13 July 2023

The plan above is how the Parliament House area might have developed if Robert Hoddle had been more creative in 1837.

Some background- in the 1890s, the newly formed Melbourne & Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) surveyed all of Melbourne as part of their mandate to sewer what had become known as ‘Smellbourne’. The plans they created are amazingly detailed, showing the outline of every building, often named, verandas, yards, gutters, and of course a little outhouse on every property, marked with a a C (for closet, or water closet). Below is a detail of the top of Bourke Street showing the Imperial hotel, and attached shops, much of it still the same. The next plan is the whole block, showing a lane lined with tiny cottages. There’s another later map from 1915, drawn differently, with the buildings shaded, and shows that not much had changed at this end of the city, or maybe it wasn’t really up to date. But I like the look of it. The maps are all online at the @library_vic, and are of course a great resource for an old building nut like me.

So my MMBW map is based on my plan of what Hoddle should have done in 1837, then imagining that the city might have developed much the same as it did, and drawn it as it might have been in 1890.

For instance I’ve still got the Princess and the Windsor, but in different spots, the Melbourne Club garden where it was, Gordon House (originally ‘Our Lodging’) in Little Bourke, tiny cottages heading up to Lonsdale, and so on. I’ve also imagined that the pair of reserves would have got cut into triangles to allow a direct line from Nicholson Street, with a matching diagonal road to the south. And that the statue of Burke & Wills got set up in the middle island, rather than the middle of Collins and Russell Streets. And that Parliament House not only had the setting of the two reserves it was set way back, with a paved forecourt, and fountains and parterres either side, which would have been nice even without the reserves and wider streets.

I also made Nicholson and Spring Street as wide as Victoria Parade, thinking Hoddle would have if he’d had the chance, and then with the Parliament House gardens, and the reserves, there’s lots of park/open space, perhaps too much!

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