April 2026

Windsor Primary School looking fine in the afternoon sun. It’s down Hornby Street, a narrow side street, but you can glimpse it from Dandenong Road. First built as Prahran South in 1877, so within the first five years of school building after compulsory education was introduced in 1873.

It’s polychrome brick Gothic, as they all were at first, with a fun tower that’s shaped like a square rocket. All the hundreds of schools bulky then are credited to the Education Department architect Henry Bastow, but he did have help. They often expanded too, and this one was apparently single storey at first, with a second floor added in 1890, so the old photo just after that I guess, and presumably the tower was made taller at the same time. Then another floor was added to the south side in 1915, this time in red brick, compatible but not matching, and they also enlarged the ground level front windows.

The school changed name a bit too – Windsor in 1891, Prahran Windsor 1994, Stonnington in 2001, back to Windsor in 2017.

It’s had a few additions out back too, the latest in 2023 by @jcbarchitects, filling up what was probably a large asphalt playground, now more of a courtyard. The original building accommodated 700 pupils, back when they used to have classes of up to 60, now its capacity is 200.

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