Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 1 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE REVIEW, VERSION 2

VOLUME 1

August 2000

12 Leonard Street Burwood l Tel (03) 9808 4329 l Fax (03) 9808 8844 l Mobile 015 530 540 Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 2 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian Contents

Volume 1

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 4 2. BRIEF ...... 5 3. STUDY METHOD ...... 6 3.1 Thematic Environmental History ...... 6 3.2 Field Survey...... 6 3.3 Heritage Overlay Areas ...... 7 3.4 Data Sheets...... 8 3.6 Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table ...... 8 4. RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 9 4.1 Port Phillip Heritage Review ...... 9 4.2 Heritage Places ...... 9 4.3 Conservation Principles and Guidelines...... 10 4.4 Heritage Register Nominations ...... 10 5. ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY...... 10 5.1 Introduction ...... 10 5.2 Migration ...... 11 5.2.1 Sandridge ...... 11 5.2.2 Emerald Hill ...... 12 5.2.3 St. Kilda...... 12 5.2.4 Post war immigration ...... 13 5.3 Transport ...... 14 5.3.1 The first railways ...... 14 5.3.2 The first tramways ...... 16 5.3.3 Reconstruction of the bay wharves ...... 17 5.3.4 Tramway and railway improvements ...... 17 5.3.5 Post war changes ...... 18 5.4 Industry ...... 19 5.4.1 Sandridge ...... 19 5.4.2 St. Kilda...... 20 5.4.3 South Melbourne ...... 21 5.4.4 Growth and prosperity ...... 21 5.5 Settlement: Growth and Change ...... 23 5.5.1 Three settlements: Sandridge, St. Kilda and Emerald Hill ...... 23 Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 3 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

5.5.2 The late nineteenth century Boom...... 28 5.5.3 Depression and recovery: the inter-war years ...... 32 5.6. Education ...... 35 5.6.1 The first schools ...... 35 5.6.2 Government intervention ...... 37 5.6.3 Other schools ...... 38 5.7. Government services ...... 39 5.7.1 Local government: the emergence of cities ...... 39 5.7.2 South Melbourne ...... 39 5.7.3 Port Melbourne ...... 41 5.7.4 St. Kilda...... 42 5.8 Ways of life ...... 44 5.8.1 Port Melbourne ...... 44 5.8.2 South Melbourne ...... 46 5.8.3 St. Kilda...... 49 6. HERITAGE OVERLAY AREAS...... 52 6.1 Introduction ...... 52 6.2 Port Melbourne - H01 ...... 54 6.3 Port Melbourne - The Garden City Housing Estates - HO2 ...... 64 6.4 South Melbourne, Albert Park, Middle Park and part St. Kilda - HO3 ...... 73 6.5 South Melbourne City Road Industrial Area - HO4 ...... 86 6.6 St. Kilda Hill - HO5...... 94 6.7 St. Kilda East - HO6 ...... 105 6.8 Elwood, St Kilda, Balaclava, Ripponlea - HO7 ...... 114 6.9 Elwood:Glenhuntly and Ormond Roads - HO8 ...... 129 6.10 Inkerman Street (east) - HO 315 ...... 140 6.11 Carlisle Street (east) - HO 316 ...... 148 6.12 Brighton Road (Elwood) - HO 318 ...... 155 6.13 Hotham Street (Balaclava) - HO 317 ...... 163 7. HORTICULTURAL ASSESSMENT ...... 168 Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 4 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

1. INTRODUCTION

This Review of the cultural heritage of the City of Port Phillip was commissioned in October, 1996. The consultant team was lead by Andrew Ward, architectural historian and supported by Francine Gilfedder, horticulturalist and garden historian. Data base management and map generation was undertaken by Ian Perry of Big Picture Software Pty. Ltd. and research assistance was provided by Jenny Dalrymple of Andrew Ward’s office. The project was directed by Jim Holdsworth, manager, Urban Design and Strategic Planning at the City of Port Phillip and he was assisted during the early stages of the Study by Peter Boyle, architect, as project officer.

The project was undertaken simultaneously with the City of Port Phillip Urban Character Study and a joint project steering committee was established to give support to the consultant teams. The membership of the committee was as follows:

• Councillor Dick Gross (chair), • Councillor Pat Browne, • Councillor Liz Johnstone • Jim Holdsworth, manager Urban Design and Strategic Planning, • David Spokes, general manager, Community Planning, • Steve Dunn, manager Business and Industry, • Geoff Austin, Department of Infrastructure, • Dale Wardlaw, Department of Infrastructure, • Kim Dovey, University of Melbourne, • Lyn Harrison, community representative, • Adair Bunnett, community representative, • Andrew Heslop, community representative, and • David Brand, community representative.

The support of the members of this committee throughout the course of the Study is acknowledged with thanks, their knowledge of the Municipality, their expertise and commitment to the task being highly valued.

The City of Port Phillip, having been formed by the amalgamation of the Cities of Port Melbourne, South Melbourne and St. Kilda, had inherited several urban conservation studies. They had been prepared at different times, commencing in 1975 and using different criteria for the evaluation of the significance of places. Furthermore, the municipal boundaries represented discontinuities in the identified urban conservation areas, placing the integrity of the new City’s conservation strategy at risk. The studies were as follows:

• Yuncken Freeman Ashton Wilson: South Melbourne Conservation Study (1975), • Jacobs Lewis Vines: Port Melbourne Conservation Study (1979), • Allom Lovell Sanderson Pty. Ltd.: South Melbourne Conservation Study (1987), • Nigel Lewis and Associates: St. Kilda Conservation Study Area 1 (1982), Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 5 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

• David Bick: St. Kilda Conservation Study Area 2 (1985), • Robert Peck von Hartel Trethowan with Henshall Hansen Associates: City of St. Kilda Twentieth Century Architectural Study (1992), and • Allom Lovell and Associates: Port Melbourne Conservation Study Review (1995).

2. BRIEF

The project brief was designed to address the inconsistencies inherent in the previous studies when viewed together. The objectives were stated in the brief as follows:

• “to provide a consistent approach to building grading and the recording of building significance across the municipality, for all architectural/historical periods including the twentieth century; • to identify and fill gaps in building records, e.g., to ensure that significant 20th century buildings across the municipality are identified; • to ensure that building gradings are updated, e.g., some buildings have been demolished; • to identify historically significant streetscapes, other public spaces, parks or elements within them worthy of protection; • to provide the strategic basis for any future statutory heritage controls in the Planning Scheme using the new Heritage Place Control.”

The project tasks were to:

• Review the building gradings and assessments from the earlier studies. • Assess 20th century buildings across the whole of the municipality to complement the work previously undertaken in the former City of St. Kilda. • Investigate and complete building identification forms and citations for the commercial and industrial areas of Port Melbourne that were not included in the 1995 review. • Review the Port Melbourne recommendations for area controls based on the new Model Heritage Place control. • Prepare plans identifying the location of all graded buildings and existing and proposed urban conservation area boundaries. • List those buildings recommended for inclusion in the Register of the National Estate and the Victorian Historic Buildings Register. • Identify and assess the public spaces and parks within the City of Port Phillip and their contents including significant trees, monuments and sculptures. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 6 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

3. STUDY METHOD

3.1 Thematic Environmental History

A working paper was prepared (no.1) summarising the findings of the environmental histories prepared by earlier consultants so as to establish an historical context for the forthcoming field work. It was, however, agreed at an early stage, that the Review should be founded in a new thematic history of the whole of the Municipality using the trial framework of themes contained in the report entitled “Principal Australian Historic Themes: A Guide for heritage agencies” (draft), being a document prepared under the Australian Heritage Commission’s National Heritage Co-ordination Strategy. This work was carried out and constitutes section 4 of the Report. The work previously undertaken by the consultants in the reports noted above was used as a source of information in the thematic history which also drew on available published histories of the former Cities of Port Melbourne, South Melbourne and St. Kilda. This work was undertaken by Andrew Ward.

3.2 Field Survey

The Thematic Environmental History provided a basis for the identification and evaluation of the significance of places in the field. The criteria for the assessment of cultural heritage significance adopted by the Australian Heritage Commission in April, 1990 were used in conjunction with the history and the field inspections to provide preliminary assessments of significance for all properties in the Municipality. A working paper (no.4) was prepared to explain how these criteria would be applied and used in the generation of computerised maps. These maps recorded information according to a system of ranking which can be explained in the following terms:

Levels of importance were simplified along traditional lines, assigning the letter A to places considered to be on national importance, B to those of regional importance and C to those of local importance. These levels of importance had implications for the introduction or confirmation of existing statutory control provisions in the Planning Scheme. Where a place was considered to have lesser importance than level C, it was ranked D, meaning that it was likely to be substantially intact but merely representative of an era. Places of lesser cultural value were ranked E, usually implying that the place had been defaced, but not irretrievably, or that it was aesthetically undistinguished. Finally, a place was ranked F if it was considered to have been important in the past but as a result of intervention now so compromised that it was likely to be of interest only. Places having for planning purposes no cultural value were ranked N.

It is important to note when interpreting the maps produced in this way that they represent a “picture” of the Municipality that is in many instances based upon imperfect data. A quick visual inspection of the exterior of a building, after all, cannot be said to constitute a thorough appraisal. By the same token, however, if a data sheet has been prepared for a place, then the recommendations arising from the review of this data sheet have been incorporated in the maps and may therefore be counted as a Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 7 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian firm basis for future planning decisions. The maps are therefore of greatest value for their capacity to graphically present an overview of the Municipality, not only in terms of its evolution but also in terms of the cultural value of neighbourhoods. They have been used to assist the consultant to identify potential heritage overlay areas.

The maps themselves used a digital base supplied to Council by the State Government. One of the layers of this base consists of a series of polygons representing the boundaries of properties. The mapping software allows data fields to be attached to each property with the result that the map becomes a front end to a data base table. Data generated during this Review, however, was included on the map by adding a separate data base table, linked to the map table by a unique identifying number. In this way, one can work on the data in the heritage table independently of the map. In its final form, the Review consists of data sheets for individual places linked to the map by the appropriate identifying numbers. The mapping software was Mapinfo, having the capability of linking with Microsoft Access97 for the storage of linked data.

3.3 Heritage Overlay Areas

These areas were identified using the maps in conjunction with the work of the previous consultants. Further inspection was then undertaken in the field to verify this Consultant’s findings. There are important changes between the work of the earlier consultants and this Review that can be accounted for in the following ways:

• in some instances, places have been altered since the earlier surveys. In extreme circumstances, contributory buildings have been demolished. This was, not surprisingly, most evident in the areas that had not been protected by planning scheme control. • given the new planning scheme provisions and more particularly the urban character provisions, it was determined that heritage controls should only apply to those areas where the fabric of the place was considered to be so important that it should not be demolished. In other words, the areas of lesser cultural value could not unreasonably be managed by the urban character provisions of the Scheme. It is for this reason that the proposed heritage overlay areas have been drawn with precision and form highly irregular patterns. Their focus, after all, is on the conservation of fabric as well as character. It is argued in this Review that discrete areas, bounded more or less neatly by streets and natural boundaries are best managed by the urban character controls with heritage overlay controls applying only to those areas within the urban character areas where demolition control is required. It is partly as a consequence, therefore, of the new planning provisions, that the approach to the identification of the heritage overlay areas has changed. • finally, and as a consequence of the computerised mapping process, changes were made on the basis of data that had been prepared consistently over the whole of the Municipality, irrespective of past municipal boundaries. Consistency carries with it the fact that comparative evaluations were made for places in this Review over a much larger area than had previously been subject to consideration. In other words, some areas, which when assessed in terms of the former municipal Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 8 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

boundaries, were arguably the most important of their respective types, were of much lesser importance when assessed comparatively over the wider municipality of Port Phillip.

Once identified, the areas were documented in terms of their present circumstances and the elements which give them distinction. Their history was then summarised and their position in the thematic framework identified prior to preparing statements of significance with consequent recommendations.

3.4 Data Sheets

Data sheets have been prepared for several additional places previously undocumented. They include the heritage overlay areas themselves, individually significant places situated outside of the areas and a number of additional places. A standard format has been used that is similar to the heritage overlay area data sheets. Big Picture Software Pty. Ltd. was engaged during the course of the Study period to prepare a data base incorporating the data sheets for the individual places undertaken as a part of this Study as well as the work of all previous consultants. The findings of the past consultants have been reviewed as a part of this Study using the same criteria, thereby introducing consistency to the assessments. This data base forms an additional four volumes of this report.

3.6 Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table

This schedule was prepared using the assessments arising from the field survey and checking them wherever possible against the assessments of the earlier consultants. It includes the identified heritage overlay areas and all places of individual significance outside of those areas. Within the areas, only those places considered to be of regional or state importance have been listed. It follows that there are many places of individual significance at the local level within the identified heritage overlay areas that have not been separately listed.

Generally speaking, paint colour scheme controls have been proposed only in the retail streets of the heritage overlay areas. These controls are not proposed in the residential areas except where a place is individually listed. Interior controls for individually listed places have only been proposed where elements of the interior of a place are known to contribute to its significance in an important way. This may be on account of their architectural or aesthetic value or simply because a building of a certain type is expected to have rooms of a certain type, the absence of defacement of which would impact on its significance. By way of example, a post office would be expected to have a public space; a railway station, waiting rooms, and so on. Planning decisions impacting on the significance of the building should respect the integrity of these spaces, irrespective of their aesthetic values. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 9 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

4. RECOMMENDATIONS

It is recommended that the findings of the Port Phillip Heritage Review (1998) be adopted by Council for application in the following ways:

4.1 Port Phillip Heritage Review

List the Heritage Review document as an Incorporated Document in Clause 81 of the Port Phillip Planning Scheme. This will have the effect of incorporating the Statements of Significance for the 8 heritage areas and the citations for individually significant heritage buildings into the Planning Scheme.

4.2 Heritage Places (including heritage overlay areas and individually significant heritage buildings, structures, gardens and trees)

Inclusion of the recommendations of the Heritage Review in the schedule or maps to Clause 43.01 of the Port Phillip Planning Scheme. This would include the 8 nominated heritage areas and the list of individual heritage places that have been identified and substantiated.

Organisation of all preliminary heritage gradings into the following categories: l all places given a preliminary grading of A, B, C or D within a Heritage Overlay or A, B or C outside a Heritage Overlay should be collectively termed “Significant Heritage Places” and l all places given a preliminary grading of E or F inside a Heritage Overlay or D, E or F outside a Heritage Overlay should be collectively termed “Contributory Heritage Places”, for the purpose of developing policy and administering the recommendations of the Heritage Review.

A map identifying significant, contributory and non-contributory buildings and provide a tool to assist the Council in interpreting how to apply the various chapters of the Port Phillip Design Manual.

Also, that the following approach should be adopted as Council policy in relation to the demolition of Significant or Contributory Heritage Places: l Any Significant Heritage Place identified in the Port Phillip Heritage Review (1998) and included Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 10 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

in the Heritage, Overlay (Clause 43.01) should be conserved,

l Any Contributory Heritage Place identified in the Port Phillip Heritage Review (1998) and included in the Heritage Overlay (Clause 43.01) should be conserved. However, an application to demolish part or all of a Contributory Heritage Place will be considered where: l it is not part of an intact streetscape; and l it is structurally unsound or can not feasibly be reused; and l the applicant can demonstrate that a replacement building will make a positive contribution to the area; and l the replacement building complies with other parts of this policy.

A planning permit application for buildings and works to significant and contributory heritages places should be required to be consistent with the relevant Guidelines contained in the referenced Port Phillip Design Manual.

4.3 Conservation Principles and Guidelines

Integration of conservation principles and guidelines into the Neighbourhood Policies, Clause 22 of the Port Phillip Planning Scheme and the Port Phillip Design Manual which will be a referenced document in the Port Phillip Planning Scheme.

4.4 Heritage Register Nominations

Nominate all ‘A’ graded heritage places (that have not previously been nominated) for inclusion by Heritage Victoria on the Victorian Heritage Register.

5. ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY

5.1 Introduction

The area now administered by the City of Port Phillip and forming the eastern shore line and hinterland of Port Phillip Bay from Garden City in the north to Elwood in the south has a population of approximately 70,000. The majority of residents are aged between 20 and 44 and of these residents 60 per cent are Australian born. The main countries from which overseas residents have migrated are the United Kingdom, the former USSR, Greece and Poland1 . It is both culturally and historically diverse and it must surely be that this diversity arises to a large extent from the presence of the sea which over the aeons has shaped the coastline and given form to the hinterland. It has in turn created a unique opportunity to build a place with its own distinctive lifestyles. They take its natural heritage as a starting point and add an overlay of history inextricably linked with the bay. At Port Melbourne, it is the role of the bay wharves, since the arrival of the first immigrants, that have shaped its destiny.

1 City of Port Phillip: Port Phillip at a Glance. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 11 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

At South Melbourne it was the pre-eminence overlooking the bay at Emerald Hill that attracted initial settlement, not only because of the views obtainable but also because the land was permanently dry. Finally, at St Kilda, the hill was attractive to Melbourne’s business classes as a healthy place of residence, exposed to bay views and the sea air, whilst the shoreline at this point became a resort which has remained extraordinarily popular throughout this city’s history. The story, of course is more complex than this and one which would take considerable time and more than a passing familiarity with the area to do it justice. This history, therefore, concentrates on those themes which give meaning to the built environment and therefore cultural value to Port Phillip, the place. It constitutes a brief overview and is dealt with at times in greater detail in the histories prepared in conjunction with the earlier conservation studies.

