17 December 2017, updated : John Danks, hardware merchants, started 1850s, built this grand store and HQ in Bourke Street in 1918, designed by #SydneySmithandOgg. I remember it as McEwans Hardware, another old hardware firm, which took over Danks in 1965, this branch closing in 1993. Then it was a failed shopping thing called The … Continue reading John Danks/McEwans →

16 December 2024 One of the many things I get excited about is early surviving bars in pubs - out of the many hundreds of pubs in Victoria, almost all of which got a makeover in the 1920s or 30s, only a handful havnt been modernised again and again since the 60s. This is the … Continue reading Railway hotel South Melbourne →

16 December 2024 The very nice geometric Art Nouveau ceiling of the former Thomas’ Music Store at the top of Bourke Street is still there, but its future a bit uncertain. Originally built in 1907 as an unusually cheery State Bank, designed by Sydney Smith & Ogg, Thomas’ closed in 2018, and was going to … Continue reading Art Nouveau ceiling →

15 December 2024 You’ve probably spotted this little Art Deco landmark from the Punt Road traffic, but it now looks very different from my 2019 pics - soon after that the classroom wing was replaced by a big black box. The Deco school was built in 1950, after a fire destroyed the 1877 one in … Continue reading South Yarra Primary School →

13 December 2024 The very stylish changing pavilion in Fawkner Park was built in 1937, designed by the ‘city architect’ of the City of Melbourne. Fabulous brickwork wrapping round each of the many doors that provided facilities for a variety of sports in what’s quite a large building. I spotted some nice terracotta panels depicting … Continue reading Fawkner Park →

12 December 2016: This great office/ house terminates the mini vista down ballarat street in villagey downtown Yarraville. It was built in 1887 but now looks quite different. It had single storey shops either side, the closest one demolished, with a verandah across all three. It also had a big parapet on top. That all … Continue reading Yarraville bank →

Dendy Brighton 11 December 2024 There’s so many long lost interwar cinemas, but here’s one that’s still a cinema but sadly nothing original left - the Dendy Brighton was built in 1940, and designed by Cowper Murphy Appleford in a rather bitsy Art Deco style, with two tone bricks and a sign that went up … Continue reading Lost Deco Cinemas →

10 December 2024 A couple of quick snaps of what you could say is a mansion on Punt Road near High Street while waiting for the bus. What you see now was created in stages up to 1885 by the Newbegin family, who enlarged a smaller house they bought here in 1873, and stayed until … Continue reading Punt Road, Prahran →

10 December 2024 This grand and picturesque house in Grattan Street Hawthorn called ‘Alloarmo’ near the river is unusual in a couple of ways. Firstly, it’s in two parts built many years apart in similar styles; the plainer brick section, enlivened only by a gothic bargeboard, is 1850s, while the more elaborate section is c1895, … Continue reading Gothic in two parts, Hawthorn →

8 December 2014: This wonderful crazy thing was built as the Avon Butter Factory in 1932 in #nicholsonstreetfitzroy, near Johnston. One of the early works by that inventive architect I G Anderson, where he fused Art Deco, Spanish and some Gothic too. No idea why they went so over the top here, and at the … Continue reading Spanish style butter factory →