2 November 2023

So I haven’t finished my ‘Melbourne as it might have been if Hoddle had laid it out differently’ project – I’ve now done a series of plans for the eastern end of the city, one for every few decades, to more accurately lay it out (which I should have done first!). Major differences between what actually happened and my alternative version are of course that I’ve made room for Parliament house to have a forecourt (maybe I’ve overdone that part – and I’ve learned that the 1855 plan for Parliament house was narrower then the 1877 revision, so there would have been some space in front), and putting St Patrick’s Cathedral in a different spot (which means putting the other churches etc on Eastern Hill are in different spots). Things I’ve learned are that in the city the subdivision into small lanes happened early, and many have persisted; how much the streets around Parliament House changed early on; that the city was very different in the first few decades, and that many blocks in the eastern end were not sold off for a long time. The city we’re familiar with didn’t take shape till about 1900.

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