5.2 Migration

5.2.1 Sandridge

The first wave of migration through Sandridge was prompted by the reports of the early explorers including Hume and Hovell (1824-25) and others who followed, most notably Major Thomas Mitchell, the New South Wales surveyor general, in 1836. Their comments on the nature of the country they had traversed coincided with a growing demand for grazing land in the established colonies of Tasmania and New South Wales. John Batman’s ship, “Rebecca” first anchored in Port Phillip Bay in 1835 and was followed by a party organised by John Pascoe Fawkner in August of the same year. Melbourne has its origins in the settlement established by these pioneers and Don Garden in his 150th anniversary history of Victoria2 relates that from the latter part of 1835, “a handful of vessels began to appear in Port Phillip Bay discharging their cargoes of sheep onto its shores”. By the following year the “dribble [of pastoralists had turned] into a steady flow”. William Lonsdale arrived in October, 1836 as the settlement’s first police magistrate, remaining in charge until Charles LaTrobe arrived as superintendent in October 1839. During 1838 and 1839 an influx of settlers from New South Wales brought about a social and economic re-orientation towards Sydney but from 1840 the majority of arrivals came direct from Britain3 , often under a variety of assisted migration schemes. Between 1844 and 1848 943 felons who had already undergone a period of imprisonment in England arrived in Melbourne as “Pentonvillians” in an attempt to reduce the labour shortage4 .

All of this was to change, however, with the discovery of gold in 1851. From September, 1852, Hobson’s Bay was jammed with ships and Sandridge was alive with newcomers. During that year, 94,664 people arrived in Victoria by sea, nearly 45,000 of whose citizens were from Britain and a good many more from other Australian colonies. Countries well represented included Germany, France, Italy, Denmark and America, many of whom, no doubt, had travelled via the California goldfields. A glance at the early directories reveals an overbearing majority of Anglo-Saxon names

2 Garden, D., Victoria A History, Nelson (1984), p.30. 3 Ibid, p.37. 4 Ibid, pp.61-62. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 12 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian in Sandridge, but there are others too, including Dundass and Vout, builders, joiners and wheelwrights, Henry Coultas, a tailer, Jacobus Verbrugge, general dealer and a Peter Hollthuson in Nott Street. Liardet, in spite of his name, was English, having been born in Chelsea in 1799. The migrants were overwhelmingly male and under forty-five years of age, the typical Sandridge resident being a young, single, adult male, British born and giving his religion as Church of England5 . Children who had lost their parents were a distinctive sub-group in Melbourne’s population, being accommodated in purpose built orphanages at locations including Emerald Hill (the Melbourne Protestant Orphange) and Cecil street (the Catholic orphanage of St. Vincent de Paul).

5.2.2 Emerald Hill

Transient accommodation was provided with official sanction at Emerald Hill where ten acres had been reserved for the Melbourne Orphan Asylum. When William Howitt arrived in September, 1852, the locality was covered in tents in which hundreds of immigrants were housed at the punitive rate of five shillings a week6 . From December, a much larger Canvas Town of government tents with some timber barracks near Princes Bridge “bloomed” along the west side of St. Kilda Road, south of its junction with City Road7 . Thousands were housed there until 1854. In the autumn of 1853 a fever epidemic swept through the place and the ladies’ Dorcas Society, set up in connection with St. James church, offered support, its efforts being memorialised today in the name Dorcas Street, this thoroughfare now forming a boundary of Port Phillip City. The Chinese had built a two- storeyed lodging house at the southern extremity of Emerald Hill by June, 1855. It was filled to capacity and surrounded by tents. A wooden joss house was opened in the following year and it was replaced in 1866 by the more permanent surviving building occupied by the Sze Yap Society in Raglan Street8.

5.2.3 St. Kilda

Quarantine stations were established with a view to isolating new arrivals for strict periods prior to their release into society. By definition, these were provided in remote locations, a permanent quarantine station being established at Point Nepean in 1853. The first such station, however, arose from tragic circumstances when the “Glen Huntly” arrived at Williamstown with the fever on 17.4.1840. The Port Phillip authorities dispatched the vessel to the Red Bluff, at St. Kilda where two quarantine camps were set up, one for fever patients and the other for emigrants free from disease. The incident underscored the practice of shipping migrants out to the colonies in unseaworthy vessels which invariably experienced an outbreak of fever in the tropics on their journey south. The station at the Red Bluff was closed in June, 1840 whilst the graves, enclosed by a picket fence, marked the site of the tragedy for many years. Later, on 27.8.1898, in the presence of the civic

5 U’Ren, N. and Turnbull, N., op.cit., p.22. 6 Ibid, p.46. 7 Ibid, p.47. 8 ibid, op.cit., p. 64. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 13 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian authorities of St. Kilda, the graves were re-opened and the mortal remains of the “Glen Huntly’s” unfortunate passengers transferred to the St. Kilda cemetery9.

St. Kilda was unusual in another sense for it was here during the inter war period that the Jewish community emerged as a distinct social group. It built on a Jewish presence in the area from the nineteenth century. Cooper notes that there were nearly fifty Jewish families here in 1871 and that they formed the St. Kilda Hebrew Congregation in that year10. A synagogue in Charnwood Avenue designed by Crouch and Wilson was consecrated in September, 1872 and it was followed by a school in 1874, with a building being erected in 1896. In March, 1927 a new synagogue to replace the original building was designed by J. Plottel in the Byzantine style and consecrated in March, 1927. The Jewish community has since flourished in St. Kilda and has been associated with several prominent Australians including Moritz Michaelis, Sir John Monash, Sir Isaac Isaacs and Sir Zelmanm Cowen, their homes remaining in the area.

5.2.4 Post war immigration

Just as the inner bayside suburbs felt the impact of the flood of emigrants that came with the gold rush, so too, a century later, they underwent change as a result of events outside of their control. In the late 1940’s Australia accepted large numbers of displaced persons and refugees from war-ravaged Europe, most of whom were from central Europe. Again, government assisted migration schemes encouraged Britains and southern Europeans, especially from Italy and Greece, to make their homes in Australia. The majority settled in the principal urban centres where industry offered employment opportunities. Victoria gained an average of over 30,000 migrants per annum from 1947 to 1961, transforming the state into a multicultural society.

Bonegilla was the principal migrant camp situated near Albury-Wodonga but in 1952 another camp was opened at Fishermen’s Bend, receiving new arrivals until 1975. By this time, the percentage of foreign born people in Port Melbourne’s population had increased from 5% in 1954 to 27%11. Most had come from Greece with much smaller numbers from Turkey or Lebanon and Italy. A similar situation prevailed in South Melbourne with Greek migrants again dominating, as they also did in Prahran. The strength of the new citizens was evidenced by a growth in popularity of soccer and by the presence of the Greek Orthodox church, which had acquired the former Clarendon Presbyterian church opposite St. Lukes c. 1966. In St. Kilda notable demonstrations of its migrant population took the form of highly successful restaurants such as the “Galleon Café”, “Leo’s”, from 1956 and

9 Cooper,J.B., op.cit., pp30-33. 10 Ibid, pp.356-359 for an account of the Jewish presence in St. Kilda up to 1930. 11 Census figures quoted in U’Ren, N., and Turnbull, N., p.260. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 14 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

“Scheherazade” from 1958, offering fare considered exotic by the standards of the time.

5.3 Transport

5.3.1 The first railways

Ruhen observes in his history of the Port of Melbourne that the spot colonial advance parties most frequently chose for a village or trading post was as far up any good navigable river as the small ships of the day could penetrate12. Here, beyond tidal influence, settlers not only obtained a source of fresh water but also attained a measure of weed and worm control for their craft, since salt water organisms could not survive at freshwater berths. This important principal guiding urban location appears to have set the scene for the founding role and early development of Sandridge. For here, the larger ships, unable to travel up the Yarra River, would weigh anchor, their cargoes being conveyed by barges at additional expense and damage to dry land. Sandridge, therefore, has its origins as a transfer point for goods and passengers on their journeys to and from Melbourne. As early as 27.10.1839 the sailors of the “David Clark” were carrying female passengers and children on their backs through the surf to the shore at Sandridge13 . From this point they walked to the “canvas town”, a temporary refuge set up by Charles La Trobe to the west of St. Kilda Road near the site of Prince Henry’s hospital. When Wilbraham Frederick Evelyn Liardet arrived in November of that year, he saw the potential of the place as a transfer point, opening his “Brighton Pier” hotel a year later with a narrow jetty projecting tenuously into the bay. Entrepreneurs like Liardet have their place in the foundation of early settlements, comparable pioneers including James Maiden and Henry Hopwood who in 1844 and after 1846 respectively established punts at Moama and Echuca on the colonial border. Nevertheless, the first wharves were established downstream from the falls, in the Yarra River.

At the same time as Liardet was opening his hotel and jetty, the bay steamer “Aphraisia” was running a ferry service between Williamstown and Sandridge. Following the gold discoveries of 1851, the coastal settlement gained business when intercolonial traders, unable to wait their turn for crowded wharf space in the river, discharged their passengers and lighter cargo at Liardet’s beach14

The question of improvements to the overland track connecting the beach with Melbourne town had been broached at an early date when the government surveyor at Port Phillip, Robert Hoddle, proposed a “rail road” in March 1839. His plan envisaged a railway pier at Hobson’s Bay and a straight line of railway cutting across the meandering track into town to terminate on the north side of the river at the upstream end of the swinging basin. It was, however, the combined impetus of separation and the gold rush, in 1851, which led to the realisation of this somewhat premature vision. The Melbourne and Hobsons Bay Railway Co. was formed in August, 1852, to build a line planned by James Blackburn, the City surveyor, between Sandridge and Melbourne. Construction commenced immediately with a contract being let, among others, to Willoughby and Mason for the construction of a pier at Sandridge.

12 Ruhen, O., Port of Melbourne 1835-1976, Cassell Australia (1976), p.16. 13 Ruhen, O., op.cit., p.25. 14 Ruhen, O., op.cit., p.50. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 15 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Services commenced on 12.9.1854. It was the first steam hauled railway in the country, a distinction attributable to the rapid growth of the colonial capital arising from the exploitation of the mineral wealth of its hinterland. For the first time, Melbourne was connected with its deep water port by an efficient means of transportation.

In November, the company inaugurated a ferry service from the railway pier to Williamstown. The vessel, known as the “Comet”, conveyed passengers from Geelong for a brief period prior to 1859, the ferry service itself lasting until 1930.15

The first year of railway operations returned an eight per cent dividend to the shareholders who agreed to the construction of a branch line to St. Kilda. It was opened on 13.5.1857, construction being to the highest standards. Today, the engineer’s name, William Elsdon, is incised on a stone plaque on the Dorcas Street road bridge with the year 1857 alongside as testimony to the standard of workmanship. The now closed station building at St. Kilda survives as the oldest building of its type in the State, predating Edward Snell’s station building at Werribee by at least a month and the government’s oldest surviving station building at Williamstown by eighteen months. Whereas Sandridge generated 570,000 passenger journeys from 31.10.1857 to 31.10.1858, St. Kilda’s total over the same period was almost 937,000 with a mere 32,928 being attributable to Emerald Hill16 . Both lines were duplicated during the next three years and in the summer of 1860-61 early morning special trains ran to Sandridge for the convenience of patrons of the Hobsons Bay Sea Bathing Co17 .

The line between the sea port and its parent settlement was almost simultaneously further strengthened by the opening of Australia’s first electric telegraph line on 3.3.1854. The system was rapidly expanded nationally, with South Australia’s first line, also between port and capital, opening in November, 185518 .

Construction of the railway line between the terminus at St. Kilda and Bay Street, Brighton, was authorized on 24th. November, 1857. The work was undertaken by the St. Kilda and Brighton Railway Co. by the contractor William Randle who was awarded the contract in August, 1858. The first trains ran on 3rd. December, 1859. Today, the rail over bridges at Carlisle, Nightingale and Grosvenor Streets, Balaclava, incorporate the original bluestone abutments and piers erected by Randle almost 140 years ago.

Wharfage accommodation by the late 1850’s was adequate only for small vessels, unloading a total of 1,440 tons daily. The Railway pier, however, could unload 900 tons daily and the Sandridge pier 500 tons. Town pier, at Sandridge, could handle up to 163 tons and the Williamstown railway pier and breakwater 1,165 tons19 .

15Harrigan, L.J., Victorian Railways to ’62 Victorian Railways Public Relations and Betterment Board (1962), p.41. 16Statistics of the Melbourne and Hobsons Bay Railway Co. in Harrigan, L>J>, op.cit., p.45. 17Harrigan, L.J., op.cit., p.42. 18 See Moyal, A., Clear Across Australia: A History of Telecommunications, Nelson, (1984), pp.15-34 for an account of the first Australian telegraphy installations. 8 Ruhen, O., op.cit., p.85. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 16 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Melbourne’s merchants and traders sought to promote the efficiency of the port ultimately leading to the passing of the Melbourne Harbour Trust Act in 1876. It threatened the viability of the bayside ports; A.T.Clark, M.L.A. for Williamstown, complaining about the free traders’ ambitions to improve the river wharves by raising loans of up to £250,00020. The Hobsons Bay Railway Co. also feared the additional competition created by the provision of a deepened channel, for in those days, the company had a monopoly over the conveyance of goods unloaded at Sandridge for transfer into Melbourne. When Sir John Coode submitted his general plan of harbour improvements in 1879, the Sandridge and Williamstown councils united in their stand against his proposals to improve the river wharves. Their efforts, however, were in vain, excavation of the Coode canal being completed by September, 1886. Nevertheless, the Trust’s engineer, J.Brady, argued at that time that the bay piers would still be required as a consequence of the impact of the expanding rail network on the amounts of goods passing through the port. He also maintained that they were required to facilitate the speedy turnaround of mail steamers. In September 1889 the Railways Department let a contract for the construction of a goods office on the Railway pier21.

The Melbourne and Hobsons Bay United Railway Co. had emerged on 30.6.1865 from the amalgamation of the Melbourne and Hobsons Bay and the Melbourne Railway Co. Finally, on 1.7.1878, the United Co. was purchased by the government: an action which led to the improvement of services through the reconstruction of railway stations at South Melbourne (1883), Albert Park (1880), Middle Park, Graham (1887) and Port Melbourne (1898). The Hobsons Bay Co. workshops at Port Melbourne were replaced in 1882 with portions of the Melbourne Exhibition buildings of 1880. They were eventually closed in 1917 and demolished soon afterwards22.

5.3.2 The first tramways

On 17.6.1890 the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Co. opened its cable tramway to South Melbourne, followed by the Port Melbourne line on 20.6.1890. The South Melbourne service crossed the Yarra river on Queens Bridge and travelled down City Road (then Sandridge Road) to Bay Street to the Town pier, on the site of the present Port Melbourne Yacht Club, where it turned north along Beach Street to terminate at the Railway pier. There was a depot in Beach Street on the north side of the intersection with Donaldson Street and an engine house in City Road. The Town pier would have been an interesting place at that time for it was served by a horse powered street tramway carrying coal from the pier to the South Melbourne gas works in Pickles Street and the sugar works on the site of the present “Sandridge Bay Towers” development. The tramway skirted the north side of the boat harbour, between Esplanade East and Esplanade West and the south side of the lagoon on its run out to the gas works. The South Melbourne cable tramway route branched off the Port Melbourne line at Clarendon Street and followed the alignment of the present electric tramway to South Melbourne Beach where there was a depot. The line between Windsor railway station and

20 Ruhen, O., op.cit., p.121. 21 Report of the Railways Commissioners for year ending 30.6.1890, p.54. 22 Harrigan, L.J., op.cit., p. 212. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 17 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian the Village Belle was the last cable powered tramway to be opened in Melbourne. The first trams ran in October, 1891 and the line provided a useful access to the sea front for passengers transferring from the Prahran cable line in Chapel Street, from the railway stations at Windsor and St. Kilda and later also from the electric trams in St. Kilda Road23.

5.3.3 Reconstruction of the bay wharves

By 1899 the Railway pier had become the subject of public criticism, there being no platforms for the special passenger trains that ran out to the ships. Shelter from the rain and the heat of the day was also lacking yet of the 1.6 million tons of goods handled by the Port of Melbourne in that year, 300,000 were still being discharged at the bay piers24. By the turn of the century, Ruhen notes that the river berths and the new Victoria Dock handled most of the shipping.25 The Railway Department’s control of the piers was assumed by the Harbour Trust in March, 1913, just nine months following the commencement of the construction of a new pier to be known as Prince’s pier from 1922. The work was finished in January, 1916, the entire structure being 1,902 feet long and 186 feet wide with two sheds providing accommodation for the Customs Department and the shipping companies. Gangways from the sheds bridged the railway lines and there were berths for four large vessels. . The construction of the Montague shipping shed in 1915 formed a part of the Railways’ plan to capture the expanding bayside trade, especially for the movement of grain and wool26.

When the old Railway pier, later known as Station pier, was rebuilt in 1926, improved accommodation was provided for the transhipment of goods and passengers along with finger wharves for the bay steamer traffic. Included in the works was the extension of the Port Melbourne station platform to the east finger wharf for the use of electric trains. The construction of the Centenary Bridge followed soon afterwards in 1934. Built by the Harbour Trust, it was viewed as the “first step towards the provision of a striking entrance to the City”27. Winners of the competition for the design of the bridge were the architects Hughes and Orme in conjunction with engineers W.G. Dempster and J.J.O’Donnell. It was envisaged that the bridge would accommodate a 66 foot wide roadway as well as two tramlines, though as Building pointed out, “the tramways authorities in Melbourne [had]…not been approached in this matter and it is unlikely they will extend the cable tramline to Port Melbourne beyond its present terminus”28.

