21 August 2024 Passed by this in Mitford Street Elwood a million times, and always wondered what it would be like living above a laundrette, and also, was it always there ? I don’t know the answer to that, but it turns out it’s not just a little block in nice variegated cream brick, but … Continue reading Clean Elwood flats →

21 August 2024 Looking a bit sad in 2014, Brooks Building on Smith Street is a relatively rare example of Gothic applied to a shopfront. Built in 1885 presumably for Mr Brooks, it was occupied by the Fitzroy Furnishing Co, perhaps one of the first of the many furniture emporiums to concentrate here. The shop … Continue reading Smith Street shops →

20 August 2016, updated (only pic 2 is mine) : Casselden Place tower, Spring & Lonsdale, 1992. I’m a fan of Postmodernism, but this isn’t a good example. The tower itself is sort of striking, all #chamfers and 45* angles, the design idea being a glassy square tower shoved through an almost octagonal solid one. … Continue reading Casselden Place tower →

13 August 2024 Down Coventry Place, one of those narrow South Melbourne side streets, is this highly significant cottage - it was prefabricated in Singapore ! It’s one of about 150 sent out here during the gold rush, this one about 1853, now one of only 4 left, and the only one on its original … Continue reading A gold-rush cottage made in …Singapore →

17 August 2024 A walk round a block of South Melbourne at the northern end of Montague / Ferrars Streets, some streets at odd angles - hadn’t realised theres so many narrow side streets, and so many timber cottages variously altered. Most looked like they havnt been touched since the 1980s maybe, some distinctly wonky, … Continue reading North South Melbourne walk, Dorcas York Montague blocks →

16 August 2024 So much glass ! St Anne’s, on the corner of Toorak Road and Park Street, South Yarra, was built in 1938, and designed by the really very creative J Esmond Dorney. At first glance it looks just square on the corner, with a wrap around balcony, but it steps in and out, … Continue reading Deco vs Tudor flats, Park Street South Yarra →

16 August 2024 Very nice leadlight shopfront at the bottom of Fitzroy Street St Kilda, note the cute motif in the door itself. Probably 1920s. There’s a permit for an apartment development to go behind the retained frontage of the Victorian shops, and the adjacent rather ordinary 1930s thing, and this shopfront is going to … Continue reading Leadlight shopfront St Kilda →

15 August 2024 A Modernist house at 208 Kooyong Road Nth Caulfield Street is up for sale, so here’s the r e photos, from now and before (only 2 years ago). It’s not super stylish, but really quite nice, and well designed, with the lounge facing north, and opening out to a rear pool. The … Continue reading Modernist House by Ernest Fooks →

13 August 2024 The really quite flamboyant former Crown Law Offices in Lonsdale Street, with lots of marvellous carved stonework. Designed by SE Bindley within the Public Works Department, and completed 1893, the lower part is sober Renaissance Revival, in a three bayed form, that then takes off in complicated early French or Dutch Renaissance … Continue reading Crown Law Offices, Lonsdale Street →

12 August 2024 The long gone Menzies Hotel once stood on the se corner of Bourke & William Streets, and was the hotel of choice of the elite from its opening in 1867 into the 1950s. It went through many additions over the years : the original hotel was 3 floors, designed by Reed & … Continue reading Menzies Hotel →