Original post 30 July 2020:

There’s these grand terraces across the road from my place in Dalgety Street St Kilda, with huge front gardens, and I’m a bit surprised to learn they’re 1858 ! Called Lansdowne Terrace, they still have their original very simple elegant timber verandahs. There were 6, but three were demolished c1970 for some boring flats ☹️. The northern end one, no 35, was much bigger, more like a mansion, with a return verandah and 15 rooms, including a dining room big enough for 50 (!), and folding doors between the drawing room and breakfast room to create a ballroom. It was on a block the size of the other 5 put together, complete with a coach house at the rear (still there), green house and dairy. Early tenants of the terrace included successful traders and solicitors. The big gardens of no 35 were subdivided in c1917, leaving the coach house accessed from the lane. The 1998 St Kilda heritage study notes that no 35 was already renovated but the other two were in poor condition, with filled in verandahs, but they look fine now, and in fact the southern one is the most unaltered, namely the parapet looks more original than the other two. Found a real estate pic from 2010 of no 35 showing off great art and furniture, while across the street, there’s a block of low rent studio flats, and a boarding house, the extremes that you still find in St Kilda, though a lot more luxury homes and very few cheap ones now. Info from ‘St Kilda Movers Shakers and Money Makers’, plan is from 1873.

New photos August 2024

No 35

Another possibly very early #grandterrace in my street, one of a pair, though the other has a different possibly recent ‘colonial’ balustrade. No’s 5&7.

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