Nov 2020 :
The Canterbury, on Canterbury Rd, #StKilda, weirdly tall and skinny, built 1914, amongst the first wave of flats built in Melbourne, when still at the experimental (for Melbourne) early stage. This was built like 3 single storey terrace houses on top of each other, though it’s a tiny site, smaller than the average terrace house.
The top floor was added 5 years later in 1919, with two one bed flats, a long way up, but a good view. Designed by #TompkinsandTompkins (brothers HW and FB), a rare residential design for them, in whats called #EdwardianFreestyle, ie a style freely composed of various Edwardian bits like the bellied balconies with gridded pattern, an Arts&Crafts tower/turret with flat roof, and overwrought baroque #cartouche things, and of course #redbrick.
I snuck in a pic of the lobby. Plans and view from the top front flat from real estate ads. Also note that I think the place next door to the left built in the 90s perhaps sets back on the corner, not blocking the corner view like it might have.
New photos August 2024 plus real estate pics 
Storey of Melbourne 
I lived in the Canterbury in 1996/97. It was an amazing place to live. It was owned by an ancient lawyer named Richard Trebilcock. I think the rent for the entire floor was $70 a week. Mick Turner of The Dirty Three lived upstairs from me; two of the other flats were musicians also. he owned the house next door as well which I ended up living in as it was inevitable, developers moved in and bought the Canterbury for $700,000.
there was a house Next Door that had been calked up into three or four flats. I lived in the front one after the Canterbury was sold. The rest of it was blocked off until some junkies decided they were gonna squat in the back and decided to get a bit nasty. One night it really got ugly and the police arrived and it was on for young and old on Canterbury Road. After they loaded the junkies into the back of the divvy van, the police came in and asked if they could use my bathroom and were astonished at how small the place had been cut up into.
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I should say that shortly after this incident, I decided that paying $70 a week for a rat infested, junkie infested falling down hovel was a bit outre, and by happy coincidence moved just around the corner to 23 Loch Street which was then the West Saint Kilda RSL and in a pretty poor state of repair. For the next five years that was our home as we transformed it into the place to be. Of course the developers eventually got that as well.
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