St Kilda Railway Station

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!).

Originally posted 26 Feb 2021:

Some #HiddenStKilda- parts of the classical front of the 1857 #StKildaStation survive – 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.