October 2018
Repost 2018: Check out what’s inside ! Hidden behind 60s flats at 40 Alma Road, St Kilda, there’s this mansion. Called Rhianva, later Shirley, built 1868 for David Rosenthal, jewellery merchant, part of the early concentration of well-off Jewish peeps in St Kilda starting in the 1850s. The architects were Crouch & Wilson, who did a house the next year on Chapel Street in similar style for Israel Bloomington, still there now part of St Michael’s, and a bit more elegant (2nd last pic). Then they did St Kilda’s first synagogue in 1872 round the corner from Rhiviana in Charnwood Grove also classical style (last pic).
Rhianva in c1965, photo National Trust of Australia (Victoria). Listing here.
The mansion and flats were still in one ownership, and sold in 2022, and rather surprisingly the new owners applied to turn it into a rooming house with more smaller flats, which was I think approved by Council in August last year. So no restoration any time soon. Plan and photo is current conditions.
Storey of Melbourne 