1 September 2024
This cute kiosk seen in a charming photo from the 50s (@library_vic) is still there, now a popular cafe in Cowderoy Street West St Kilda just behind the Beaconsfield Hotel. It must have an interesting history, though I can’t find out much, but the building looks c1930 to me. It was still going into the 2000s, though became more of a milk bar, and was run by ‘colourful’ Frank Economakos, when it was in competition with Quilkeys dairy/milk bar, just one block away. The front was infilled with matching clinker bricks perhaps in the last decade. Sort of an odd place for a kiosk, but maybe it was a venture by the hotel itself, since this was originally part of the hotels rear yard, and it was in the days when people spent the whole day at the beach; the last pic is right there in the 30s. The new venue started in 2017 is called Frankie’s, either after Frank, or after the new owner’s Dachshund. Only other thing I found was that it was a more open ‘confectionery kiosk’ in 1929, when four youths tried to break in at dawn, challenged by an off duty policeman and his housemate who lived nearby, the latter being shot in the foot as the crims ran off !
Update : from a st kilda resident’s Facebook page, it was known as a kiosk up to the 90s, then became more of a milk bar.
Storey of Melbourne 