8 March 2024
The fantastical St Kilda Baths, a collection of exotic domes hovering in the sea. Id seen images of this ages ago, the first time in Maggie Fooks dreamy 1987 short film Pleasure Domes, but not much since, and these are all I could find. It was one of many sea baths built on the foreshore starting in the 1850s – at one point there were at least three of them, but they regularly got damaged in storms or replaced or renamed. This one, simply called St Kilda Sea Baths, built in 1906, was by far the grandest, and was designed by Nahum Barnet, who did a lot of creative Edwardian era things, but I didn’t know about this one. They only lasted 20 years, the domed part destroyed by fire in 1926, eventually the whole thing was replaced by the Moorish /Spanish one in 1931, itself demolished and rebuilt in the late 1990s. High res images and postcards from the State Library, others Victorian Collections and St Kilda Historical Society.
7 March 2024
The St Kilda Sea Baths, probably not long after it was built in 1931, with the men’s section on the right, and the smaller women’s on the left. The domes are still there but the bold Spanish arches of the right hand side were lost a long time before it was demolished and rebuilt in c2000. There’s not a lot of good photos of it, but there are 3 surprising ones of what it was like inside in the 30s and 40s in the men’s at least – they swam nakked! And sunbaked – plenty there with no tan lines. The photographer managed to get shots with only bums, or rather took many and chose the ones without any wedding tackle. Pic 1 via reddit, 2 found on my computer, 3 old postcard, 4-6 from Victorian Collections, 2 of them held by the St Kilda Historical Society.
In the 1930s Sidney Nolan painted a few pictures like this, thought to evoke the baths in St Kilda, where he grew up. This one is called Bathers, from 1943, NGV collection.
Storey of Melbourne 