Melbourne Club

23 September 2017:

The #MelbourneClub, the first, best, most exclusive club, very much a part of the #highsociety that clustered here in what’s now called the #ParisEnd of #CollinsStreet, once lined with exclusive Drs surgery/townhouses, clubs, and the Masons too. Built in two stages, the first in 1859, designed by #LeonardTerry – swipe to see today’s discovery, a photo before the bay window end was added in 1885 (by #TerryandOakden), with a gigantic dining room inside. Had thought that only the bay was added but one set of windows too, quite seamless.

23 September 2023

The design is clearly a more restrained version of the Reform Club in London by Charles Barry, completed 1841, which was the first notable example of Renaissance Revival, itself directly inspired by the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, by Antonio de Sangalo, completed 1589. The Renaissance Revival then pretty much dominated Melbourne architecture for a couple of decades.

You’ve probably wondered what this mysterious brick thing at the back of the #MelbourneClub is; well I thought it was a squash court, and I’m not quite right -it was actually built as a #RacketsCourt in 1876, a game like but not like #squash, it’s faster and the ball is harder (!) It was never very popular cos it needed huge things like this, the court being twice the size of a #SquashCourt, so mainly clubs and private schools. There’s only maybe a couple of dozen left in use, this one now used for functions. It has a corrugated iron bit sticking out on one side, perhaps extra seating ? And I found a 19thC image if the game, from New York.

21 December 2021:

Did you know that the great huge wall of the garden of the Melbourne Club on Little Collins Street is actually made out of the walls of terrace houses ? The club already had a big garden but in the 1880s they bought three two storey houses facing Little Collins in order to enlarge it – and they just kept the walls and bricked in the windows! The garden now sports three majestic plane trees, all planted in this new section. My photos from 2018.