1 August 2024 Lost Sydney - someone said that maybe Melbourne’s losses were worse than other cities, and I said, well every city in the English speaking world lost a lot in the huge urban rebuilding of the 1950s-70s, before there was such a thing as heritage listing, so I’ve found a bunch of big … Continue reading Lost Sydney →

30 July 2024, photos from March : A rather dramatic example of facadism on Spencer Street West Melbourne, completed in 2017. When first proposed in 2006, they were going to demolish it completely, since heritage listings were way behind, but the art deco & modernism society and the @nationaltrustvic successfully got the facades preserved, with … Continue reading Facadism in Spencer Street →

28 July 2013: East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation/ Melbourne City Synagogue, 1877 but facade 1883 (what did it look like before then ?). Both parts designed by Crouch & Wilson, who were not Jewish, in fact did lots of churches, mostly Gothic but here classical, with slightly exotic pointed domes. Inside, rather spacious, also classical, with … Continue reading East Melbourne Synagogue →

27 July 2024 Repost 2019 Open House Melbourne : All Saints St Kilda East has an interior that’s much more elaborate than the exterior - the wonderful apse decoration was done in 1898 (designer not known) - pale green, dark terra cotta, and gold go together rather well. The painted decoration was comprehensively restored in … Continue reading All Saints St Kilda →

26 July 2024: Very nice Edwardian warehouse with some very elaborate Art Nouveau decoration in Queen Street near Lonsdale. All super curly, sort of vegetal forms, but so abstracted looks like seaweed. Designed by Gibbs & Finlay, and built in 1904, as an investment for solicitor Alexander Grant, the first occupant being a lithographer. The … Continue reading Art Nouveau in Queen Street →

Original post 12 July 2020, new photos 2024 Repost 2020: The Regal on Fitzroy Street St Kilda isnt just an old building with added floors, it’s amalgam of 3 different periods. Starting out as a Victorian villa, in 1922 it was greatly enlarged by adding a 4 storey building to the front, and a huge … Continue reading The Regal, Fitzroy Street →

9 January 2025 Yurnga is a fab looking and quite significant block of flats on Brighton Road Balaclava, opposite the shops, next to the Grosvenor Hotel. It was finished in 1921, making it amongst the boom in flats after WW1. At the time architects weren’t sure what style to use, but typically used red brick, … Continue reading Earlyish flats, St Kilda →

20 July 2024 This unusual building once stood in Elizabeth Street just north of Flinders Lane, and was one of the few commercial buildings completed in Melbourne by famed US architect Walter Burley Griffin. Built in 1924, it was noted then for having ‘wholly glazed’ front and rear facades and belonging ‘to our own time’. … Continue reading Leonard House 1924, first all-glass facade. →

20 July 2024 This stylish monster once stood on Southbank near Polly Woodside I think where the Plenary Centre now is. Called New Gordon House, it was a replacement for the 1880s charity housing Gordon House in Little Bourke Street, but with single rooms instead of dormitories, and located in what was then the fag … Continue reading New Gordon House →

17 July 2024 ‘Welsh Terrace’ on Mary Street, West St Kilda, a very impressive and unusual Edwardian era landmark. Terraces were still built up to WW1 but not super common, and not many as grand as this row of 6, with projecting paired rooms/porches, and broad arched verandahs. Likely designed by Blackett & Rankin in … Continue reading Artsy terrace, St Kilda (and a crime of passion) →