5.3.4 Tramway and railway improvements

When the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board took over management of the cable tramway system on 1.11.1919 it set about formulating a comprehensive plan for the integration and development of the system as a whole. The conversion of the cable system to electric traction formed a part of this

23 Keating, J.D., Mind the Curve! A history of the cable trams, MUP, (1970), p.48. 24 Ruhen, O., op.cit., p. 180. 25 Ruhen, O., op.cit., p. 182. 26 Trust News, 10/89, pp.6-7. 27 Building, 12.2.1934, p.97 in Allom Lovell and associates: “Port Melbourne Conservation Study Review”, p.30. 28 ibid. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 18 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian plan, the first complete route to close also being the newest, running between Windsor and the Village Belle. It was closed on 29.8.1925. By October, 1926 the Board had opened its South Melbourne and St. Kilda Beach electric tramway29 Further conversions within the City of Port Phillip were forestalled by the Depression, the Port and South Melbourne lines eventually closing on 13.3.1937. Although the majority of lines were converted to electric tramway operation, the Port Melbourne route was replaced by buses, the disused cable tramway tracks in Bay street remaining in situ for many years.

The Railways Department responded to the Tramways Board’s improvements by electrifying the Port Melbourne line on 26.10.1919 and introducing electric services to Prince’s pier. Both the bay excursion trains and Prince’s pier services were withdrawn in November, 1930. “The Boat Train” was another initiative designed to stimulate rail traffic. Connecting with ships at Station pier, the inaugural service was introduced on 73.1936 and the last “Boat Train” ran in October, 1939. The first electric trains on the St. Kilda line were introduced on 31.8.1919, connecting with the Railways operated electric tramway service to Brighton from May, 1906. This service was noteworthy as the first permanent electric tramway to run in the streets of Melbourne. It was cut back progressively from 1957 to 1959.

5.3.5 Post war changes

The post war years have been associated with a decline in the use of public transport and a corresponding increase in the number of private motor vehicle journeys. The City of Port Phillip has suffered from this process of change by the completion of intrusive road works. The Spencer Street bridge had been opened in 1930 and it was followed by the King street bridge on 12.4.1961. The reconstruction of the St. Kilda Junction in 1968 resulted in the loss of an important urban character element, marked as it was by a complex tramway junction with overhead pointman’s cabin and late Victorian street architecture. The widening of High street followed in 1970, leading to the partial destruction of one of St. Kilda’s most important shopping precincts. In 1973 the fun fair near Luna Park was removed and Marine Parade widened to better serve as a major outlet to the southern coastal suburbs. More recently, the suburban trains to Port Melbourne and St. Kilda have been replaced by light rail services and the rail yards and pier sidings removed. Today, medium density housing estates occupy the land where rakes of goods trucks and workshops once stood. The station buildings on both lines have been either closed or demolished. The Centenary bridge was demolished in February, 1991 and the east finger wharf at Station pier followed soon afterwards, leading to fundamental changes in the character of the area. Finally, Princes pier was gutted by fire in 1996 and it remains today, stripped of most of its buildings and closed to foot traffic. The Graham Street overpass lives on as an unsightly reminder of a past need to separate road and rail traffic, the present light railway to Port Melbourne scarcely justifying a structure of this magnitude.

29 Allom Lovell Sanderson Pty. Ltd., “South Melbourne Urban Conservation Study”, 5/1987, v.1, p.4/18. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 19 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

5.4 Industry

5.4.1 Sandridge

Sandridge, unlike St. Kilda and South Melbourne, has its origins in industry: the shipping industry, with all of the associated functions that facilitate the transhipment of goods and the fitting out of ships with their crews. Compelling though this view is of the place, it is a constricting one for the industrial history of Port Melbourne is a far more varied one.

Certainly, the influx of fortune seekers who arrived with the discovery of gold in 1851 came in ships which required maintenance and ships chandlers to fit them out. But their arrival also gave birth to a transport industry, the American, Freeman Cobb operating a carrier’s business briefly from the port. Storage yards were required to hold goods recently arrived and there were boatmen, making small fortunes30 in ferrying people to and from boats anchored in the bay. U’Ren and Turnbull state that there were also breweries, including James Byrne’s in Stoke Street, coopers and blacksmiths in operation from the early 1850’s31. It was warehousing, however, which stood out. Ingles, Adam and Gresham, and Callender and Caldwell were two of the firms which had stores and offices in King Street and a major store in Sandridge.

When the railway arrived in 1854 it spawned its own network of industrial establishments consisting of the workshops of the Hobsons Bay Railway Co. and its Sandridge shipping shed. In the same year the Swallow and Ariell Steam Biscuit Manufactory was founded in rented premises in Rouse Street. Thomas Swallow began by making ships biscuits and built a three storeyed factory in 1858, taking Thomas Ariell in as a partner in 1859. The factory faced the railway workshops and was a mere stone’s throw from the cable tram terminus after 1890. It was the first such manufacturing establishment in Victoria, importing the first automatic biscuit making machine in 1880.

The Town pier, forming an extension of Bay Street, was crucially linked with the siting of at least two important factories. One was the sugar works, in existence at least as early as 1860 and burnt out in 1875. It was situated on Beach Street between Dow Street and Esplanade West and was taken over in 1876 by the ironmongers, Francis and Nott, who stayed there briefly before shifting to Bay Street. The works fell into disuse until 1887 when the Port Melbourne Sugar refinery was opened east of the lagoon. Its life was short lived however, and in May of the same year extensive rebuilding was undertaken by Harpers, the new owners who were employing 150 men at their starch factory by October. Robert Harper and Co. had been established in 1865, moving to Port Melbourne in 1885. In 1899 the firm’s Beach street complex was substantially enlarged through the incorporation of the industrial buildings constructed nearby in 1891 by the Australasian Sugar refining Co. In 1894, CSR strengthened its monopoly hold on the industry by purchasing this factory complex and closing it down. The MMBW litho plan of 1894 illustrates the relationship between Harpers, the refinery and the Town pier, showing a tramway line conveying coal from the pier to the refinery and thence 30 U’Ren, N., and Turnbull, N., op. cit., p.21. 31 Ibid, pp.21-22. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 20 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian alongside the lagoon to the works of the Metropolitan Gas Company in Pickles Street. A second sugar works is shown on the south side of the same lagoon whilst Harper’s is described as an oatmeal factory. Thus the shoreline between the railway station and the lagoon during the nineteenth century was dominated by major industrial establishments, recalled especially today by the now disused station building at Port Melbourne and the premises of the starch factory, now converted into apartments.

Further inland, in the vicinity of the lagoon which may have served as repository for industrial waste, Schumacher’s Flour Mill Furnishing Works, manufacturers of milling plant, was opened in 1887 near the gasworks, in Graham Street. There was also a substantial distillery in Danks Street, facing one of the gas company’s gas holders and close by the lagoon. In Ingles Street, the MMBW litho plan of 1894 shows the works of the Apollo Candle Factory and further west in the vicinity of the present Westgate freeway Felton Grimwade’s Chemical Works. At this time, the extensive triangular shaped area of land contained by Ingles Street, Normanby Road and the Westgate freeway consisted of large expanses of vacant land interspersed with substantial industrial establishments including the municipal abattoir in Boundary street, founded in 1861.

The shipping industry provided employment throughout the nineteenth century. In 1860, the Sands and McDougall directory shows that there were two shipwrights on the waterside of Beach Street and a ships smith on the inland side. There was a sailmaker in Nott Street and a coal store in Bay Street along with the usual cottage industries comprised of farriers, bootmakers, bakers, milliners, tinsmiths, ironmongers, tailors, upholsterers, locksmiths, engineers and building contractors. Industries to survive into the 1890’s32 dependant upon a buoyant shipping trade included that of William Libby, sailmaker in Bay Street, J. Close and Co., stevedores in Beach Street, William Macavoy, stevedores in Dow Street, David Fisher, the ships smith in Nott Street, the Victorian Stevedoring Co. on the railway reserve where the pier master, Captain J. Vine was also in residence. Duthie and Atkinson were boat builders in Stokes Street along with Robbines and Sons, stevedores and the shipwrights, Peterson and Slemmon.

5.4.2 St. Kilda

By way of contrast St. Kilda hill was a residential location from the outset, giving rise merely to the small industrial establishments necessary to meet the needs of its residents. In 186033, these consisted typically of tailors, bootmakers, carpenters, cutlers, dressmakers, clock makers and persons engaged in the food industry, mostly located on the main highways of the settled areas. The Council had established abattoirs in Barkly Street in 1862 and there was a manure and night soil depot at Elwood, all of which were vigorously opposed by the early residents of the area who agitated for the swamp to be filled and subdivided.34

The St. Kilda pier was associated with local shipping activity including that of a firewood schooner

32 Sands and McDougall directory 1890. 33 Ibid, 1860. 34 Cooper, op.cit., vol.1, pp.191-93. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 21 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian which conveyed fuel from East St. Kilda to Queens wharf during the 1850’s. In 1853 the St. Kilda Pier and Jetty Co. was formed in anticipation of the profit its promoters expected to receive from pier dues paid by boat owners bringing timber and building materials to St. Kilda and conveying firewood as back loading. The company’s activities, however, were brought to a standstill soon after its formation by a heavy storm which blew away the pier along with its directors’ aspirations for quick money35. Later, the St. Kilda Council used the pier, following its reconstruction, for the transhipment of stone from its quarry at Stoney Creek on the Yarra River down the bay to St. Kilda. Here it was used for pitching, channelling and road metalling.

5.4.3 South Melbourne

Although South Melbourne has its origins as a suburban location, linked by its railway with the City, the late nineteenth century boom period laid the foundations of industry on the low lying land east of Hanna Street, now Kingsway. Amongst the leading companies were the Langland’s Foundry and the Castlemaine Brewery. Inextricably linked with the fortunes of South Melbourne since that time, the boundaries of the new City of Port Phillip exclude this area, now known as Southbank. The land crossed by the Williamstown Road remained mostly unoccupied in the nineteenth century, the only exception being the stoneworks shown on the MMBW litho plan of 1894 at the north-west corner of Smith and Tarver Streets. Watsons Baths occupied the site of Prince’s pier.

5.4.4 Growth and prosperity

If Port Melbourne had prospered as an industrial location last century, it boomed during the twentieth when Fishermen’s Bend was released for industrial development. Amongst those factories established during the 1920’s were the works of the engineering company, Malcolm Moore Pty. Ltd. on Williamstown Road from 1927. Larger complexes such as General Motors Holden and the aircraft manufacturing plants including the Government Aircraft Factory and the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation were founded in the 1930’s and 1940’s to the north of the present Westgate Freeway and beyond the limits of the City of Port Phillip.

The low lying industrial land to the south of the Yarra River had been one of the cradles of Melbourne’s industries, extending gradually to the south as vacant sites became scarce. Avoided as residential land initially on account of its susceptibility to flooding, the late nineteenth century witnessed its drainage and the beginnings of the process of industrialisation. Most of this land is outside the boundaries of the City of Port Phillip although such is not the case for the tract to the immediate south of the Westgate freeway, previously controlled by the City of South Melbourne. Here, at Ingles Street, J.Kitchen and Sons Pty. Ltd., soap manufacturers, prospered during the inter war period, occupying a 15 acre site where the company made articles which it sold under the well known brand names of “Velvet”, “Witch”, “Anchor” (laundry soaps), “Persil” (-“the modern oxygen

35 Ibid, p. 219. 36 Ibid, pp.280-82. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 22 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian washer”-), “Solvol” and “Electrine” candles36 . Nearby in Normanby Road, the Melbourne factory of Dunlop Perdriau was established in 1901, commencing production of motor tyres in the following year. The site was filled swamp land on the western outskirts of the riverside industries at the time, allowing plenty of room for expansion. For the next eighty years it was Dunlop’s largest Australian factory site. A new rubber mill across Normanby Road was established in 1913 and linked with the earlier plant by an overhead bridge. It remains today as a self storage warehouse with residential apartments constructed as recently as 1997. The firm became the City of South Melbourne’s largest employer.

City Road became a focus for industrial development, consolidating its inheritance from the previous century. . James Moore had built his sawmills at 115-143 City Road in1899.37 At 357-61 City Road the old cable tram engine house was converted for use by the Buckeye Harvester Company. Kellow Falkiner Pty.Ltd., commencing operations as a bicycle manufacturer and repairer in 1889 surviving to become one of the oldest motor vehicle builders and agents in Melbourne and building its South Melbourne premises at 380 City Road c.1940. Johns and Waygood established their head offices at the corner of Cecil Street with extensive workshops behind them following acquisition of land in 1909. Here the manufacture of lifts was carried out a much larger scale and the plant for the manufacture of structural steel extended38. The same company opened premises at the corner of Gladstone and Kerr streets in 1938-39 where it manufactured mortar bomb cases as a part of the war effort39 . At Ferrars Street, the Union Can Company Pty.Ltd. grew from relatively humble beginnings in 1908 to occupy a three acre site accommodating the administrative and technical headquarters of its nationwide offices as well as its production facility manufacturing food packaging articles. Interestingly, the location of this large manufactory had been determined by the need to import mild steel sheeting from Wales via the riverside wharves40. Monteath’s foundry weathered the 1890’s depression following the commencement of operations in Moray Street in1882 and prospered during the inter war period. Of unchallenged standing in foundry work after 1900, however, was the form of John Danks and Son41 whose new works were shifted from Queensbridge Street to the corner of Hanna Street and Bank Street.

In recent decades the industrial face of Port Melbourne and South Melbourne has changed dramatically. The prestigious companies of the southernmost riverside areas have moved away, to be replaced by smaller concerns, business enterprises in need of office space, often located in pre-existing industrial premises, self storage companies and car parks. Elsewhere, modern factories are characteristic of the industrial landscape, occupying vast sites on the south side of the Westgate freeway and including the premises of Toyota Australia, Meadow Lea and Mercedes Benz, as well as industrial estates.

37 National trust citation, 10/1989. 38 Pratt, A., The National Handbook of Australia’s Industries, The Specialty Press Pty. Ltd., (1934)pp. 257-58. 39 National Trust citation, 10/1989. 40 SeePratt, A., op.cit., pp.325-27 and Priestley,S., op.cit.,p.259. 41 See Priestley, op.cit., p.258. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 23 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Port Melbourne’s special nineteenth century industrial heritage is memorialised by re-cycled factories, too substantial to be demolished, and symbolically by such places as the old Port Melbourne railway station building and “Gasworks Park”.

5.5 Settlement: Growth and Change

5.5.1 Three settlements: Sandridge, St. Kilda and Emerald Hill

The greater part of Port Melbourne, the West Melbourne swamp and the low lying lands of South Melbourne is understood to have its origins as an arm of Port Phillip Bay linked by the Yarra near Princes Bridge and the Maribyrnong near Flemington. The south-easterly winds banked up mud and sand and gradually the Yarra river course was established against the limestone ridge of Williamstown. A delta, formed by the rivers, was overlaid with sand washed out from the red cliffs to the south-east and up the coast past Brighton, forming the seafront from Port Melbourne down to St. Kilda and spreading inland as shallow dunes. The site of Albert Park lake was a swamp, comparing in this respect with Yuille’s swamp, later Lake Wendouree at Ballarat, and the body of shallow water known as the lagoon extended inland from the shoreline as far as the site of Raglan Street. Even today, the memory of the lagoon is recalled by the irregular configuration of Esplanade West and Esplanade East and by the Lagoon reserve and adjacent Edwards park. The lagoon, in fact, marked the eastern boundary of the future settlement of Sandridge, the land on which the latter was surveyed being described in 1841 as “sandy soil… moderately wooded [with]gum”42 . The beach at Port Melbourne had been first charted by a European, Charles Grimes, in 1803. He described his visit in the following terms:

At the usual time the same party as yesterday, with the addition of the doctor, went on shore; for about a mile the land was dry, a light sandy soil; afterwards a large swamp with three lagoons in it all dry. The land appears to be covered with water in wet seasons. Come to a salt lagoon about a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide; had not entrance to the sea. Soon afterwards came to a large river; went up it about a mile, when we turned back and waited for the boat to take us aboard. The ground is a swamp on one side…Saw many swans, pelicans and ducks.43

The name Sandridge was chosen by the surveyor William Darke when he mapped the shoreline after 1836. Edward Curr, author of Recollections of Squatting in Victoria , however, visited Sandridge at the time of the first land sales when surveyors’ string lines marked out the allotments to be sold and

42 See early survey plan in Jacobs Lewis Vines: “Port Melbourne Conservation Study” (7/1979), p.12, reproduced here as fig…NB Date of map given is 11/1841 although U’Ren and Turnbull give it as 1839. 43 Log book of Charles Grimes, 2.2.1803. Quoted in N. U’ren and N. Turnbull:A History of Port Melbourne, O.U.P. (1983), p.6 in Allom Lovell and associates: “Port Melbourne Conservation Study Review, vol.1, pp.13-14. 44 Curr, E.M., Recollections of Squatting in Victoria Then called the Port Phillip District (from 1841-1851), MUP, (…), pp.9-10. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 24 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian recorded that the place was then called “the Beach”44

Whereas the higher land later known as Emerald Hill and the St. Kilda hill was not surprisingly the first to attract urban development, it was surrounded by less attractive lower lying ground. Middle Park was occupied by swamp, sand dunes and ti-tree. South of St. Kilda hill, the land beyond Carlisle Street was also mostly low lying and swampy, remaining so until the construction of the Elwood canal during the late 1890’s.

