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 →

10 August 2024 The slightly famous and quite delightful ‘Green House’ in Burnley Street Richmond, which is a perfectly preserved time capsule of (probably) post-war migrant upgrading of an old house, at a time when the English speaking community thought they were just too old and dingy to bother with. (Update : I was wrong, … Continue reading Green House, Burnley Street Richmond →

11 August 2019: A rather luxe 1960s #blockofflats at 247 #GlenEiraRoad, #Elsternwick; its got huge windows and strips of marble and fancy #wroughtiron balustrades, and semi-hidden parking - only four spots and four letterboxes - only 4 flats. I think they’re all 3 beds, quite spacious. The lounges face north over the house next door, … Continue reading Spacious 60s flats, Elsternwick →

9 August 2018: A #VictorianMansion that’s so big and severe it looks like a public building ! Which it has been most of its life. Built 1890, called Blackhall, no other info. Better known as a #SalvationArmy home for girls from 1915 to 1978, then it became a campus for #Preshil, Melbourne’s main alternative school, … Continue reading Mansion / school, Kew →