10 December 2024

A couple of quick snaps of what you could say is a mansion on Punt Road near High Street while waiting for the bus. What you see now was created in stages up to 1885 by the Newbegin family, who enlarged a smaller house they bought here in 1873, and stayed until 1908. They called it Stella, and it ended up with three bay windows and four grand reception rooms, and a very large rear wing to boot. It was one of a row of similar scaled houses here, progressively demolished in the last few decades, the one next door went in about 2013, now a carpark. This has happened despite some heritage listing because there’s a road widening easement of 20m along the whole east side, in place since 1954 (!). It was reviewed in 2015, and the recommendation was to keep it only at the intersections so they could be ‘flared’ but im not sure anything’s changed. This house meanwhile is now two huge apartments, and two smaller ones down the back. Some rather speccy details in the downstairs one, but all painted white of course.

A dilapidated landmark on the corner of Punt Road and High Street. It’s not heritage listed and I havnt tried researching, but from Google maps you can see it has two roofs, and so was originally a pair of terraces. It has a few Art Deco features, so it was turned into flats in the 30s, with the addition of a stair to the front. It looks abandoned, and I couldn’t find any sale or lease ads. It’s affected by the Punt Road widening easement, so waiting for VicRoads to buy and demolish I guess. It’s a recipe for blight, they should just go ahead and compulsorily purchase what they want, and go ahead. I have visions of a nice boulevard lined with trees and dedicated bus lanes and rows of apartment blocks, but that’s not what’s planned. Or maybe in the near future driverless Ubers will mean less traffic and so we won’t need a wider road ?

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