Changes to the natural order commenced with Wilbraham Liardet’s entrepreneurial endeavours at Sandridge and the formation of a track between the beach and the town of Melbourne from 1839 (see section 3). Both Liardet and Alfred Lingham established their own hotels at Sandridge, the 1841 survey map of the locality showing both the “Marine” and “Pier”: hotels in existence, each with their own jetties and individual tracks to Melbourne, ultimately joining to form the one track on their route north. A hut and a customs tent are shown prudently situated midway between the two hotels and there is a magazine a short distance to the south. Already the framework of the future township at this site was being sketched out with its two essential elements: the inland route to Melbourne and the shoreline development being clear from the outset. This so called “T plan”, with the stem of the T being the Melbourne track, later Bay Street, and the head being the shoreline, later Beach Street, was first recognised in 1839 when the government surveyor, Robert Hoddle laid out his scheme for the development of “South Melbourne”, being the whole parish south of the Yarra. His plan was changed in 1842 and provided for half acre allotments with a main street in the location of Bay Street, of about thirty metres in width, crossed by narrower roads running east-west. The survey laid out forty allotments in four blocks between the present Graham and Rouse Streets but following its advertisement in the Government Gazette Governor La Trobe withdrew the land from sale45 possibly because he was anxious not to prejudice the future development of a port at this location. In 1849, the government constructed a pier on the site of Liardet’s first jetty and another attempt was made to sell land at Sandridge. This time, the plan was drawn up by the assistant surveyor, Lindsay Clarke. Two additional blocks were offered at this time, each containing seven allotments and being bounded by the present day Bay, Beach, Rouse and Stokes Streets. Both had already seen development, as has been described.

The Brighton road during this period constituted a land route south from Melbourne past the high ground at St. Kilda to Brighton and Arthur’s Seat. Coaching inns were provided along its length, the “Grosvenor” and “Elsternwick” hotels surviving in altered form, today. The St. Kilda hill may have been seen by the government as a suburban seaside resort from the outset, land being offered for sale from 1842. Government policy had initially been that a long rectangle between the Yarra River and what is now Victoria Street/ Parade would be kept as a town reserve and sold only in small allotments, with ample provision for public purposes and expansion of the town. Land immediately outside of this reserve was described as suburban and sold in comparatively large allotments whilst further afield blocks were sold as country lots. Thus St. Kilda Road was created as a broad avenue through the publicly owned land of the town reserve, as was Kerford Road, but when it crossed into the

45 U’ren, N., and Turnbull, N., op.cit.,p16 in Allom Lovell and Associates op.cit., p.16. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 25 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian suburban lands it suddenly contracted in width to a standard half chain road, typical of others reserved by the government in outer areas. In more recent times, as has been noted in section 4.3.5, High Street has been widened and is now called St. Kilda Road.

Furthering the notion of St. Kilda as a seaside resort, the “Royal” hotel was built soon after 1846, not on a main road, as one would expect, but on the sea front at the east corner of the Esplanade and Robe Street. Houses were constructed after the land sales, the architect Samuel Jackson purchasing land in 1843 and 1847 and building his surviving home “Wattle House” during this period in the picturesque “cottage orne” manner46. H also designed “Charnwood”, since demolished at St. Kilda hill.

The impetus for development provided by the gold rushes commencing in 1851 coincided with separation of the Port Phillip District from the colony of New South Wales to form the new colony of Victoria. These events were soon followed by the opening of the rail line from Melbourne to Sandridge in 1854. Apart from its economic impacts, this railway had a profound effect on the layout of the new township. Following its construction, settlement was contained to the north by the railway itself and to the south by the lagoon. These circumstances were reinforced in 1855 by a new Crown Lands Department plan for the area which confirmed that development was not permitted beyond the railway. This provision coincided with the formation of a reserve along the route of the railway for the purposes of ornamental plantations. Extending from Boundary to Graham Streets and occupying both sides of the railway between Station Place and Evans Street, it was a unique concept insofar as railway construction was concerned and a suitable memorial for the place occupied by the line in Australian history.

Following the first land sales at Sandridge in September, 1850, the certainty of land tenure and economic opportunity led to rapid development. At first, the shortage of building materials and labour encouraged the erection of prefabricated buildings which had been prohibited within the area controlled by the Melbourne Corporation by the Melbourne Building Act of 1850. The American merchant, George Francis Train, of Caldwell Train and Co. erected a six storeyed timber warehouse near the pier, transported from his home town of Boston. In Bay Street the Anglicans engaged architects Knight, Kemp and Kerr to supervise the erection of a prefabricated corrugated iron clad church manufactured by Samuel Hemming of Bristol and in the same year A.E. Johnson supervised the erection of an iron school for the Board of National Education.

In Decmber, 1852, the Argus recorded that about a hundred tents had been erected near Liardet’s and there were other flimsy wooden shelters in use. The temporary shanties were clustered near Stokes Street, Nott Street, along the beach and in Bay Street, the latter being the only clearly delineated street. There was plenty of opportunity for commercial gain by traders fitting out new arrivals for the goldfields; in accommodating them, selling them horses, equipment food and entertainment47 .

46 Andrew C. Ward and associates: “Wattle House Conservation analysis”, 3/1990, p.23 47 See U’Ren, N. and Turnbull, N., op.cit., pp.21-22 for further details from which this account has been taken. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 26 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

No known houses survive from this period while Edwin Thomas’ sketch of Bay Street in 185348 shows single and two storeyed timber shops with verandahs in a continuous row on one side and interrupted on the other by unoccupied ground. The buildings have that transient quality common to all towns in their initial development phase: a phase which is relentlessly superseded by more permanent structures in the wake of economic growth. Further land sales were held in 1853 when prices peaked. Sandridge was caught up in a period of frenzied growth, servicing the markets of the new colony. An 1855 plan (see fig….) shows the essential elements of the township. Commencing at the sea front there is a customs house at the corner of Beach Street and Nott Street and a reserve for the post office on the south corner of Bay and Rouse Streets. Between Rouse and Graham Streets there are allotments for the Roman Catholic and Wesleyan churches and a reserve for the watchouse. Further north again between Graham and Liardet Streets are the Seamen’s, Presbyterian and Church of England reserves. Between Liardet and Raglan Streets, as the available land between the lagoon and the railway reserve narrows, there is a pool - on the site of present Lalor Street - and associated swampland. Private allotments are scattered liberally throughout the area and it would appear that the whole of Sandridge had been alienated by this time. Station Place is lined with small presumably residential allotments.

St. Kilda’s role as a resort was consolidated in the 1850’s by the arrival of the railway in 1857. An illustration of “Mooney’s “Royal” hotel captures the mood with its English looking hotel, bathing boxes wheeled out beyond the water’s edge, horse drawn carriage and well dressed lodgers promenading with their parasoles. Whether the scene was an idealised one or not is immaterial; it certainly depicts the image which the proprietor sought. Terrace houses were characteristic and are understood to have been unusual outside of Melbourne itself at that time. Surviving examples include 62-64 Barkly Street (1854 or earlier), 9-11 Clyde Street (pre 1854), 22-24 Princes Street, designed by Lloyd Tayler in 1856, “Eden Terrace” at 4-18 Dalgety Street (1855-57), “Marli Place” at 3-7 Upper Esplanade (1858) and others49. In July, 1856, the Argus complained of the small allotments on which houses were being built in St. Kilda, Richmond and Collingwood50. Overcrowding as a consequences of the gold discoveries was taking its toll. Cooper in his history of St. Kilda published in 1931 records a surprisingly large number of prefabricated iron and timber buildings being erected at the time. Today, only 7 Burnett street is understood to be representative of this aspect of St. Kilda’s early development. By the time of Alexander Black’s plan of 1854 there were over two hundred houses at St. Kilda built on land most of which had been sold in 1842. Ten years later, Cox’s coastal survey plan shows some increase in the original settled area as well as equally dense development in the wedge between Barkly Street and St. Kilda Road to the east. A fairly continuous row of houses extends along the south side of Alma Road as far east as the railway line and their is additional development to the south. The land between Alma Road and Wellington

48 This sketch is illustrated in U’Ren, N. and Turnbull, N., op.cit., p.20, the original being held in the LaTrobe Library Collection. 49 See Lewis, Dr.M.:St. Kilda-An Historical Outline in Nigel Lewis and Associates: “St. Kilda Conservation Study- Area One” 9/1982, p.34 for a complete list of these terraces. 50 Ibid., p.34. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 27 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Street was mostly vacant except in the vicinity of the Wellington Street/High Street intersection. The view in Cooper is helpful to the extent that it offers a glimpse of St. Kilda Junction c.1858. St. Kilda Road itself is a fairly narrow road in a wide reservation having no semblance of a formal layout. The verandahs of shops at the Punt Road intersection are visible whilst a police station overlooks the intersection from the north and faces the two storeyed “Junction” hotel, then run by Henry Young. Elsewhere, looking north, between Punt Road on the right and Albert Park Lake on the left is open woodland interspersed with patches of bush.

Whereas settlement at the Port commenced at an early date as a function of the formation of Melbourne town itself and whilst St. Kilda was an attractive suburban resort, there was no such catalyst to prompt the early growth of Emerald Hill. Indeed, the natural barriers combined with the comparative distance of the locality from the nearby activity centres to delay development until August, 185251. Again, the impact of the gold discoveries doubtless put pressure on the government to make more residential land available. The first stage of a fifty lots sale of land took place at this time and was bounded approximately by present day Eastern Road, Park Street, Montague Street and the Sandridge (now City) Road. Included in this area, which had been laid out on a grid pattern, was the Orphanage Asylum reserve, on the top of the hill where the South Melbourne town hall now stands. Police, town hall, church and National School reserves were also included. Just prior to August 1854, the subdivided lands were extended to the “Three Chain” road, later Albert Road in the south and to Nelson Place in the west. This plan, attributed to Clement Hodgkinson by Priestley, included St. Vincents Place and the semi-circular streets which enclose it. Recalling the formally planned residential squares of nineteenth century English cities, this locality remains highly distinguished within metropolitan Melbourne, though the idea of semi-circular street layouts was not without precedent, Henry Foot’s plan of the Brighton Estate, pre-dating St. Vincents Place by some eight years.

The north-western quarter of the area was both closest to Melbourne and the most commercially oriented, supporting ten of the fourteen hotels listed in the 1856 municipal valuation52. James Watson was a resident of Emerald Hill in the 1860’s. He wrote:

There was no continuity of houses connecting with the city, the houses did not reach down from the upper part of Clarendon-street to the Sandridge-road, and there was none between that road and the river. The river-bank was higher than the adjoining land, which was a marsh right back beyond the Sandridge-road, which had been constructed on it, and higher up to behind the barracks to the three chain road which connected the Hill with St. Kilda-road. As many people walked to their occupation or business in the city every day a plank road had been erected across this swampy land. This footway was about 4 feet wide, built about the same height above the

51 See Priestley, S., South Melbourne A History MUP (1995), p.51. 52 Ibid, pp.52-53. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 28 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

ground, with a handrail on one side. One of these was a continuation of Clarendon- street, and another of Moray-street joined up with one which was parallel with the river-bank that led up to the Falls Bridge53.

The section bounded by Montague, Park, Moray and York Streets was the most intensely settled. The main street was already Clarendon Street although the principal public buildings were around Cecil Street and included the mechanics’ institute, court house and municipal offices. St. Vincents Place was at that time unoccupied. Road surfaces were rough and there were constant arguments about where the levels should be set. The correct decision had important implications for drainage and at times involved lowering roadways by several feet, leaving the original buildings literally high and dry. Evidence of this can still be seen at St. Lukes church where a bluestone wall in Dorcas Street marks the difference between the original and new street level. The street grid included accommodation for a market whilst the impact of the St. Kilda railway was softened by its situation in a cutting with bluestone overbridges linking both sides of the township. Nevertheless, development on the west side lagged behind that on the east.

Sandridge, St. Kilda and Emerald Hill were geographically discrete townships during the 1860’s, each with its own character and purpose and interlinked by the railway system of the Melbourne and Hobsons Bay United Railway Co. Whereas Sandridge was the port town and St. Kilda the resort, Emerald Hill was the suburban retreat for what the Victorians called the commercial classes. The 1861 census vividly demonstrated this circumstance.

5.5.2 The late nineteenth century Boom

U’Ren and Turnbull write that the decades between 1860 and 1890 were perhaps the most decisive in Port Melbourne’s history. The population had increased sevenfold from 3,351 in 1861 before beginning a long and steady decline54. At the beginning of the period the process of replacing the earlier and more temporary buildings with permanent accommodation was gaining momentum. The surviving brick court house on the corner of Bay and Graham streets was built in 1860 and the police station alongside in Bay Street in 1861-63. The long closed post office, also in Bay Street, was built in 1861. Amongst the brick hotels being built were the “Chequers Inn” which remains today at the corner of Bay and Bridge Streets and the “Fountain Inn” at the corner of Raglan and Crockford Streets. There were in fact many hotels at the Port, which was not surprising, given its foundations in the shipping trade. In 1872 the architect, Thomas (?) Watts designed a small hotel in Graham Street and Frederick Williams a larger one at the corner of Graham Street and the Esplanade. In 1873 he designed another one on the site of the old “Sandridge Inn” in Bay Street and carried out alterations to the “Bay View” in 1887, the “Prince Alfred” in 1889 and designed the new “Victoria” in 1895. In 1888 the local architect, J.B. Grut carried out works to “Chequers”, the “Rising Sun”,

53 James Watson, “Personal Recollections of Melbourne in the ‘Sixties”, in Victorian Historical Magazine, vol xii, no.4 (7/1928); Roads and Bridges in Victorian Parliamentary Papers, in Allom Lovell Sanderson Pty. Ltd.: “South Melbourne Urban Conservation Study”, 5/1987, vol. 1, p.4/2. 54 U’Ren, N. and Turnbull, N., op.cit., 78. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 29 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian the “Exchange”, the “Hibernian” and the “Cosmopolitan”. The shops, mainly in Bay Street, convey something of the same picture as the hotels, a few being designed by quite distinguished Melbourne architects and then from the 1870’s more and more by the locals. Frederick Williams was exceptionally busy whilst John Flannagan’s group of three shops in Bay Street of 1874-75 survive as a testimony two his work and a reminder that the original development encompassed five shops. Williams commenced his run of commissions with a tender in 1871 for an unspecified number of shops and dwellings. There were more in Bay Street (1873) and Ingles Street, four in Bay Street in 1874 and others again later in the year. Although the main commercial street was Bay Street, others included Beach, Rouse, Graham, Nott and Stokes and there were non-residential establishments in Railway Place and Station Place, taking advantage of their proximity with the railway line.

At the beginning of 1872 a committee was appointed with representatives from Sandridge and South Melbourne to promote the establishment of a gasworks serving the locality. A lease over six acres had been negotiated on land at Pickles Street and gas was turned on in March, 1873, the South Melbourne Gas Company later amalgamating with the Melbourne and Collingwood gas companies to form the Metropolitan Gas Company. The retort house was a substantial structure from which rose a ninety foot high stack whilst the gas holders dominated their immediate environs55. Although residents had been purchasing gas from the West Melbourne gasworks prior to this time, the provision of a local works meant cheaper rates and improved living standards for the people of Sandridge and South Melbourne.

St. Kilda retained its importance as a seaside resort for “Marvellous Melbourne” throughout the nineteenth century. A view of the Esplanade c.1870 captures the spirit of the age with the activity on the footpaths overlooking the bay and the sailing ships at anchor. Present Jacka Boulevard has the appearance of a rough track, accessible to vehicular traffic whilst the sea baths are prominent. The St. Kilda pier is glimpsed in the distance. The baths included Captain Kenny’s “Hot Sea Baths” and the facilities of the “Royal Gymnasium Baths and Sea Bathing Company”, designed by W. Elsdon who had gained a reputation locally for his association with the Hobsons Bay Railway Co. These baths later became known as Leggett’s, after the name of their manager56. The old pier of 1853 had been extended in 1857-58 and was further extended in 1873 by H. Turnbull and Co. Following agitation for a breakwater by the St. Kilda Yacht Club in 1874 ensuing debate led eventually to the extension of the pier in the form of a breakwater by the Public Works Department in 1884. It was, by this time, 1944 feet long.57

St. Kilda, the resort, was also the place of residence for many of Melbourne’s successful businessmen. Ambrose Kyte, owner of the “Theatre Royal” in Bourke Street, built “Oakleigh Hall” pre (?) 1865 in

55 See Proudley, R., Circle of Influence A History of the Gas Industry in Victoria, for an account of the commencement of gas supply in South Melbourne and its history thereafter. 56 See Cooper, J.B., The History of St. Kilda from its first settlement to a City and after: 1840-1930, Printers Pty. Ltd., (1931), vol.1, pp.172-180 for an account of St. Kilda’s sea baths. 57 Ibid, pp. 219-223 for an account of the history of the St. Kilda pier. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 30 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Dandenong Road, East St. Kilda. Cooper described it as “the finest dwelling at the time around Melbourne”, even though Kyte overextended himself in the process of its erection58. In 1873 the St. Kilda Council sent photographs of its finest houses to the Vienna Exhibition. Among them were the residences of Major Sargood ( “Rippon Lea”), Thomas Alston, George Twentyman, James Service, soon to be colonial treasurer and premier, William Peterson, T.J. Crouch, a prominent architect of the day, Archibald Michie, H. Moore and Emil Thoneman. Already larger holdings were being subdivided for profit. Among them were Robert Smith’s “Berochah” in Barkly Street, sold off in November 1873. The “St. Kilda Beach Estate” (1873) was comprised of 58 allotments and the “Acland Estate” at the corner of the Esplanade and Carlisle Street, close to the “Royal” hotel, consisted of 31 allotments. In January 1874 Henry Tullet announced the sale of the land between the Esplanade, the town hall and the market.

