November 2019, updated 2025

The fantastic long demolished Fish Markets once at the far end of Flinders Street; one of the great loses, but then in the 1950s there was no such thing as heritage listing, and Victoriana was actively disliked.

Ive collected a whole bunch of images, mainly via Facebook, mainly originally the State Library. Built 1891-2, the design by R G Gordon won a competition, and it’s an Italian Gothic fantasy of towers and turrets and arched windows. It was in two parts divided by the then new railway viaduct, with the fish market itself actually on the riverbank, the prominent Flinders St part was meat & poultry and stores. Couldn’t find a good close one of the fish section, except the riverside entrance in the 1950s, showing it all grimy and a bit cracked (from a little booklet I’ve got).

It all went because the site was getting too small and crowded, and plans for a viaduct over the new kingsway meant one end had to go. It’s sometimes said it was demolished because of the cracking, due to subsidence – but that happened not long after it was finished, and wasn’t given as a reason for demo 70 years later.

When a new fish market was built in the Docklands in 1959 the old one was immediately demolished, to become a carpark for 50 years. (The gates went to Fawkner cemetery, pic 16).

The site was sold off for a very squeezy apartment development of tiny flats overlooking a noisy railway line, completed 2009. No 2 is a colourised pic by @coloursofyesterday.

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