached houses, which was covered by a different building code. In 1949 the restrictions were finally lifted and Krantz was given permission to build 74 apartments across four blocks on Burtway, at a cost of £85,000.
Forty years after the first tenders had been called and ten years after Harold’s retirement, the company was still completing work for the Burt Way development, however by 2000 many of the blocks were in a state of disrepair and the whole complex faced the prospect of demolition.
The Heritage Council of WA recommended that if demolished, there should be an archival record created to illustrate the heritage of the original development. In 2009 the Reflections Waterfront Apartments opened, featuring a street-level display providing information, photographs and a scale model of the original Burtway apartment blocks.
