21 February 2025

Halcyon, cnr Acland and Robe Street, #StKilda, 1886, architect #FrederickdeGaris. A typical towered #VictorianMansion, that had a billiard room, library and two coach houses – and I think still does. The architect was Frederick De Garis, who tended toward loads of elaboration, so this is relatively restrained for him, but features unusual rustication and quoining, plenty of brackets, and very lush cast iron. It seems a bit out of place amongst all the flats and terrace houses, but actually it’s a rare unaltered survivor of an area that had plenty of mansions and large houses on big grounds by the 1880s. (Linden is the one other to survive.) It was built for Mrs Dudgeon, who apparently spent her inheritance on this pile, after her (much older) husband John Dudgeon, tobacconist, died in 1884. Then a decade later she married, Mr Agar Wynne, a grazier, mining investor and MP, and it was his second marriage. After she died in 1926, it became a boarding house, under a variety of names, lastly Illoura. By the 1980s it was owned and occupied by the Melbourne School of Philosophy, a London based organisation that teaches a Hindu tradition; they’re still there and it hasn’t been touched since then, it’s even still got the 50s front gate seen in the old photo.

Would you believe this was nearly built in St Kilda in the 1930s? It would have had over 200 flats over 11 floors, complete with rubbish chutes, air conditioning, built in fridges and a beacon on top. It was announced in August 1936, with different architects noted, but the development company director was Bernard Evans, who had designed and developed many flats, so maybe it was his design. It was for the corner of Robe and Acland Streets, the site of the Victorian mansion Halcyon, which had a side garden, plus the lot next door. It would have been so dominating ! And no doubt the rear, probably just little windows, would have been visible from the Esplanade.

St Kilda Council was opposed to the idea of a restaurant on the ground floor, and said no, but it went straight to court, and the developers got a permit when they removed the restaurant, and it seemed to be about to happen in Dec 1936, but didn’t. Instead, a few years later the side garden and the vacant block were developed as walkup flats, and the mansion stayed a boarding house.

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