28 May 2023 Boyd Community Centre, City Road Southbank, a great State School built 1885, in Tudor style when almost all others were Gothic. Now rather lost amongst the towers, but looks great. Designed by chief schools architect Henry Bastow, or possibly by an underling. A reminder that the area had a residential population in … Continue reading Boyd School, Southbank →

23 May 2023 Adass Israel Orthodox Synagogue, Glen Eira Avenue, Ripponlea. The congregation was formed by mostly Germans / Austrians in 1940, moving here in 1950, then commissioning Vienna-born Ernest Fooks to build this, completed 1965. Not the most exciting design, but nice brickwork in the projecting house-shaped bit, behind which I’m pretty sure is … Continue reading Adass Isreal synagogue →

25 May 2023 I had this print above my desk when I was a teenager - I guess mum got it for me, and where my heritage interest started ! It’s by Samuel Calvert, ‘a birds eye view’, but i think entirely done from the ground, not a balloon. You can download a very large … Continue reading Melbourne birds eye view 1880 – as it was and as it might have been. →

Original post 26 May 2017: Repost from 2017: The architects own home by #DavidGodsell, 1960, by far the most exciting thing on my #beamarismodern jaunt. Luckily the large site next door is vacant. Godsell was (obviously) a rather talented interpreter of #FrankLloydWright, infuences from many of his periods here, along with that 60s interest in … Continue reading Godsell House, Beaumaris →

18 May 2023 I remember this ! A lone old house in front of the Camberwell Junction Safeways where we shopped every Saturday morning when I was a youngster. Facebook took me to an ABC article from 2016, outlining the whole story. She was Mary Ann Campigli, who not only refused to sell to Safeways, … Continue reading ‘The old lady who wouldn’t sell ‘ →

18 May 2023: Amazing place - happened to pass this a few weeks ago, at 23 Seymour Road, Elsternwick, and recognised it from ages ago - it was identified in a @cityofgleneira study from 2019, which tells me it was designed by Harold Shafer, and built in 1973. The very unusual street front has tall … Continue reading Flats that look like something else … →

Original post 16 May 2019: #Alverno, #DalgetyStreet, #StKilda, built 1918 for Miss Hoffman. Next door is an Edwardian house same date probably, and both were once part of the garden of the big Victorian terrace further to the right. An example of #earlyflats, part Edwardian #redbrick, part #ArtsAndCraftsStyle, and rather formal. It’s one flat on … Continue reading Alverno →

12 May 2023: Surveyor Robert Hoddle is famous for laying out the original town grid of Melbourne in 1837, but he wasn’t very creative about it. So I’ve re-drawn his plan of Melbourne, with improvements, a speculative design of what might have been. - I’ve drawn it up to Latrobe, which wasn’t actually surveyed until … Continue reading The Hoddle grid reimagined →

Original post 8 May 2019: Every mans home is his Modernist Castle-with-decorative-railings, spotted in Robe Street St Kilda. I think that maybe the slightly rafish seaside suburb of #StKilda after WW1 attracted people and/or designers who just let their heads go. If it was 1930s and didn’t have the stepped parapets it would actually be … Continue reading Modernist castle →

13 May 2023: The sex shop on Acland Street left this little Victorian shop some time ago, looks terrible - but the interesting thing is that the rear, all exposed because it’s a corner, is very intact, with nice brown bricks and verandah, complete with cast iron, which looks to have been larger upstairs, part … Continue reading Sex didn’t sell after all →