December 2018

Looks a bit like a Russian church, but it’s #FlemingtonPostOffice, 1890, another wonderfull eclectic design from the #PublicWorksDepartment when they went all creative in the 1890s.

Flemington for some reason has a great bunch of public buildings arrayed up a side street, taking advantage of the pointy corner sites, but a long way from the shops, train station etc. The #PostOffice here would have been quite visible though, with its tall #clocktower, but now there’s a #damntree in the way.

The design was by John Russell Brown in the Public Works Department, by far his most exotic, though his Traralgon Court House has a fun stumpy tower and his own house, Kiora in Brighton, has some exotic fretwork on the verandah. The tower was detailed by AJ MacDonald, who did the Romanesqueish court house up the hill the next year.

This has so many influences, perhaps mostly Italian- the brick polychrome is drawn from northern Italian medieval, as introduced by Joseph Reed by 1870, the corbeling is particularly lush, and I think the double curve windows are rounded versions of Venetian Gothic ones. But the octagonal tower topped by an orb and the long gone rounded arched/domed entry thing both just look very Russian.

• victorian