8 July 2024
Very cute but curious old shop/house on the east side of St Kilda Road, near Alma Road, showing the angle of the lots to the street. It looks like a house with an added shop, but it was built 1867, and you can see it in a photo of the street in 1874, looking much the same as now. The sign says Arnott’s Library, and there’s a ghost sign where you can just make out ‘stationers’, and it was indeed both, with a ‘circulating library’, subscriptions starting at 5s/month (it was a bookseller and stationers until 1893, so the sign could be 1867 but likely much later). Another remarkable thing is that the timber balcony wasn’t there in 2017 streetview, it was rebuilt the next year, though not an exact match (I wonder why not ? The @statelibrarynsw pic is high res, showing the details clearly). This part of St Kilda Road was originally called High Street, and was lined with shops, banks etc, but the west side was all demolished when the road was widened in c1970. Info from St Kilda Historical Society.
Storey of Melbourne 