Original post 9 Feb 2021:

St Kilda Railway Station, as it looked in c1864, from the @cityofportphillip heritage collection- and all of it is still there ! Built in 1857 as the terminus for Melbourne’s 2nd train line, it turned St Kilda from a scattering of villas and mansions into a desirable sea side suburb. The shed part was extended to Fitzroy Street in 1882, but the timber Edwardian front was added c1907, when the side facing the bay, which originally had a lovely Georgian bow front, lost that and gained a verandah, to allow for the new fangled electric trams from Brighton to terminate there (it closed in 1960). The current pic is mine, the next from 1999 when I complained the alterations to shops would obscure everything (I was right, but it’s still there, just no evidence it was ever a station, like the tracks or platform), engraving from @library_vic, last image possibly via st kilda fb group (not sure!).

22 August 2020

StKildaStation as it was originally and then 1987-99, then now, I’d forgotten it sat there largely unused for so long. It’s so filled in and surrounded by stuff you’d be forgiven for not realising that trains once sat inside that roof, now part pub and part cafe.

Originally posted 26 Feb 2021:

St Kilda Station on Fitzroy Street on opening day in 1857, with lots of cheering ! Thought to be designed by the Railways engineers William Eldson. Surprisingly much of the original building survives behind later alterations and additions, and the oldest station to survive in Victoria. Behind the verandah added for the Brighton trams in 1908 are two of the three arches that led from the waiting room to the original portico (which was actually angled rather than curved), plus nice classical windows. All further obscured by recent bar/nightclub things, one of which cuts an arch short (though they seem to have been cut short at some other point as shown in the 80s colour pic I found on Facebook). Also @gunzels_down_under has a great photo of the trams from 1957. The third arch perhaps also lost a long time ago, but honestly why wasn’t it restored in 2001 when the whole station building transformed – unfortunately into many tenancies each with different clutter so it’s very hard to understand what it was originally like.

15 March 2018:

Photos of the St Kilda station to Brighton line, in operation 1906-1959, from the Prahran Mechanics Institute library.

7 February 2024

Just a little thing, but annoying – a couple of months ago workers started closing in the verandah of the St Kilda Railway Station on Fitzroy Street – and they were doing it without a permit from Heritage Victoria ! The pub in the other part, 5th Province, has taken over the little vacant shop, and they’d planned to extend right through to the verandah, and put in a floor, windows with a tiled base, and built in seating with a fireplace, which of course would very much turn a verandah into something else. They recently got a permit, but for all glass, no fireplace, and they have to take out the ceiling lining they’d put in. It’s just another part of the ongoing obscuring of the station by various occupants, I’m sure some of you have no idea that’s what it was. It’s actually the oldest in Victoria, dating from 1857, with front additions from 1907, as well as the verandah, where the long gone St Kilda to Brighton trams terminated. Images of proposal and inside from the permit application.

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