By this time the commercial streets of St. Kilda were Fitzroy Street, Acland Street and Robe Street. Commencing at Barkly Street, Alma Road, Inkerman Street and Carlisle Street were each occupied by a handful of business enterprises as was Dandenong Road, east of Punt Road and Barkly Street. High Street was especially important, being occupied by retailers from Dandenong Road all the way to Carlisle Street.

By the turn of the century, the area north of Blessington Street/ Carlisle Street to Chapel Street, east of Chapel Street down to Brunning Street and on the other side of the railway approaching Hotham Street was quite intensely settled. Although the building stock varied, it consisted generally of larger villas facing the main streets such as Alma Road, with smaller houses and terraces behind, in the narrow streets. Beyond Hotham Street and down the Brighton Road, houses remained in their spacious grounds. Marine Parade shared in the housing boom during the late nineteenth century and in 1888 a contract was signed to fill the Elwood swamp using sand dredged from the bay.

Emerald Hill’s formative period, noted above, was followed by one of tumultuous growth in company with Port Melbourne and St. Kilda. By 1880, the population of the municipality stood at 25,000. By the end of the decade it had reached 43,000. Growth was eagerly sought by the City fathers amongst whom were prominent real estate developers and financiers including Matthias Larkin, James Page, J.R. Buxton and W. Thistlethwaite. There was much for them to develop. The limits of the town extended out past Emerald Hill on all sides, and by the end of the 1880’s, South Melbourne had become the industrial hub of the metropolis. Growth was inextricably linked with the general rise in the fortunes of the metropolis. No longer was South Melbourne only a suburb whose residents travelled to other parts of Melbourne for their work. Now developers set about providing cheaply constructed low rental housing to attract workers to the factories. The 1870’s witnessed the expansion of residential Emerald Hill down onto the flat land at Montague. By 1880, Gladstone, Buckhurst and Thistlethwaite Streets were crammed with small cottages. Another favoured area was along the eastern side of town, between Moray Street and Hanna Street. Closer to Albert Road, there were new houses in Napier and Raglan Streets and in the narrow streets that ran behind them, while to the

58 Ibid, pp. 232-33. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 31 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian south, houses were spilling out across the old racecourse. Many employers chose to live in the municipality too. St. Vincents Place had become the chosen place. John Danks lived at Merton Crescent in the 1880’s, next to St. Vincents Place West. William Buckhurst, purchaser of a number of allotments at the original land sales, was another resident, strongly promoting the beautification of the gardens as well as the development of nearby Albert Park. As the park was improved and its objectionable smells dealt with, Albert Road itself became another desirable address for the elite.

When the orphan asylum moved from Emerald Hill to Brighton leading to the development of the new town hall and public offices at this location, the Church of England responded in 1881 by constructing its own shops facing Clarendon Street and the Emerald Hill. The result confirmed Clarendon Street’s importance as the principal retail thoroughfare in South Melbourne.

The community leaders were usually in favour of any moves to extend the residential lands beyond their existing limits. In 1875 the Council commenced an agitation to have the areas now known as Middle Park and Albert Park surveyed for subdivision. This called for a new road to run alongside the railway line and so in 1876 Ferrars Street was extended to St. Kilda, taking the name Canterbury Road for the extension. Land sales commenced soon afterwards although few houses were built there until the 1880’s.

The most controversial of all the land development schemes of the period was the government’s decision in March 1875 to sell off the St. Kilda Road frontages of the Albert Park reserve. The motives behind this move are unclear but the act was consistent with previous government decisions to sell park frontages in Royal Park and Fawkner Park during the 1860’s. There was much public anger over the move, but none from the Council at Emerald Hill. Under the proposal, Queens Terrace, now Queens Road, was laid out to run parallel with St. Kilda Road. An existing playing ground, the Warehousemen’s Ground, was reserved from sale. Allotments would be large and expensive and the government insisted on certain building restrictions to ensure that only mansions and large villas would be erected. The most cynical part of the process was the announcement of the decision between parliamentary sittings. Auctions were held prior to the resumption of parliament and in spite of specially convened public meetings. As a consolation, perhaps, the government then moved to proclaim the remainder of Albert Park as a permanent reserve, although this was not to prevent later incursions into the park in the name of roads and improvements, most recently including the establishment of Melbourne’s Grand Prix circuit in the face of local protestations.

The days of Emerald Hill, the discrete urban township, had passed. In its place was an extensive suburban and industrial area bounded by the sea on one side and merging with the adjoining municipalities on all other fronts. Although the distinctive qualities of the original settlement had been retained and enhanced, it was now a part of something much larger and it was but a sign of the times when in 1883, upon attainment of cityhood, the Council changed its name to that of the City of Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 32 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

South Melbourne. To “Garryowen”, then writing his Chronicles of Early Melbourne, the prospect of a name change was unthinkable: “It is seriously proposed to call it South Melbourne”, he wrote, “and if this notion be carried out, a flagrant mistake will have been made for two reasons, viz., that it is simply conferring on a special portion of a district a nomenclature by which the whole district is officially known…Again, if it be so called, it will be nominally reducing it to a part and parcel of Melbourne, a subordinate adjunct of the principal city”59

5.5.3 Depression and recovery: the inter-war years

The 1890’s depression served not only to slow the rate of metropolitan development to a stand still but it also provided the newly formed Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works with an opportunity to catch up with its sewerage program. In March 1893, the Board opened tenders for the main trunk sewer to run through Port Melbourne. By April, 1897 the work was complete and ready for use and on 17.8.1897 the “All England XI” hotel became the first property in Melbourne to be connected with the sewerage system60. Many connections followed, ultimately leading to a marked improvement in the standard of community health. In spite of the improvement, compounded by the introduction of electric light in 1913, Port Melbourne was appealing less and less as a desirable residential location. Unemployment and poverty, of concern prior to the depression and intensified during the 1890’s remained an important issue in the twentieth century.

As Port Melbourne’s interests became more closely aligned with those of its workers, specific goals directed at alleviating workers’ hardship became evident in at least some local policy initiatives. The eventual result of one of these is clearly reflected in the fabric of the City. Though the development of the State Bank Garden City and Housing Commission housing estates in the inter war years were undertaken at the behest of the government, these developments followed many years of effort by the Port Melbourne Council to improve workers’ housing within its municipal boundaries. The Council had been petitioning the government to unlock land at Fishermen’s Bend, and to sponsor workers’ housing there since 1906. In the post war period, the Town Planning Commission continued to campaign for the establishment of a state model suburb at a location such as Fishermen’s Bend. The Labor Party supported the idea in 1924-25. Also in 1925, the general manager of the State Savings Bank undertook a tour of Britain where he inspected some large scale low income housing projects. The Bank purchased land at Fishermen’s Bend between 1926 and 28, subdividing it in accordance with the recommendations of the Town Planning Commission. The layout of the estate was designed by Fred Cook, chief technical officer of the Town Planning Commission. His plan demonstrated some of the principles of the Garden City movement in England and especially Letchworth, just north of London, designed in 1904 by Sir Raymond Unwin, an originator and practitioner of the movement. In Victoria, the State Electricity Commission’s workers’ housing development at Yallourn designed in 1921 by architects Alan La Gerche and Arthur Stephenson was comparable.

Designs for the houses were prepared by the Bank’s architect, G.B. Leith and were based on the

59 Garryowen, p.535 in Allom Lovell Sanderson Pty. Ltd., op.cit., pp. 4/15-4/16. 60 U’Ren, N. and Turnbull, N., op.cit.p.177. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 33 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

British Local Government Board’s Manual on the Preparation of State-Aided Housing Schemes. Work was under way in 1926 and the official opening took place in March, 1927. By 1930, 184 houses had been built, construction stopping during the depression and resuming after 1937. The vision, though having its roots in the pioneering work of the Garden City movement, harkens back also to the early days at Emerald Hill when Clement Hodgkinson set about planning a suburb having intrinsic aesthetic values. Yet the comparison stops here, for St. Vincents Place appealed to the relatively few who could afford it whilst the Fishermen’s Bend project, aptly called Garden City, represented a new deal for the worker61.

The division between rich and poor was equally clear in St. Kilda for whilst the wealthy occupied the higher ground at St. Kilda hill, the poorer residents occupied timber cottages on the lower ground of the Balaclava flats. They included servants to the wealthier residents and workers employed in local businesses. As the locality’s role as a resort for the metropolis was strengthened by the introduction of public transport services focussing on the Esplanade, the Council of the day formed its St. Kilda Foreshore Committee in 1906 with both state and City Council representation. Luna Park followed in 1912 whilst the opening of venues such as the Palais de Danse in the following year provided a firm basis for the development of an identity for central St. Kilda which was celebrated not only by its proximity with the bay but also by its place as an entertainment centre for Melbourne. These changes basically only affected the St. Kilda hill area, supplanting the character of established, wealthy gentility with one of impermanence and mobility. Buildings which were particularly evocative of this change were the new guest houses and hotels, particularly those created by the conversion of former mansions.

The low lying land to the south of the hill became attractive as potential residential land given its proximity with St. Kilda and the City during the first decade of this century. The filling of the swamp, the re-alignment of the Elster Creek and its transformation into the Elwood canal was virtually complete by 1905 and it remained for the Victorian Railways with the ardent support of Thomas Bent, premier, treasurer and minister for railways, to construct an electric tramway linking Elwod and points south with the rail head at St. Kilda. Tracks were laid to the broad gauge of 5’3” rather than standard gauge adopted by the street tramways elsewhere and the line was opened on 5.5.1906. Major land sales followed in 1908 and 1913 with blocks being provided of a size sufficient for freestanding villas and bungalows. Elwood was an early suburb demonstrating new and more spacious living standards made possible only by the provision of fast electric tramway services. Others beyond the limits of the City of Port Phillip were to follow soon afterwards.

In the older parts of the City, the St. Kilda Council supported the redevelopment of existing properties into flats, leading to a trend which accelerated in the 1930’s. Longmire notes that St. Kilda was second only to Camberwell in the total value of permits issued in 1937. This rate of development led eventually to the attainment of the highest levels of residential density in Melbourne and during one

61 See Allom Lovell and associates, op.cit., pp.23-25,26 for a more detailed account of the Garden city development. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 34 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian particular year in the early 1930’s one third of all metropolitan flat development. Accommodation included bachelor flats, maisonettes, bungalow courts and mansion flats catering for a range of middle class requirements. The designs were oriented to achieving generously proportioned apartments with the result that lower overall densities were achieved than in the post Second World war period. In the early years, flats were regarded as smart and progressive accommodation and the development of architectural styles was expressive of this status. The transformation of the St. Kilda hill area was overpowering with new accommodation provided cheek by jowl with the gracious marine villas and mansions of a past era. At the other end of the accommodation market, rooming houses proliferated, providing short and longer term accommodation for visitors, often from country areas.

By the end of the inter war period, the locations of pre-existing commercial activity had been consolidated whilst the strip development along High Street had continued to spread southward as far as the Chapel Street tram terminus. At Elwood, retail centres had grown up at the intersection of Broadway and Glenhuntly Road, where the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board’s Point Ormond tramline crossed the Victorian Railways’ tram to Brighton Beach. Ormond Road attracted strip development between Beach Avenue and Pine Avenue and corner shops were built throughout the new suburb at a time when the majority of householders did not have access top the private car.

Post depression recovery in South Melbourne had gathered pace by 1912 when industrial activity and employment levels surpassed those of the best years in the nineteenth century and the population rose to 43,000. The Edwardian period was associated with a surge of building activity in the newer parts of Albert Park but it represented the end of an era for the City as did the development of Elwood for St. Kilda. The new electric tramways system shifted the focus away from the coastal belt to the middle ring suburbs of Camberwell, Malvern and Caulfield and population growth rates levelled out to a peak of about 48,000 by the end of the 1920’s. Two and three storeyed flats also made an impact, especially along the boulevards, with the impact of St. Kilda’s flats making itself felt along Beaconsfield Parade.

By 1931 Melbourne was suffering from its second major economic depression with its associated poverty and deterioration in living standards. In 1936 the government agreed to the establishment of a Housing Investigation Board to consider housing conditions in Victoria. The Board’s inspectors were thorough in their investigations and concluded that South Melbourne contained numerous slum pockets and narrow residential streets with poor houses, at times subject to flooding62. The Council had already made an attempt to improve housing standards in one small area in Montague. The site was a notoriously flood prone spot on the corner of Gladstone and Montague Streets. It had been occupied by twenty-one sub-standard cottages when it was purchased by Council. A new development was created on higher ground consisting of nine pairs of houses and they were made available on apparently generous terms to purchasers who were required to buy the land at site value and pay off a loan raised to cover the cost of the house. The Housing Investigation Board was critical of the Council’s efforts, arguing that a lot of money had been expended on behalf of relatively few and that the beneficiaries could well have provided themselves with homes through normal channels of private assistance. The Board’s findings led to the formation of the Housing Commission

62 See Allom Lovell Sanderson Pty. Ltd., op.cit., p. 4/20 for a more detailed account of the Board’s report. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 35 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian in 1938.

The inter war years had witnessed the final phase in the physical settlement of the present City of Port Phillip with a single exception. This was again at Fishermen’s Bend which became the site of the Victorian Housing Commission’s first housing estate. Port Melbourne had not been a principal target for slum abolition, the 464 houses which were examined by the Housing Investigation Board making up a mere 6% of the total enquiry. The Boards’s report noted that in Port Melbourne “the slum problem is not as acute as elsewhere. A few slum pockets exist as well as narrow residential streets. There are, however, many substandard houses and replanning to eliminate narrow streets is appropriate”63. Whilst the investigation was still in progress, the government undertook its first experiment in the provision of public housing in Port Melbourne. In 1936, forty-four houses were constructed to Public Works Department designs in Southward Avenue and Griffin Crescent. The estate was opened in May 1936 with houses in the English Cottage style, constructed in pairs.

The Fishermen’s Bend development followed using a design prepared by Saxil Tuxen of Tuxen and Miller, licensed surveyors, and Ballantyne and Wilson, architects. Tuxen’s design drew on his knowledge of American suburban estate planning and Garden City principles. It included cul-de- sacs, a community centre and playgrounds. A panel of consultant architects made up of Arthur Leith, Frank Heath, Best Overend , Harold Bartlett, Thomas Buchan and John Scarborough was appointed to design the houses for the estate. Though not built according to plan, the estate was nevertheless the only early development of its type to include a community centre. It was viewed as something of an experiment and was not repeated.

The first families to move in came from Richmond, Port Melbourne and South Melbourne. They were people who had suffered greatly through the depression and there was immediate friction between the residents of the State Savings Bank houses and these new arrivals. The Commission area became known as “Bagdad” after a magistrate’s description derived from a reference to the “forty thieves” who lived there, while the Savings Bank area became known as “Nob Hill”.

5.6. Education

5.6.1 The first schools

The early settlers made their own arrangements for the education of their children. Those who could afford governesses made the necessary arrangements but the majority was reliant upon the efforts of individuals who established their own schools. Churches were also influential obtaining land grants and some on-going financial aid. From 1842 schools receiving aid were brought under a common system by means of the first Regulations for Schools, dubbed the “penny-a-day system”64. It was

63 Quoted in Phillips, A., “Kindergartens, Housing and Charity” p.30, in Allom Lovell and associates, op. cit., p. 26. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 36 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian criticised along with the education being provided by the churches especially since only half the school aged children in the colony were receiving any education at all65 . A select committee in 1844 considered the remedy to be a non-denominational government supported system of education, the genesis of which was realised in 1848 when governor FitzRoy appointed a General Education Board to establish and administer a national system. The committee’s recommendations, however, were compromised by the appointment of two denominational boards to manage the church schools which would operate alongside the national schools.

In 1850 a proposal was received by a lady in the “healthy and lovely village of St. Kilda” to open a small private school66. Soon after, on 1.1.1851, Christ Church Church of England commenced services in Acland Street with a day school. It soon ran into difficulties when the teacher left for the goldfields and the school remained unstaffed until the Denominational Board made an appointment in 185367

The system of dual administration proved to be unworkable although it was adopted by Victoria upon Separation. A National Schools Board was created in 1852 and the matters of teacher training and curriculum guidelines began to be addressed68. Schools sprang up, spurred on by the flood of immigrants associated with the gold rush years. To cope with the urgent need for accommodation, both boards obtained a variety of portable premises including canvas, iron and prefabricated composite structures. The “Canvas Town” school at Emerald Hill and the Holy Trinity church school at Sandridge both started out in tents in 1853 and 1854 respectively69.

The Denominational Board outstripped the National Board in its development of schools at this time70. At Sandridge, the Wesleyan, Church of England and Catholic churches opened schools between 1854 and 1857. During the same period, these denominations and the Presbyterian church were also active at Emerald Hill. Between them, they opened seven schools, two of which were embodied in the Melbourne Orphanage and the St. Vincent de Paul orphanage. There were at least four schools at St. Kilda, each supported by one of the above denominations.

