March 2026

Repost from 2014: A row of four most unusual #shophouse / #terracehouses. Built 1888 for local notable chemist Cuthbert Blackett, it was designed by Tappin Gilbert & Dennehy in a free interpretation of the very new to Melbourne Queen Anne style (seeing as they didn’t originally have inset #balconies like this). The architects used very similar elements for the huge Queen Bess Row in East Melbourne, also 1888, pic 3. Unusual at 3 storeys when almost all shops were one or two, and also that they are built with actual stone. Unusual and beaut all round really.

Also on the side there a very faded sign for ‘Vi Lactogen’, a babies milk powder from the 1930s-50s- there’s a photo from c1970 that shows it less faded, I seem to remember it quite readable in the 80s. There’s little enclosures on three of the balconies, those ones are I think boarding houses, and the extra rooms are probably kitchenettes.

Update : I’m told the enclosures are little bathrooms. Found some interiors, they were big ! Like most shop-houses it was the shopkeeper who lived upstairs, the main entrance being via the shop.

The site next door was a single storey shop and carparking for ages, filled in in 2017 with a thing by @jcbarchitects, where they managed extra floors under a sort of mansard, so it sort of fits into the streetscape.

My photos are 2014, and 2018

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