February 2026

A rather striking #publictoilet that once stood in the Fitzroy Gardens until just on 20 years ago; the first photo is one I have left over from a @nationaltrustvic exhibition on historic public toilets in 1998. Lovely overlapping brick and stone walls, with a dramatic cantilevered roof supported on a single post.

This was just labelled 1950s, but Peter Johns’ @_butterpaper blog from 2006 says it was built in 1957, and was designed by the @cityofmelbourne architects. That post also describes the day it was unexpectedly demolished in May 2006. The main reason was “…complaints about offensive and intimidating behaviour from individuals who chose to linger there.” ie it was a well known gay beat. Also that it was a modern intrusion into a heritage garden (never mind that since then they’ve since built a modern cafe at the south end, albeit where there used to be a depot). Also it was/is council policy to have facilities at the edges not the middle. And to have those self-cleaning unisex ones. But in this case, they could have lowered the walls or removed the brick ones, and left the roof as a nice picnic spot.

Pics 2,3 and demo and 1957 pics from the blog. Also found a construction photo from the CofM archives, and a postcard pic (!).

This post got over 2000 likes and 95 comments, here’s most of them :

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