The first national school was Canvas Town. It was opened initially under the auspices of the Church of England with an enrolment of eighty-five students. Accommodation was not surprisingly, a tent, but improvements soon took the form of an iron building on the corner of Clarendon and Bank Streets.

64 Blake, L.J. (general editor):Vision and realisation: A Centenary history of State Education in Victoria, Education Department of Victoria, (1973), vol.1,p.5. 65 Ibid., pp.12-16. 66 Cooper, J.B., op.cit., vol.1 p.371. 67 Ibid., pp.372-73 and Blake, L.J., op.cit., vol.3, p,.301. 68 Blake, L.J., op.cit., p.789ff. 69 Burchell, L., Victorian Schools, MUP (1980), p.29 70 Blake, L.J., op.cit., vol.3, p.290.. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 37 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Opening a school placed a heavy financial burden on its community, the Board although sympathetic being also starved of funds and sometimes hindered by government members opposed to the national system. Such problems surrounded the formation of the Sandridge National School in Bay Street. Several petitions preceded its opening in October, 1854 with Daniel Gilchrist as headmaster71. It was relocated in 1862 to an old iron store at the corner of Bay and Liardet Streets72.

By 1860 there were two national schools in St. Kilda, one at the St. Kilda junction, opened in 1854 and the other on the north side of Inkerman Street East, east of Chapel Street, which opened in 1859-60 and was known as the National Day School. In 1861 the enrolments were seventy-one and forty-seven scholars respectively.

There were numerous private schools in addition to the Board schools, the Sands and McDougall directory for 1860 listing ten at St. Kilda, six of which were reserved exclusively for ladies. There were six private schools at Emerald Hill and two at Sandridge. With the exception of two, all were under the supervision of women. Private tuition was also offered in pianoforte at Sandridge and St. Kilda.

5.6.2 Government intervention

In 1858, a St. Kilda resident and MLA, Archibald Michie, introduced an Education Bill to abolish aid to churches and to establish a national system73. The Bill was lost by a single vote in the Legislative Council and the debate continued, eventually leading to the Common Schools Act in June, 1862. It created one Board and basically combined the elements of the two earlier systems. The greatest change however took place on 17.12.1872 when the Education Act became law. Its provisions were for education to be secular, compulsory to the age of fifteen and free in the basic subjects. An Education Department was created to administer the schools which began opening from 13.1.1873. Victorian children entered a new era of opportunity and enrolments increased immediately. The new minister for Education, James Wilberforce Stephen presided over the construction of larger complexes designed by his department’s own architectural branch headed by Henry Robert Bastow, architect and civil engineer formerly with the Railways Department. A competition for the design of the larger schools was held in mid 1873 and led to the construction of the Emerald Hill (Albert Park no.1181) school in 1874. It was designed by M. Schneider on two floors with accommodation for one thousand scholars. Charles Webb, one of the adjudicators, also received a commission to design the Emerald Hill (South Melbourne no.1253) school which was opened in July, 1873 but it was not until 1881 that the premises built by James Treeby were completed.

New schools were also opened at Sandridge (Nott street no.1427) and Brighton Road, St. Kilda (no.1479), the latter being designed by Bastow and accommodating 614 scholars. It was opened in January, 1875. All of the new schools were overcrowded form the outset. The department leased former Common School buildings and other premises including church buildings, the Mechanics

71 U’Ren, N. and Turnbull, N., op.cit., pp.67-69. 72 Burchell, L., op.cit., pp.34-35. 73 Blake, L.J., op. Cit., p.67. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 38 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Institute at Emerald Hill, the Orderly Room at the Army Barracks, also at Emerald Hill and the St. Kilda town hall at various times.

Additional schools were opened as the late Victorian boom period progressed with its associated population explosion. Port Melbourne (Graham Street) was opened as an annex of Nott Street along with St. Kilda (Fitzroy Street). Four new schools were opened in South Melbourne at Eastern Road, City Road, Mills Street and Montague Street.

At the turn of the century kindergarten and continuation schools were opened by way of the Education Act of 1901. The McRobertson Girls’ High school has its origins at this time, having been opened as the state’s first secondary school in 1905. Known as the Melbourne Continuation School, it was later named Melbourne High School and, after separation from the boys in 1927 and removal to its present site in 1934, adopted its present name.

The development of a system of secondary education, however, came more by way of the Education Act of 1910 which provided for the establishment of Departmental high and technical schools. A preference for vocational training had already been established and the new South Melbourne Technical School of 1918 reflected the trend, its initial main function being to train returned soldiers.

Many years were to pass before further secondary schools were to be built in the City of Port Phillip, Elwood High School in Glenhuntly Road being opened in 1957 and Albert Park High School in Graham Street in 1971.

5.6.3 Other schools

The concept of adult education had been fostered by the mechanics institutes which had spread to Melbourne in the 1850’s. Institutes were opened at Emerald Hill in 1857 and in St. Kilda in 1859. The Catholic Church continued to provide its own schools alongside the State system. Included amongst them were St. Mary’s, St. Kilda (1854), St. Peter and St. Pauls, Emerald Hill (1854), St. Vincent de Paul’s orphanage, Emerald Hill (1857) and St. Joseph’s, Sandridge (1857). By 1940, Catholic sponsored education in South Melbourne was making an important contribution to secondary schooling with its Christian Brothers College in Park Street, the Brigidene Convent High School for girls in Beaconsfield Parade and the Loreto Convent in Albert Park. A technical school was founded in Bank Street in 1924 and a Domestic Arts school at St. Peter and Paul’s orphanage in 1937. A women teachers’ college was also in operation at Albert Park.

The emphasis this century has been focussed on both secondary education and kindergartens, along with the introduction of new schools at Elwood. Curriculum development, migrant education and changing expectation of teaching have been important influences. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 39 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

5.7. Government services

5.7.1 Local government: the emergence of cities

The whole of the City of Port Phillip was originally encompassed by the City of Melbourne Corporation and has since been formed through a process of severances and reformations summarised as follows. Melbourne was incorporated as a town in the Colony of New South Wales in 1842. It was created a City by Letters Patent of Queen Victoria dated 25.6.1847. At this time the City stretched from Point Ormond, almost as far as Henry Dendy’s Special Survey, in a line directly up Punt Road to the Yarra river, east along the Yarra River to the Merri Creek and through present day Brunswick to the Moonee Ponds Creek, thence downstream to Flemington Bridge and then due south to a point on Hobson’s Bay just west of Princes pier. Emerald Hill was created a Borough and severed from the Melbourne Corporation area on 26.5.1855. It was proclaimed a Town on 1.3.1872 and a City on 21.9.1883 in the year that Council agreed to change its name to that of South Melbourne. Sandridge was severed and created a Borough on 13.7.1860 and its name changed to Port Melbourne on 25.1.1884. It was proclaimed a Town on 20.1.1893 and gazetted a City on 14.5.1919. St. Kilda was severed and created on 24.4.1855 and proclaimed a Borough in April, 1863. It was gazetted a City on 8.9.1890. The City of Port Phillip was recently proclaimed by way of amalgamation of the three cities except that Port Melbourne City beyond the Westgate freeway and west of Todd Road was included within the reconstituted City of Melbourne. South Melbourne City, once extending to the south bank of the Yarra River, lost the area known as Southbank to the Melbourne Corporation. Given Emerald Hill’s success in attaining municipal status before its neighbours and in spite of the efforts of the Melbourne Corporation, it is dealt with first, here, followed by Sandridge and St. Kilda.

5.7.2 South Melbourne

Emerald Hill had talented politicians to pursue its cause. They included the future Victorian premier, James Service, and future parliamentarians John Nimmo and George Higinbotham. Service became the first elected chairman of the Council and Nimmo served as rate collector and surveyor, becoming a councillor from 1867. All three were well placed to advance the interests of their constituents, Nimmo particularly so between 1878 and 1886 when he was also a member of the Melbourne Harbour Trust. Amongst the first contracts to be let by the new Council was the construction of Clarendon Street as a “proper” entrance into the town off the Sandridge Road74. Almost ninety per cent of Council’s income was spent on essential public works, notably roads and footpaths. Road forming and metalling with blue gum kerbs flanked by gravel paths were the order of the day although pitched channels, kerbs and crossings were installed from the outset at some intersections. By the end of 1873 there were 36 miles of formed roads. Early in 1858 10,000 square feet of Yorkshire flagstone was imported for footpath construction in Cecil and Clarendon Streets. It was followed by additional orders and in 1874 tarred metal screenings, presumably using tar obtained from the South Melbourne gasworks opened in the previous year, were used to finish off all the remaining

74 Priestley, S., op.cit., p.87. 75 Ibid., p.88. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 40 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian footpaths75.Elms, oaks and cedars were planted as street trees from 1859 and in 1868 Council assumed control of its public gardens including St. Vincent Place. A tollbar with adjacent toll collector’s house was placed on the Sandridge Road late in 1855. Others were situated on the Brighton Road just to the north of Domain Road and at St. Kilda Junction early in 1859.

By June, 1860, mains carrying Yan Yean water had been brought across the river near the Falls bridge, along Moray Street and into nearly every street with water being made available through public standpipes and by means of private reticulation systems in houses. Fifty oil lamps were provided at the main intersections on the Sandridge Road in 1856. From 1859 gas was purchased from the Melbourne Gas Co. for lighting purposes and subsequently from the South Melbourne Gas Co.

The original land granted by the government for municipal purposes was the block bounded by the railway and Coventry, Cecil and Dorcas Streets, the Council moving its offices into temporary premises in 1856. When it became clear in the 1870’s that a larger town hall was needed, a new proposal was considered. It was the Melbourne Orphan Asylum which occupied the best land on Emerald Hill. Ever since its establishment, the siting of the asylum at this location had been criticised. Besides, blocking Bank street was an irritation. The proposal which appeared to have the endorsement of most of the councillors was that the asylum should sell a part of its holdings to Council for a sum sufficient to allow it to buy a larger piece of cheaper land, further from Melbourne and also build sufficient accommodation for its purposes. The remainder of Emerald Hill would be subdivided and built on with shops and houses, having frontages to Clarendon and Park Streets. The asylum would in this way earn a considerable income from its property rentals.

Council intended to fund this initiative by providing a post office and police station in the town hall complex at the government’s expense and by erecting shops and offices on the balance of its land to provide similar rental income. This strategy was a not uncommon one at the time to the extent that government departments were involved but the idea of building shops was unusual, comparing only with the old Hotham Town civic complex in Queensberry Street, opened in 1876. It was, when viewed from a different perspective, however, a sign of the times.

The asylum was initially outraged at the proposal but was ultimately won around to Council’s idea. In 1875 the matter was taken to parliament. George Higinbotham introduced the bill and it was warmly received. A select committee was appointed to consider the proposal arriving at a conclusion favourable to the development. The town hall buildings were completed by the end of June 1880.

In 1899 Council’s abattoirs, which had been established in Boundary Street in 1861, were rebuilt to a plan adopted by the Melbourne City Council at Kensington. The market, under full municipal control since 1895, was refurbished in stages from 1916.

Development of South Melbourne’s industrial land to the south of the river prompted Council in Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 41 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

1907 to embark on a program of stone pitching for the main service roads. By 1924 the greater part of the City’s stone paved roads was located in the Montague area76 . During this period road improvements generally included tarring the pitched or wood lined channels, asphalting footpaths and fully pitching laneways which had been transferred from private to municipal control.

The streets were electrically let by the State Electricity Commission from 1923 and between 1905 and 1911 enamelled iron street name plates were attached to lamp posts throughout the municipality. Tree planting was intensified, mostly using Oriental planes, poplars, elms, oaks and pines, interspersed with Moreton Bay figs (in Nimmo Street), sugar gums, currajong and pittosporum77 . Garden reserves were extended, including central rockeries along the important boulevards such as Beaconsfield Parade, Kerferd Road and Albert Road. The St. Vincent Gardens were completely refurbished.

5.7.3 Port Melbourne

From the late 1850’s Sandridge was losing control over its waterfront. In 1858 its residents petitioned three times for local government but each time, their claims were opposed by the Melbourne Corporation which feared that a Sandridge Council might place taxes and charges on incoming goods and associated services, effectively holding the colony to ransom. As a result of this opposition the Legislative Assembly rejected Sandridge’s submissions. Finally, when the municipal district of Sandridge was created the river frontage, wharves and piers were excluded from the deal with Melbourne maintaining control of the water ways. This process of divestment of power over its port facilities continued in the 1870’s with the establishment of the Melbourne Harbour Trust which recognised the river wharves as the centre of water front activity for the metropolis.

The first Council of 1860 set about roadway improvements from the outset. In 1868 the Borough surveyor proposed that the lagoon be opened up to the bay, thereby allowing the pollution, much of which was draining down from Emerald Hill, to run out into the sea. Neither the government nor Council, however, had funds available for such a project with the result that consideration was given to developing the inner reaches of the lagoon as an ornamental reserve in much the same way as Albert Park was to be treated later in the century. In 1871 it was suggested - and not for the first time - that it be converted into a dock, thereby enhancing the Borough’s industrial power base. Again, funds were not forthcoming and the government eventually put paid to the dreams of new docks by passing the Port Melbourne Lagoon Act of 1889. Under the provisions of this Act, the Harbour Trust was to commence draining and filling operations. Although work had progressed by the turn of the century, sufficient of the lagoon’s traditional stench remained for it to be a scene of local agitation. Finally, filling was concluded in 1929 and Council turned its attentions to the creation of

76 Ibid., p.250. 77 Ibid., p.251. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 42 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian parklands and an infant welfare centre instead of industrial progress. By the mid 1860’s there were three fenced reserves along the railway line, one of which had been grassed and a second planted with trees78. During the 1870’s further land was reserved for this purpose and it served as a stimulus for residential development facing the parks of a higher standard than elsewhere in their immediate vicinity.

New premises were opened for Council on the market reserve in December, 1869. In May, 1881 funds were borrowed to complete the work, the present town hall complex designed by J.J.Wild also accommodating the Mechanics Institute library on the second floor.

The years leading up to the 1890’s depression saw the reservation of additional land for ornamental and recreational purposes during an era when residents depended heavily on their local parks for relaxation and a change from their daily routine. A street tree planting program was commenced using young trees obtained from the government nursery at Mount Macedon. Electric lighting was introduced to the streets of the City in 1913 following agreement on supply being reached with the Melbourne City Corporation.

5.7.4 St. Kilda

Amongst the first works to be undertaken by the newly constituted St. Kilda Council was the repair of a culvert in Barkly Street, the formation of Alma Road and Argyle Street, seats for the promenade and works at the manure depot79. Attention was given also to forming the Great Dandenong Road, marking out other roadways and footpaths, acquiring land for Council’s abattoirs, eventually closed c.1899, and the appropriation of additional reserves for the supply of sand80.

By March of 1858 street lamps were burning at strategic locations throughout the municipality and in the following year arrangements were entered into for the supply of gas to twenty-eight new lamps by the Melbourne Gas Co. South Park - now Albert Park - had been defined by a fence along Fitzroy Street making it the leading entrance to the Esplanade and the most “capacious street” in St. Kilda81. The Esplanade itself had been fenced on the crown of the slope which had been grassed and planted with shrubs. Council enclosed the Blessington Street land with a picket fence and announced its intentions of creating a public garden and promenade within: again demonstrating an approach to the provision of urban amenities which stands in marked contrast to the present era of local bushland reserves and regional parks. Ideas for the layout of the gardens were sought and the entry of a Mr. Gloystein judged the most acceptable. By September 1861 a considerable portion of the walks, paths and garden beds had been laid out and several hundred plants and shrubs supplied by the

78 U’Ren, N. and Turnbull N., op.cit., p. 100. 79 Cooper, J.B., op.cit., p. 92. 80 Ibid., pp.136-37. 81 Ibid.,. p.138. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 43 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Melbourne Botanic Gardens. The Esplanade gardens also received further attention and in 1869 the Alma Street, Fitzroy Street and Barkly Street reserves were fenced and planted. Included amongst the trees selected were pittosporum, pines, cypresses and tamarisk82.

St. Kilda’s pre-occupation with its gardens, writes Cooper, led to the early recognition of the value of St. Kilda Road as an ornamental approach to Melbourne from the south and “which, for magnificence and beauty, might in time, vie with the world famed avenues, which adorn many of the capitals of Europe”83. This concept, obvious enough with the benefit of hindsight, is of special interest in that it recalls the early colonists’ dreams of recreating something of Europe in their remote homeland: a dream realised but sadly impoverished by the destruction of the “Junction” hotel as a fitting termination for the boulevard at its southern extremity.

The Council’s beautification works were extraordinary when considered in the light of the imperatives which it faced during the same period. Drainage had been a major concern, residents of the low lying lands being required to vacate their houses to escape the stormwater being swept across their locality from the higher ground outside of Council’s control. Poorly drained land also posed health problems and when the Caulfield Road Board commenced to drain the vast Leman swamp between Koornang and Grange Roads the invading swamp waters were accommodated by the construction by Council of a main drain to the sea. The project was frustrated by the government cutting its grant-in-aid by half in 1861. Meanwhile, Council pressed on with the pitching of crossings in High Street and improvements at the south end of Chapel Street, funded by revenue from the road tolls. High Street represented a crippling burden and Council’s representations to the government for financial assistance, though ultimately successful in 1860, interestingly brought comment from John Myles, member for South Grant, that St. Kilda was a wealthy suburb and the place of residence of many honourable members, and that he saw no reason why it should be the subject of special consideration84.

