3 July 2024
A rather nice bit of Victorian polychrome brick in Blessington Street St Kilda – which anyone in St Kilda would probably recognise as Albert Tucker’s house. He lived there from 1980 till his death in 1999, and so painted his late works in the studio out back, still there. It’s rather a large house, and a Facebook post says it’s 1868 by George Johnson, but that would make it just one year after the first fully polychrome brick, Joseph Reed’s Collins Street Independent Church, so it’s more likely 1880s. Update : there’s a book about the North Melbourne Town Hall that lists many works by Johnson, and it says it’s 1868, for John Tuomy, and it what’s more it appears on an 1873 map of the area, so actually quite important!
I’d never really noticed it before- it was sold in 2010, and streetview shows it had a thicker hedge up to 2019, I guess relatively recently replaced, and I could get a shot through the gaps ! Interiors from sale listing.
Storey of Melbourne 