October 2018

For anyone who watched #TheBlock2018, here’s a reminder of what the inside of the #TheGatwickHotel looked like before they demolished it all in order to create empty shells for the contestants to decorate. I’m still fuming that the @CityOfPortPhillip didn’t lift a finger to try to save any of this (and the perfectly intact 1937 interior should have been listed ages ago), despite assurance from the mayor @bernadenevoss that Council would ‘work with’ them on this. I was quite shocked when I saw the plans and they demolished this whole staircase to build another one round the side. Really it should have just been turned back into a nice boutique hotel as it was originally.

From the block website : “When it opened its doors for the first time in 1937 it was advertised as a luxurious private residential hotel with ‘lovely wall to wall carpets’, large lounges, a card room and three bathrooms on each floor. The bedrooms had private telephones linked directly to the Exchange and ‘a hot water service enclosed in a delightful compact cubicle’. There was a noted oriental chef, Alex Julius, and all of this was available for just three guineas per week. During World War Two, it provided accommodation for the United States armed forces when officers from Base Section Four headquarters at Port Melbourne, under the command of Colonel Galloway, were billeted at The Gatwick and also at The Prince of Wales Hotel in Fitzroy Street, where an officer’s club was established.” All gone now, except for one bit of panelling in the new entrance.

A remnant piece

October 2025

Of course one reason no one cared about the building itself was that for a long time it was infamous, a last refuge for people other places wouldn’t accept, run by sisters Rose and Yvette for 30 years who took it over from their mother before them (in that fun bathroom pic). The residents were rehoused elsewhere but I read some just came back to the area, perhaps some of the homeless who now live on the street opposite.

• contemporarymelbourne