June 2026
Tanner Street near to Richmond Station is dominated by a bunch of big old factories that were built for the Australian Knitting Mills. I don’t know exact dates but they look 1920s and 30s, and there are at least three blocks, and there’s a great walkway between two of them, running under some elevated bits. Very atmospheric. Those two seem to be offices.
The taller one has the signage facing the station, with that great huge arrow, and a logo of a sheep and a kookaburra, which was their brand of hosiery. There’s a chimney in there too. Great huge spaces inside. There’s even some rag trade businesses in there.
The third, tallest one was converted into apartments, some so tall they have mezzanine floors – so the bedrooms only have borrowed light, but very nice.
Since they havnt been facaded, and any new bits are industrial style, the whole complex feels very unchanged, even down to the informal carparking. It’s all great ! I don’t know when the conversion happened, but I feel like maybe a long time – the mid 90s ? There’s stuff I didn’t get many pics of, like the ex-Henry Bucks building which is also rag trade, and even more beyond that.
The other side is Stewart Street, which runs next to Richmond Station, and it’s lined with old industrial buildings, creating a nice curved canyon effect. Two have recently been done over, both involving retaining only facades and then going way up. This is unlike earlier projects nearby that just put new uses in the old buildings. The effect is that it’s now as much contemporary style as industrial heritage, but also exaggerates the dense urban feel.
They’re both small area offices, showing there’s more of a market for these little inner urban projects than cbd office towers (I think).
The first one has a vertical expression, which the architects @cerastribley say is : “Drawing inspiration from the nearby Richmond train station, our design orchestrates an architectural symphony reminiscent of interlocking railway crossings…” (that also looks rather Zaha Hadid style). The other side is just sheer glass, but there’s some interesting holes in the roof. Delta Demolitions used a Whelan the Wrecker sign when they did the demo in 2024.
The other one makes the preservation of only the front facades more obvious. It’s part red brick gridded part white grid, perhaps to look smaller than it is, which is nice actually.
The one in between was I think done some time ago, and added floors rather than replaced the old ones, and the taller part is well set back. Would have been better that the other two were like that too, but everything everywhere is just getting bigger taller denser.
Storey of Melbourne 