November 2025
Spotted this in May this year in Alma Road St Kilda, clearly it was a mansion converted into flats. Now it’s up for sale, so we can see a bit inside – it was until recently the Scottsdale Supported Residential Service, I think run by the Uniting Church, so it’s got loads of bedrooms and a communal lounge and dining. The inside looks intact, partly Victorian partly whenever the conversion was.
As far as I can work out it was called Stormont, and built by 1870 for John Wagner, a partner in Cobb& Co, and Mt Morgan gold mine, who did so well he built the giant mansion Stonnington in Malvern in 1890 and lived there ! Makes this house look modest. It was still a family home in 1939, when Mrs McAdam died there, but the alterations look earlier than 1940.
It’s graded Significant in the precinct, so pretty safe, could become a mansion again, or proper flats. It’s concerning that this is yet another boarding style house that’s closing – where have they gone ?- though the ex-mansion Rhianva down the road is going from flats to boarding house, but private.
Storey of Melbourne 