Kinkabool in Surfers Paradise

Kinkabool is located in Surfers Paradise

Address: 32 Hanlan St, Surfers Paradise

Position on map:

Kinkabool, constructed 1959/60, is historically important in demonstrating the pattern of the Gold Coast’s beach tourism development. The building demonstrates late 1950s modernist architecture and technical achievements in high-rise technology. It was the starting point for a style and scale of multiple-dwelling and multi-title building that appeared in the late 1950s/1960s and from which the Gold Coast gained its international reputation as a tourist destination. Kinkabool also illustrates a significant aspect of the evolving character of the quintessential Australian beach holiday, which was highly influenced by American standards of accommodation and entertainment, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s. Kinkabool is one of the few buildings remaining that delineates the original heart of Surfers Paradise in the 1950s. Surviving components of Kinkabool reflect the standards marketed in the 1950s and 1960s as ‘luxurious’, but which also exemplify the character of this type of building. Kinkabool demonstrates the principal characteristics of a class of cultural place – high-rise beach holiday accommodation – that was rare in Queensland in the 1950s but is now common. Kinkabool is representative of the work of Stanley Korman, a developer and entrepreneur operating in the late 1950s on the Gold Coast. The Kinkabool units maintain their views to the beach and the hinterland, which were also important components of the building’s attraction to early buyers and holidaymakers. Rather than detracting from its significance, the great disparity in scale and appointment between Kinkabool and buildings like the 80-storey Q1 tower, demonstrates dramatically how tourist preferences, architectural design and construction technologies have evolved on the Gold Coast since the 1950s.

Queensland Heritage Register: YES
Heritage protection boundary: –