2 August 2025

A house in Dandenong Road East St Kilda that’s seen better days – and pretty notable too. It’s called Broxted, and was built in 1918 by Howard Lawson as his own home. He was a pretty prolific architect /developer, starting out about 1912, best known for the 1930s Beverly Hills flats in Sth Yarra. But here, with the new electric trams along Dandenong Road, he developed a dozen houses and flat blocks in this area, and lived here too.

The house is built at 45 degrees, squished onto a small lot, with lots of bays, verandahs and floral decoration too, an idiosyncratic version of the emerging Bungalow style. Similar details to Wimmera flats in St Kilda from 1917, last pic. He moved on by 1925, and by 1940 it was a guest house, later a rooming house.

In 1987 it was the first property purchased by the St Kilda Housing Association, now known as Housing First, and seems they sold it in March this year. It also has a decrepit bit out the back, and I guess has had problems with squatters, hence all the fencing.

A house he built next door had just been restored, but unfortunately the whole front garden was paved for parking. It was built in 1919, and shows the transition from Edwardian to Bungalow styles, with that very exaggerated top level roof over what was probably a sleep-out.

Seems it was a boarding house, sold in 2018, and now is going to be a ‘residential health facility’, so some kind of supported accommodation, which no doubt requires all the parking space.

Next door in the same year he built flats, looking like a large house, and a bit more Bungalow style. Google maps says it’s a @launchhousing property, good that they get such a nice place.

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