March 2026

Fun quirky house in Deakin Street, West St Kilda. Love the fish-scale shingles, still unpainted, and that they curve out. The heritage study says this is an alteration of a Victorian house from c1920, and some Victorian bits are still evident. They also say it’s ‘bizarre’, and that ‘its presence in the streetscape that belies its small size.’, but there’s big bushes in front now.

Great house on the corner of Canterbury Road and Mary Street, West St Kilda that’s an amalgam of two periods, 1904 Edwardian downstairs, and 1924 Arts & Crafts upstairs.

So there’s a very typical corner verandah entry with nice sun ray motif in the woodwork, and peeping above is a diagonal corner attic style window, with shingles, sort of matching, sort of not. Glad to see the woodwork isn’t all black. Some great stuff inside, an original wallpaper frieze, tall overmantels, a conservatory (I think later), nice plaster ceilings, and a circular seat in the big added top room, built for billiards.

A real estate site tells me that Nick Cave and/or the Birthday Party lived there in the 80s, a short stagger down the hill from the Seaview Ballroom (but he was in Berlin by 81, so maybe the late 70s?). In 2017 it was bought by Jimmy and Nadia Bartel, then sold after they separated in 2020. Kind of the whole history of St Kilda there.

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