November 2025

Offington was one of the grandest mansions in St Kilda Road, and was demolished in 1971 – but the point of this post is that it looked completely different by then, having been rebuilt as flats 1932, the bricks rendered and losing the verandah.

It was a grand important house in its day, on a triple block near Commercial Road – it was one of the first mansions built on the road, after the lots were subdivided off Fawkner Park in 1865, built in 1871 for developer John Robb. The architect for the symmetrical polychrome brick house with a fancy verandah was probably Lloyd Tayler. The house became more famous as the home of Edward Henry of the Western District farming family, who bought it in 1873. He added an extra block, developed a fine garden and added a conservatory. The photo is probably the same date as the painting of 1878 by William Tibbits, the year Henty died. His widow remained there until 1901, and by then St Kilda Road had many mansions and large houses, which continued to be built. In 1911 the left third of the block was sold for a large house, and about 1920 the right side was too, becoming flats, and the house itself soon became a guest house (in fact I was surprised to discover my great grandmother lived there briefly about 1929). Then in 1932 the house was completely transformed into flats, designed by Marcus Barlow; the @nationaltrustvic has a good pic of it from the 1960s I guess. I also blew up a couple of 1950s aerial pics to see the context.

It was replaced by a particularly boring 70s office block, transformed with lots of glass in 2016 into apartments. So it’s a long tale of development and change over 100 years!

Info and pic of demolition comes from a detailed article by Tim Gatehouse for the @australiangardenhistorysociety in 2016, rest @library_vic and real estate.

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