1 February 2025

Im posting this block of flats at the bay end of Robe Street St Kilda not because of its architectural qualities, though it is a very nice combo of Arts & Crafts and Spanish, but because of a memory it evokes – waaay bank in the mid 80s when I was a lad going to gay night at Inflation on Wednesdays (free wine!), one night after closing at 1am I was with a friend on the footpath and we got invited by a random girl back to her place / the place she was house sitting with some others, and it was here ! Top floor front. I remember thinking ‘St Kilda, how risqué’, closely followed by ‘this place is enormous and delightful, I didnt know flats could be like this’, revealing my suburban upbringing. Nothing terribly exciting happened that night, we just sat around talking till dawn. One bloke was Scottish and kept talking about his new ‘coo-ker’, ie stove, and we all thought his accent was hilarious. Never saw any of them again. Looking at real estate pics, it is indeed very nice inside, though not as big as my memory made it. And it’s just possible it was actually next door, which is similar, last two pics. As to its history, all I can say is the earliest mention is 1930, so perhaps built 1929, just before the depression. I also found that the Michael family lived there in 1932, whose infant son had his ‘beriss-milah’ (circumcision) there, after which the guests had a ‘dainty repast’, Mrs Purvis of Koo Wee Rup stayed there after a period in hospital in 1937, and in the 1940s the Rosenwax family were in residence.

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