3pm and the sun shines right through the 1889 #MelbourneGPO #clockfaces. And the bells rang too ! Havnt heard them for years ....in 1986 I was doing final year architecture and had a shared studio in #HardwareLane, and when I heard the midnight bells I’d drop my pens and run to Flinders Street Station to … Continue reading GPO clocktower
Chart House c1940, architect unknown - pretty radical for 1940, looks so 50s, except for the #steelframedwindows, with opening leaves, 50s would be aluminium frames. I don’t love it, but it’s very interesting. Rather oddly the heritage study by @lovellchen says the front was altered in the 50s, but the side wasn’t, so only the … Continue reading Chart House c1940 and Melbourne House 1923, Little Bourke Street
John Donne & Sons sold charts and maps and globes and published stuff, located here at 356 Little Bourke Street since at least the 1890s, rebuilt in c1940 - think this #shopfront is original, they left here only maybe 10 years ago, seem to be in Bentleigh now. #WilkinsandKent left the sign which is nice.
#RankinsLane at 2.30 pm and earlier at 12.30 today - all this nice #sunlight would be blocked by the 20 storey tower proposed for 360 #LittleBourkeStreet - you’d think there’d be rules protecting the sun in this popular residential and business #laneway just up towards #HardwareLane but you’d be wrong ! There’s a 15m limit … Continue reading Rankins Lane overshadowing
116 little Bourke. So named cos once was private museum of antiquities. Saw it on a school trip in the 70s. Now seems all locked up. Instagram post 3 May 2013. Update Oct 2018 : built 1915, possibly as church hall, now houses Urban Seed, an outreach and education arm of the Collins Street Baptist … Continue reading Ancient Times House, Little Bourke Street.
#MiddleBrighton #OldEnglishStyle, a bunch of modest and larger sized English cottage style houses here, like the middle ring eastern burbs and middle north that immore familiar with- Brighton isn’t all over-sized houses (though there’s plenty even here). Probably 1930s, judging by the generally restrained detailing.
Here in Victoria, we call this style #lombardicromanesque, even though sometimes it's Italianate or Gothic. Anyway it's a special melb invention, a blend of influences - wonderful #polychromebrick, round arched windows, varied massing, #jerkinhead roofs, and of course a #tower topped with #mansard roof and #widowswalk. Even the ornate #castironfence is intact. My favourite sort … Continue reading Harston, Brighton, 1885
One of two big mansions on Church Street on top of the small hill east of the #MiddleBrighton railway station. Another towered mansion, in #redbrick #Italianate form, but with hints of #gothicrevival in the window arches, and the prominent #gable ends. All details painted white, just as they have been probably since the 1950s. Original … Continue reading Calabria, Brighton, 1886
October 2018 For anyone who watched #TheBlock2018, here’s a reminder of what the inside of the #TheGatwickHotel looked like before they demolished it all in order to create empty shells for the contestants to decorate. I’m still fuming that the @CityOfPortPhillip didn’t lift a finger to try to save any of this (and the perfectly … Continue reading The Gatwick vs The Block
One of the many many #redbrick #Romanesque/#Byzantine/#Gothic #CatholicChurches designed by the wonderfully named #AugustusFritsch, aka #AAFritsch. If you see a church like that anywhere in Victoria it’s probably his, or maybe #FritschandFritsch, in partnership with his son. His first churches were in this style, nicely eclectic Edwardian in the 1900s, which he barely changed for … Continue reading St Columbas, Elwood, 1929, AA Fritsch
If the Nazi's never took power, would Berlin have Europe's tallest skyscraper and East Prussia be a honeymoon destination ?
Storey of Melbourne 