11 September 2025

Just found this pic of my house ! That is, the house that was transformed into my flats in Dalgety Street St Kilda. So exciting! Well for me and my neighbours anyway. Never thought I’d find a photo, but @historical_stkilda had it up, noting a tender in 1890, and that the address had been wrong. So it was called Kara, and probably designed by Sydney W Smith. He basically put a rather unusual verandah on an otherwise simple terrace-like house to one side of a double block. In fact I reckon they intended to build, or left space for, another half, but built extra verandah instead.

It was built for Joseph Salberberg, a solicitor, who arrived aged 12 with his family from Koblenz, Germany. And … I even found a photo of him, aged 90 or so, when he died in 1933. In fact I found a lot of stuff, like Miss Butchers wedding in 1906. The photo comes from an add in the 1914 ‘St Kilda By The Sea’ annual when it was a guest house.

Then I found the auction of the contents in 1925 just before they built around next to in front of to create the flats, in an odd Mediterranean/ Tudor style, all one beds. Not much left of the house, except the hall and stair.

The flats were called Kara Mansions, and I found the Larkins having a baby in 1929, the Bonwicks here in 1940, and Theadora Rose (nee Het Hoff) in 1955. Maybe we can use the name again ? And maybe it’s a reference to Katra-ite Judaism.

May 2026

Further research and I realised there was a house shown here on the 1873 Vardy maps of St Kilda, then went to directories and found it was built c1869. Then followed up a reference to an illustration of the 1890 design, found it was online, and voila ! A grand mansion that never was Drawn by Charles Ogg of Sydney Smith & Ogg in 1890, it’s described as ‘Jacobean’ (but I can see a lot of Queen Anne elements), in brick and stone, with a ‘very costly’ interior.

So Joseph Sabelberg didn’t build the house after all. It was possibly built by the first occupant Emmanuel Davis. And the big side garden is the result of adding extra lags from the site next door probably in 1875.

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