In 1860 portions of Fitzroy and High Streets were paved in cement. Judged a success, the experiment was extended to the Esplanade, Grey Street and additional areas of High Street in 1876. Council established a free public library at the court house in 1863. The present town hall complex, designed by William Pitt, was opened in 1888.

The Council was also a pioneer in beach improvements, successfully agitating for the formation of the St. Kilda Foreshore Committee which held its first meeting in June, 1906. It was the committee’s intention to beautify the St. Kilda foreshore by renting sites along its length, thereby raising funds to carry out beautification works. Membership included representation at both State and local levels and was in itself a demonstration of the importance of the foreshore to Melbourne as a whole. The committee was given the task of managing two hectares of land between Fraser and Dickens Streets. Under the direction of Carlo Catani the area was remodelled to resemble a European resort with a split level Esplanade, amusements, dance halls and theatres. The committee’s work acted as a catalyst

82 Ibid., p.142. 83 Ibid.,loc.cit. 84 Ibid., p.148. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 44 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian for private investment which secured St. Kilda’s position as the pre-eminent beach resort of the metropolis.To the north of the St. Kilda pier the committee embarked upon a land reclamation project which was extended by means of a continuous sea wall as far as the South Melbourne municipal boundary at Fraser Street. Lawns and gardens were formed, later to be known as the Catani Gardens after the chief engineer of the Public Works Department who had worked so tirelessly in support of the committee’s objectives.

In 1923 Council gave consideration to the construction of baths for the purpose of “open sea bathing”. It accepted the tender of T.R. and L. Cockram for their erection at Beaconsfield Parade, Marine Parade and Elwood in 1928 A portico had been added to the town hall in 1925 and in 1930 the Catani memorial clock tower was erected to the design of N.E. Schefferle.

5.8 Ways of life

5.8.1 Port Melbourne

During the 1850’s Sandridge boomed as the gateway to Melbourne and its gold rich hinterland. The population was young, predominantly male and engaged in jobs servicing the shipping trade, construction and the provision of accommodation and meals to those passing through. During the 1860’s, a transient population was transformed into one with an air of permanence, focussing on the establishment of those cultural institutions which are the hallmark of civilisation. They included churches, schools, local government, lodges and societies. There were even public baths in Rouse Street, on the south side between Stoke and Nott Streets85.The usual football and cricket teams were founded from this time with bowls and tennis clubs following in the 1880’s. Large industrial workplaces such as Swallow and Ariell were to field their own football and cricket teams. Other less healthy pastimes took place indoors in the Port’s numerous hotels, where gambling and billiards competitions flourished. But the hotels were also associated with moonlight sailing parties following feasting, drinking, music and song. The ‘highlight’ of the season was a yachting regatta watched by crowds lining the shores. Horse racing on the beach was also organised with similar enthusiasm.

Sandridge has its origins as a home for the working classes and Allom Lovell and Associates note in their 1995 history that it has been suggested that as early as the 1860’s the workers of Port Melbourne forced the ‘gentlemen’ who represented them on Council and in their colonial legislature to adopt rather more liberal attitudes than some of their colleagues86. A working class political culture appears to have been strong in early Port Melbourne from this time. The 1880’s saw several unions established in the area, sometimes in connection with the larger workplaces. The railway workshops, for example, employed around 125 workers during this period and had an active branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. Other unions included the Port Melbourne Stevedore Labourers Association

85 Sands and McDougall directory, 1860. 86 Allom Lovell and Associates, op.cit., p.21. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 45 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian and the Hobson’s Bay Fisherman’s Union, formed at the “Pier” hotel in November, 1887. Major strikes of wharf labourers and fishermen in 1886-87 and of gas workers in 1890 sharpened the focus of this emerging political dimension. Other organisations developed which reflected the working class nature of the place, including a branch of the Progressive Political League, formed in 1891. The club rooms of the Port Phillip Stevedores’ Association were at 25 Bay Street, near the “Pier” hotel. Here there were billiard tables and an extensive library. Members played cards and engaged in lengthy discussions on a variety of subjects, including politics, trade unionism and world events87. The PPSA’s rules outlawed criminal and loutish behaviour. May 1885 saw the formation of the Melbourne Wharf Labourers’ Union, aiming to protect the rights of the river wharfies. Striking in 1886, its members were supported by the PPSA, then 800 strong, of whom 600 were Port Melbourne residents. Until 1928, men followed the piers, or the wharf. Work on the mail ships was handled by the Port Phillip Stevedores, the “bottom-enders”, considered the aristocrats of the port. Stowing the cargo was their special skill. The men who handled the wharf work were known as the “top-enders” or “river rats” and were considered a lesser order88.

Temperance interests established themselves in the late nineteenth century, the old Temperance Hall functioning today as the ‘Liardet Community Centre’. When the Victorian Licensing Reduction Board examined the situation in Port Melbourne in the early twentieth century it noted that the area was “heavily overstocked with hotels…the main demand is for liquor only…The Board is of the opinion that the licensed accommodation at present levels is largely in excess of the needs of the people, and that the hotels left will be ample to provide for all requirements”89. The Board delicensed eighteen hotels in the period up to 1916, few of them surviving today. Hotels were important meeting places for societies and lodges in the nineteenth century, prior to the construction of purpose built structures. Freemasonry was strong. As well as the Masonic Lodge in Liardet Street, the original Masonic Lodge building remains at 18 Stoke Street. Facilities for seamen were provided from the 1850’s, including a Bethel (seamen’s church) and a Seamen’s mission, the former Seamen’s Institute building of 1888 still standing at 49 Beach Street.

From the early years of the twentieth century, Port Melbourne was not surprisingly dominated by labour interests. The working class nature of the population and the resulting sense of shared experience shaped the identity of the suburb with a strong sense of solidarity and community. One Port resident, Tommy Lahiff, put it bluntly: “you were either a wharfie or you worked in one of the factories. Swallow and Ariell’s, Kitchens, Dunlops, Laycocks”90. One of Unilever’s foremen in the 1950’s recalled that Port Melbourne was a close knit community, rough but honest: “once you were

87 Lockwood, R.,The Miraculous Union: A Hundred Years of Waterfront Unionism, p.13, in Allom Lovell and Associates, op.cit., p.22. 88 Lowenstein, W., and Hills, T., Under the Hook: Melbourne Waterside Workers remember working lives and class war:1900-1980, (1982), Melbourne Bookworkers, p.7. 89 Ninth Annual Report and Statement of Accounts to 31st. December, 1915, p.34, in Allom Lovell and Associates, op.cit., p.31. 90 Tommy Lahiff, quoted in “They can carry me out” Memories of Port Melbourne, (1991), p.57. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 46 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian in you were right”91. The people of Port Melbourne suffered enormously through the 1930’s depression when between 75 and 90 per cent of young people are thought to have been unemployed.

In the post war period the influx of migrants had its impact, Mary Caporale, who was raised in Middle Park during the 1940’s, clearly remembering the crowd scenes at Station pier when shipping lines, including the Lloyd Triestino, discharged their cargoes of passengers and “proxy brides”92. Many workers were engaged in night shifts and there were hotels, such as the “North Port”, which opened at all hours in the era of six o’clock closing to dispense a drink or two to the men starting and finishing their shifts. It was the practice for the wives to collect the pay - before it could be spent - although they too were known to spend time at the local pub, preparing the vegetables with friends and having a drink at the same time. In those days, Mary recalls, “you knew everyone in the street…everyone walked to walk. Weekends, as a child, were spent playing in the street, swapping comics and yabbying. The beach was an attraction at summertime, although we kept clear of the beach at Port Melbourne. ‘Rube Walker’ was the sp bookie - down the back lane by the ‘Middle Park’ pub. The ‘Port Colts’ played on the ‘Lagoon oval’ and there were always a few onlookers engaged in a game of two-up behind the gasworks with their ‘nits’ keeping a weather eye out for the police”. To sum up, said Mary,” if you were a Port boy…you were tough!” But then, she lived in Middle Park.

The coming of mechanisation, write Lowenstein and Hills, “changed the waterfront beyond belief - not only the job itself but the men who worked it. The close communities are dispersed. The men now live all over Melbourne and drive good cars to work…They drive cranes and fork-lifts and many, perhaps half the work-force, are post war migrants. Sons do not commonly follow fathers”93 . These changes have been associated with the “gentrification”, of Port Melbourne during the 1970’s when young middle class families moved back into the streets of workers, renovating their often sub- standard cottages and breathing new life into a locality which retained one of its most outstanding attributes: proximity,…proximity to places of employment and entertainment.

5.8.2 South Melbourne

Emerald Hill, as has been noted, was established later than Port Melbourne and St. Kilda as a suburban retreat for what the Victorians called the commercial classes. The most prominent occupational groups were clerks and shopkeepers, blacksmiths and mechanics, builders, bricklayers and carpenters, carters, coach drivers and railway employees. There were relatively few unskilled labourers. The existence of the St. Kilda railway from 1857 gave them a degree of mobility which other areas of Melbourne lacked until the following decades. As at Sandridge, the 1860’s witnessed the formation of the educational and religious institutions associated with permanent settlement. The schools included National, church and private establishments and there were orphanages and a mechanics institute at Cecil Street, on the Dorcas Street corner. From the 1860’s minstrel and vaudeville shows

91 Bob Renton, in a conversation with the writer. 92 Conversation with the writer. 93 Lowenstein, W., and Hills, T., op.cit., p.9. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 47 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian were staged in the mechanics institute. After 1880 the new town hall became the main venue for theatrical entertainments while the institute became something of the intellectual hub. A School of Arts and a School of Works operated here on Friday nights and there was a reading room, club room, chess room, whist and smoking room, a ladies’ conversation room, lecture hall and other centres of activity. By 1874 the Record observed that “We have developed into a matured and prosperous town, with its mercantile, manufacturing, banking, trading and labouring interests all in harmonious play, and possessing those social and religious institutions which give dignity and security to modern civilisation”94. The surrounding lowlands, however, provided ample space, as they do today, for recreational pursuits including racing. A racecourse had been laid out in 1862 on the ground between the township and the seaboard. It was here that the “Emerald Hill and Sandridge Races” were held, Bell’s Life remarking that it was a “very fine piece of galloping ground”95. Other sports were well represented in Emerald Hill too. Shooting in the swamps was popular, the destruction of wild game being so great that in 1862 the government legislated for its protection. The Emerald Hill Cricket Club had emerged by 1855, playing its first matches on temporary grounds before securing permissive occupancy of six acres in Albert Park in 1862. Boathouses near the lake first made their appearance in 1864, the lake emerging as an asset at this time as settlement extended south towards its shores and as wider Melbourne sought social diversion and outdoor recreation. The Albert Park Yacht Club was formed in 1870 and regular Saturday regattas became a feature96.

South Melbourne grew during the nineteenth century into a suburb of contrasting life styles. “The modish part…is decidedly Queen’s-terrace, between St. Kilda-road and Albert-park, and facing that reserve” wrote a contributor to The Argus in 188497. He continued by describing the area then known as Montague but colloquially as “Salt Lake City” as a poorly drained sector with a terrible stench. It is “wonderful”, he wrote, “how people can live there; yet new houses are going up there daily in thick clusters, evidently intended for persons of the artisan class. Children are being reared…in great numbers. Their chief amusement here is to play in the horrible liquid surrounding their homes.” It was an area in which typhoid was rife. By this time, also, St. Vincents Place had been laid out with ornamental gardens, a bowling green and a croquet lawn, converted in 1883 for the newly fashionable game of tennis98. A further contrast with the niceties of South Melbourne was the problem of prostitution and the popularity of Albert Park as a location for “this most degrading of human vices”.

From just fourteen hotels in 1860, the number of licensed houses had risen to eighty-six by the end of 1879 with almost one in four licensees being women. Offering an insight into their use, Thomas Walsh and his wife, Margaret, opened their “Albert Park” hotel in 1883, advertising that “Private

94 Record, ‘The Growth of Emerald Hill’ 13.8.1874, in Priestley, S., op.cit., p.83. 95 Bell’s Life in Victoria, 31.5.1862 in Allom Lovell Sanderson Pty. Ltd., op.cit., p. 4/10. 96 Priestley, S., op.cit., p.195. 97 The Argus, 16.8.1884 in Priestley, op.cit., p.121. 98 Priestley, S., op.cit., p.132. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 48 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Families, or Single Gentlemen who may desire a residence near the City, will find the accommodation in every way satisfactory”99. Thus the purveying of drinks was by no means the only purpose fulfilled by South Melbourne’s hotels, their use as respectable residences being an important adjunct. The grandest hotel was the surviving “Victoria” on Beaconsfield Parade. It functioned as a seaside resort and “an unrivalled summer residence within a few minutes of the city”100. It faced the Kerford Road pier, gardens and a small rotunda on the foreshore, these picturesque elements in the coastal landscape combining with the substantial residences attracted to the seafront to create the atmosphere of an English resort town. The Emerald Hill sea baths were close by. Here, visitors, who might have arrived by cable tramway, could relax in an environment carefully planned for the needs of a pedestrian based society. In 1890 additional baths were provided opposite Armstrong Street, Middle Park.

The 1890’s depression witnessed a decline in population, many of the houses and workers’ cottages thrown up in the boom times being vacated and allowed to deteriorate. It provided a reason why so many parts of South Melbourne were to be scrutinised by the slum abolition movement in the 1930’s when Melbourne was yet again in the grips of an economic slump. The friendly societies offered members material help in the form of sickness benefits and life insurance. The United Friendly Societies dispensary, the first in Australia, has its origins in York Street, moving later to a building in Coventry Street designed by the noted architect, G.R.Johnson. South Melbourne, however, retained its resort role during the depression, an observer in 1897 noting that 499 bicycles passed him by on Beaconsfield Parade in two and a half hours101. By 1905 the Princes Court fun fair included a gigantic slide called “The Chute”, ornamental gardens and miniature railway rides, all of which were in the tradition of the English coastal resort town and which preceded the longer lasting Luna Park by several years. Later, South Melbourne’s metropolitan importance in the matter of recreational pursuits was underscored by the formation of the Open Sea Bathing Club in 1914. Quickly renamed the Albert Park Surf Club, it set about the promotion of life saving classes and although the Great War curtailed training, it was resumed by the life saving clubs in the 1920’s102.

Writing about the inter war years, Susan Priestley notes that “if an overriding suburban ethos may be claimed for Albert Park and Middle Park, its essence was distilled through the beach”103. And so it was. Although the numbers of young families declined after the Second World War, they continued to enjoy that characteristic of the locality which had always given it distinction: proximity; proximity to recreational and entertainment venues, proximity to work. There was no need for a car, the Glaciarium on the site of the present Arts Centre, the beach, the lake and the entertainment centre at St. Kilda all being within walking distance or a short tram ride. Later on, the process of “gentrification”, which preceded that of Port Melbourne by approximately a decade, introduced a new generation of

99 Ibid., p.141. 100 loc.cit. 101 Ibid., p.202. 102 Ibid., p.203. 103 Ibid., p.299. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 49 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian young families, re-building the cottages of the previous century’s working classes and imparting new life to a suburb which had slipped in the social pecking order on account of the deteriorating condition of its housing stock and a perceived lack of amenity in the face of competition from the quarter acre block municipalities on the fringe of the metropolis.

5.8.3 St. Kilda

A glance at the Sands and McDougall directory of 1860 offers clues concerning the distinguishing characteristics of St. Kilda. Essentially residential and served by its own privately run railway line with an unusually pompous railway station complete with semi-circular porte-cochere, there were no less than seven parliamentarians in residence104. There were ladies’ schools, seminaries, other private schools and a circulating library along with the other occupational groups typical of the period. Amongst the architects in residence were T.J. Crouch and Nathaniel Billing, both of whom were highly successful in their day. It is clear, that St. Kilda was both genteel and further distinguished by its political connections. When police found prostitutes in Acland Street in 1886, they were ordered to leave since residence was considered to be simply unavailable to them105. At Balaclava, such was not the case, but on the hill, things were different. Furthermore, St. Kilda was special on account of its beach, which Council in cooperation with a number of entrepreneurs, developed into a metropolitan resort par excellence surpassing those of its coastal neighbours from an early date. The Esplanade could be reached by rail and cable tramway services and there were hotels affording fine views of the bay with a pier and ornamental gardens. Its importance was recognised in the creation of the St. Kilda Foreshore Committee in 1906. Under its direction, amusements, dance halls and theatres were fostered together with open air shows and a program of foreshore improvement. Luna Park, opened in December, 1912, was described as the greatest park of its type in the world106, setting an example which was followed in Sydney in 1935. The Phillips brothers built the Palais de Danse in the following year, though religious leaders protested about the temptations of the tango and the corruption of public morals. It was converted into a picture theatre in 1915, replaced in 1920 and the present Palais de Danse erected on an adjoining site. The theatre was burnt down in 1926 and replaced with a new venue accommodating three thousand people soon afterwards. Such was the level of commercial frenzy associated with the Esplanade at the time. During the early inter war years, St. Kilda remained a popular and highly successful resort. Visitors stayed in hotels built during the previous century and including the “Esplanade” and the “George”. Guest house accommodation included the “Majestic Mansions” in Fitzroy Street and “Mandalay” on the Esplanade. Day trippers arrived from all over the suburbs via the electric tramway network, the Prahran and Malvern Tramways Trust having built its own restaurant at the Acland Street terminus of its route

104 They were Matthew Hervey, MLC, Archibald Michie, MLA, T. Thomas A’Beckett, MLC, James McCulloch, MLA and Richard D. Ireland, MLA, all in Alma Street, G.S.W. Horne, MLA in Carlisle Street and John B. Bennett, MLC, in Dandenong Road. 105 Longmire, A., St. Kilda The Show Goes On: The History of St. Kilda vol.III, 1930-July 1983, (1989), Hudson, p.ix. 106 Ibid., p.xi. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 50 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian along Carlisle Street. Here, terminating trams travelled around a loop encircling the restaurant which was designed in a style not unlike the Moorish architecture of Luna Park itself. It was all part of the fun, replaced today by a McDonalds restaurant. Further south, the Point Ormond tram also offered access to the beach along Glenhuntly Road.

