Original post 16 July 2020
Seen in #BayStreetPortMelbourne- this has to be one of the WORST ‘heritage’ outcomes in melbs – I couldn’t believe it when I saw I first saw it many years ago. The 1913 church is not only completely hemmed in, only the external walls are left, and possibly not the east one at all, the side where they rebuilt a stylised version of the lost tower as some kind of ‘restoration’, and all the windows on the west side are practically gone too. The completely new bits are really awful too, they look like really cheap 80s offices, but the whole thing is an apartment development from 2000. If I was the heritage advisor I would have said don’t bother, just demolish the lot if this is the only alternative. But that’s not the way planning works. I don’t know anything about the church apart from the date, except that it replaced a completely prefabricated #corrugatediron one sent out from England in 1956, which was a little boxy, but soooo interesting where this is not.
Storey of Melbourne 