St. Kilda, writes Anne Longmire, was proud of its gardens. Visitors promenaded along the Esplanade and picnicked on lawns studded with flower beds, rockeries, continental tea rooms, palms, bandstands and statues68 . To the gardens were added more dance halls, the “Wattle Path” opening in 1923 beside Alfred square as a dancing saloon and café selling ice-cream and aerated waters. There were also cinemas including the “Victory”, the “Broadway” in Elwood and the “Memorial”. The “Palais Pictures” was the showplace of Melbourne’s finest performers69 .

Yet even in its ascendancy, St.Kilda as a centre of entertainment was sewing the seeds of its undoing. Vandalism, sly-grog dealing, drug peddling and prostitution blemished its reputation whilst others looked upon the facilities for mass entertainment as vulgar. Fewer holiday makers were arriving and many apartment houses and boarding houses closed their doors. Others kept them open to offer sub-standard accommodation. When the depression hit in 1929, discretionary spending was first affected with inevitable repercussions for those dependant upon the entertainment industry. To add to their woes, the amusements were becoming regarded as old fashioned whilst those with motor cars were able to drive further afield to country destinations. Coffee lounges, modern hotels and an ice skating rink helped redress the situation. The “Astor” cinema was opened in Chapel street in 1936. In 1938 Council approved mixed bathing at the baths in the same year as the “St.Moritz” ice rink opened. The Galleone coffee lounge, opened in 1933 was a foretaste of a new era in dining and street cafes. Bolstered by post war migration, the popularity of European cuisine has remained a distinctive and continuing attraction in Fitzroy Street and its environs.

While Acland Street maintained its favour, High Street went into decline. In August, 1934, the mayor, Cr. Burnett Gray stated that “High street as a shopping centre is now a memory and will never again be what it was before modern transport was introduced”70 .

The war years gave St. Kilda a second boost in its traditional role of entertainment centre, the scarcity of petrol no doubt enhancing its competitive edge. Its identity as the heart of youth culture continued. The proliferation of entertainment venues and the general liveliness of the environment, together with the availability of new forms of less expensive accommodation attracted young people, from the middle class occupants of fashionable flat blocks, to entertainers, musicians and artists. Meanwhile, Elwood and East St. Kilda continued to develop along suburban lines with a certain vitality being given by the mix of residential and flat development, proximity to good public transport services, the sea and St. Kilda Hill. Prostitution, however, remained as St. Kilda’s most infamous

68 Ibid, p.6. 69 Ibid, p.7. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 51 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian industry during this period.

The residential areas of St. Kilda, along with those elsewhere in Port Phillip, deteriorated after the war. Similarly, the standards of guest houses and boarding houses further declined. The days of the Foreshore Committee were over and as St. Kilda’s identity as a centre of entertainment declined, the vacuum was filled by a range of less savoury activities consolidating its notoriety through to the 1980’s. The 1950’s witnessed a continuing trend towards flat development with scant regard being paid to standards of residential amenity. Construction peaked in the 1960’s at a level unsurpassed elsewhere in Melbourne. St. Kilda continued to be a place not just for artists but for a whole sub- culture of creative people including actors, writers and students. Their natural place was amongst the diverse forms of poverty characteristic of the place and enmeshed in drugs, prostitution, itinerancy and the multiplicity of outcast groups.

In recent years, St. Kilda has revived its role as an entertainment destination for the metropolis, with an upmarket image again sponsored by Council in the tradition of the past and built on by business enterprises. Whereas Elwood and Balaclava remain essentially the domain of their resident populations, St. Kilda continues to belong to Melbourne.71

71 See article in The Modern Store, 3/1938, pp.20-22 referred to by Longmire, op.cit., p.62. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 52 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

6. HERITAGE OVERLAY AREAS

6.1 Introduction

The heritage overlay areas constitute those areas within the Municipality that are considered to demonstrate a comparatively high level of cultural value when considered in terms of their historic, aesthetic and social attributes. They survive generally with a higher level of architectural integrity than the remaining areas of the municipality and it is not unlikely that they will have superior civic or aesthetic qualities. Given that Port Phillip has evolved over a long period, principally from the 1840’s until the inter-war period, these areas invariably exhibit the characteristics of their time, both in architectural and civic design terms, as well as functionally. In some instances, most notably St. Kilda, there is a diversity which imparts special character. All of the coastal areas identified in the Review, extending inland to Albert Park and Clarendon Street, South Melbourne, have cultural importance extending beyond the limits of Port Phillip. These areas impart identity to Melbourne as an international City and their management, as a consequence, places a heavy burden of responsibility on the shoulders of the community of Port Phillip and its Council. This burden is increased by the mounting pressures for change that reflect the desire of many to live in a coastal strip of limited capacity. The identification of these areas, therefore, represents an initial step in the development of the conservation strategy required to manage change in the interests of the very qualities which make them special places in which to live.

The heritage overlay areas are shown collectively on the figure overleaf. They are described in the sections which follow. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 53 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 54 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

6.2 Port Melbourne - H01

Existing Designations: Heritage Council Register: nil National Estate Register: nil National Trust Register: nil

Description: This Area is bounded on its north side by Ross Street and on the east by Ingles Street and Boundary Streets. Pickles Street marks the southern boundary which links directly with the South Melbourne, Albert Park, Middle Park and part St. Kilda Area. The western boundary is fragmented as a result of widespread recent residential redevelopment along the waterfront and inland. This redevelopment has in the past been undertaken by the public sector but in more recent times by the private sector. The fragmented nature of the western end is exaggerated by the Lagoon Reserve and associated recent residential developments. Also forming part of the Port Melbourne Area are the residential areas physically linked with the Garden City estates but historically and in terms of their appearance more properly associated with this Area. These areas are generally located to the south-east of the earliest Garden City estates.

The route of the former Port Melbourne railway line with its associated reserves and the Bay Street commercial thoroughfare divide Port Melbourne into discrete neighbourhoods. Their alignments relative to each other have resulted in the creation of a triangular shaped area bounded by Princes and Nott Streets that is in itself subdivided somewhat irregularly into street blocks and triangular reserves. The reserves are known as the Crichton reserve and the Sangster reserve and Port Melbourne Bowling Club.

The former railway route and gardens are overlooked by comparatively opulent houses in Evans and Station Streets. Verandahs are invariably built to the property line and there are some two storeyed Italianate residences at nos. 73 and 75 Evans Street and nos. 164 (“Ulster House”), 163 (“Derwent Coffey House”), 160-162 (“Alfred Terrace”) and elsewhere in Station Street. Although masonry construction predominates, there are also important timber cottages such as no. (63?) Station Street and 99-100 Evans Street. The house of the slaughterman, Caleb Kennett, at no.64 Evans Street is exceptional on account of its spacious garden, high bi-chromatic brick fence and palisade cast iron fence with cast iron pillars. These houses are more characteristic of the “better” streets of South Melbourne than of “Port” yet it might equally be argued that they constitute the “better” streets of Port Melbourne as does the St. Vincent Place area, for example, constitute a “better” part of South Melbourne. Importantly, they represent a dimension to the fabric of the area often overlooked by persons unfamiliar with the place. They also demonstrate the importance of the railway gardens as a catalyst for substantial villa development last century. These gardens are noteworthy on account of their exotic plantings. Some of the trees in the Turner and Walter reserves on Station Street and Evans Street respectively may have been planted as early as the turn of the century and are predominantly exotics. They include Cedrus deodara, Schinus molle var. areira, Ficus macrocarpa, Cupressus sempervirens, elms and a very large Ficus macrophylla in a fenced off reserve in the centre of Raglan Street. The Gill, Howe and Smith reserves also include mature Schinus molle var. areira Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 55 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian and Ficus macrophylla that collectively establish the highly distinguished ambience of the locale.

The former “Excelsior Hall”, now the RSL building, is a remarkable large timber public building, important if for no other reason than for the rarity of its mode of construction. Together with the nearby corner hotels and shops it adds greatly to the diversity of the Area and to its capacity to surprise the newcomer. More importantly, these buildings illustrate a life style that evolved long before the widespread use of the motor car.

The remaining residential areas are made up predominantly of single storeyed timber and brick cottages, in terraced rows as at nos. 3-17 Bridge Street and 22-26 Lyon Street or in detached rows of identical cottages as may be seen in Princes Street and elsewhere. The rows known as “Queens Terrace” and “Jubilee Terrace” occupying nos. 118-144 Nott Street are extraordinary on account of their great length. In these areas, unusual two storeyed buildings include the all timber house at 64 Cruikshank Street, “Guernsey House” at 232 Esplanade East and others attracted to Graham Street, having always been an important thoroughfare. The housing stock, though predominantly Victorian, is enriched by Federation period villas and by the diversity of the non-residential buildings that include the ubiquitous corner hotels, often delicensed, the occasional church, factory and corner shop. There is a characteristic pattern here wherein the corner sites were typically occupied by commercial premises and the allotments in between by houses. This pattern was the product of a pedestrian and public transport dependant society and is enriching when viewed from today’s perspective. The minor streets and lanes, now mostly rebuilt, are also of interest, the survival of Peckville Street being of special note. So too are the streets facing the Crichton reserve in that they demonstrate an approach to urban planning that is in a way superior to the current practice of confining open space to the spatially inconsequential lands associated with watercourses and vacant blocks. Finally, the schools at Nott and Graham Streets are pivotal to the interpretation of the social history of the Area.

Bay Street is a remarkable thoroughfare in many respects. There is in the first instance the prospect of the sea at its southern end and the manner in which buildings associated with the sea are located here. The bluestone mass of Morley’s coal depot is especially evocative in this respect. But it is the diversity of the buildings along its length which sustain the visitor’s interest. First, there are the public buildings, including two generations of post offices, the police station, court house and lock- up and the Port Melbourne town hall, occupying a pivotal site surrounded by streets and houses and terminating the Spring Street vistas. These buildings impart identity to the street particularly on account of their dominant corner sites. Also of note are the hotels, including the “Rex”, the “Prince Alfred”, “Chequers Inn”, “Quinn’s” and the “Fountain Inn”. Again, it is the corner sites that give them prominence. There are also banks, the former Holy Trinity Church complex and a former drill hall. The shops include terraced rows with cast iron posted verandahs such as nos. 79-85 whilst other important rows include nos. 149-155 (“O’Briens Terrace”), nos. 165-179 and the “Market Buildings” at the Liardet Street corner. Finally, Bay Street’s houses have been built over a considerable time, cheek by jowl with the shops and hotels. “Peckham Terrace” is the earliest (c.1859). “Carroll’s Terrace” alongside was built in 1884 and nearby, nos. 378-382 followed in 1900. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 56 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

History: A track between the beach and the town of Melbourne had been established as early as 1839. The government surveyor, Robert Hoddle, had prepared a plan for a “rail road” on the alignment of Bay Street and a street subdivision for Sandridge in that year. Wilbraham Liardet arrived in November, establishing his “Brighton Pier” hotel and jetty at Sandridge a year later. By 1841 Alfred Lingham had opened his “Marine” hotel, also with a jetty, at the same location and the two hotels marked the commencement of tracks to Melbourne that eventually joined to form a single route. There was also a hut and customs tent and a magazine at Sandridge at that time. Hoddle prepared a further survey plan in 1842, providing for half acre allotments and a roadway on the alignment of Bay Street. There were 40 lots in four blocks between present Graham and Rouse Streets but the land was withdrawn from sale. In 1849 the government built a pier on the site of Liardet’s jetty and Lindsay Clarke’s survey plan was used as a basis for the first land sales in September, 1850. By December, 1852 the Argus recorded that about 100 tents had been erected “near Liardet’s” and Edwin Thomas’ sketch of 1853 showed single and two storeyed shops with verandahs in a continuous row on one side of Bay Street. The Sandridge railway line, built by the Melbourne and Hobsons Bay Railway Co. formed in August 1852, was opened as Australia’s first steam powered railway on 12.9.1854. By this time, the street grid between the railway and the Lagoon had been established.

An 1855 plan shows the essential elements of the township. Commencing at the sea front there was a customs house at the corner of Beach Street and Nott Street and a reserve for the post office on the south corner of Bay and Rouse Streets. Between Rouse and Graham Streets there were allotments for the Roman Catholic and Wesleyan churches and a reserve for the watchouse. Further north again between Graham and Liardet Streets were the Seamen’s, Presbyterian and Church of England reserves. Between Liardet and Raglan Streets, as the available land between the lagoon and the railway reserve narrows, there was a pool - on the site of present Lalor Street - and associated swampland. Private allotments were scattered liberally throughout the Area and it would appear that the whole of Sandridge had been alienated by this time. Station Place was lined with small presumably residential allotments. Sandridge’s role as a geographically discrete port town had been established.

By the late 1850’s the process of replacing the earlier and more temporary buildings with permanent accommodation was gaining momentum, “Peckham Terrace” erected c.1859 in Bay Street being a surviving example of this earliest redevelopment phase. The court house, police station and post office were all erected during the early 1860’s. Amongst the brick hotels being built were the “Chequers Inn” which remains today at the corner of Bay and Bridge Streets and the “Fountain Inn” at the corner of Raglan and Crockford Streets. There were in fact many hotels at the Port, which was not surprising, given its foundations in the shipping trade. In 1872 the architect, Thomas (?) Watts designed a small hotel in Graham Street and Frederick Williams a larger one at the corner of Graham Street and the Esplanade. In 1873 he designed another one on the site of the old “Sandridge Inn” in Bay Street and carried out alterations to the “Bay View” in 1887, the “Prince Alfred” in 1889 and designed the new “Victoria” in 1895. In 1888 the local architect, J.B. Grut carried out works to “Chequers”, the “Rising Sun”, the “Exchange”, the “Hibernian” and the “Cosmopolitan”.

The shops, mainly in Bay Street, convey something of the same picture as the hotels, a few being Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 57 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian designed by quite distinguished Melbourne architects and then from the 1870’s more and more by the locals. Frederick Williams was exceptionally busy whilst John Flannagan’s group of three shops in Bay Street of 1874-75 survive as a testimony two his work and a reminder that the original development encompassed five shops. Williams commenced his run of commissions with a tender in 1871 for an unspecified number of shops and dwellings. There were more in Bay Street (1873) and Ingles Street, four in Bay Street in 1874 and others again later in the year. Although the main commercial street was Bay Street, others included Beach, Rouse, Graham, Nott and Stokes and there were non-residential establishments in Railway Place and Station Place, taking advantage of their proximity with the railway line.

By 1900110 the Area had been almost completely built up. The Graham Street school had been opened in 1889 partly to save children living north of the railway from crossing this busy thoroughfare on their way to the Nott Street school opened in 1874. The Port Melbourne cable tramway on Bay Street had been opened in 1890 with a terminus and depot in Beach Street, demolished in 1998. The Town pier at that time was served by a horse powered street tramway carrying coal from the pier to the South Melbourne gas works in Pickles Street and the sugar works on the site of the present “Sandridge Bay Towers” development. The tramway skirted the north side of the boat harbour, between Esplanade East and Esplanade West and the south side of the lagoon on its run out to the gas works. There were extensive rail yards at Port Melbourne together with a passenger station on the site of the present disused building and another at Raglan Street. By the turn of the century the river berths and the new Victoria Dock handled most of the shipping and the bayside’s brief pre- eminence as Melbourne’s port had passed.

If Port Melbourne had prospered as an industrial location last century, it boomed during the twentieth when Fishermen’s Bend was released for industrial development. Amongst those factories established during the 1920’s were the works of the engineering company, Malcolm Moore Pty. Ltd. on Williamstown Road from 1927. J. Kitchen and Sons and Australian Motor Industries were other important enterprises. Larger complexes such as General Motors Holden and the aircraft manufacturing plants including the Government Aircraft Factory and the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation were founded in the 1930’s and 1940’s to the north of the present Westgate Freeway and beyond the limits of the City of Port Phillip. Together with the port they sustained the Area’s working class population residing to the south of the Williamstown Road.

Today more than at any time in the past the occupants of the terraces and detached houses of the Area are white collar workers employed in the City and elsewhere and “Port” has lost its past character as a working class locale tied to the docks and factories of the Yarra River flats.

Thematic Context: Building settlements, towns and cities:

• Planning urban settlement • Making suburbs

110 See MMBW Drainage Plan. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 58 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

• Supplying urban services (transport)

Statement of Significance: The Port Melbourne Area encompasses the long established residential and commercial streets of Port Melbourne commencing at Pickles Street in the south and finishing at Clark Street in the north. It has historical importance (Criterion A) as a nineteenth century working class area associated with the growth of the Port of Melbourne and especially the bayside shipping activities of the port and with the industrial development of the shore line last century and the Yarra River flats this century. This importance is demonstrated not only by the housing stock and surviving industrial establishments but also by the diversity of commercial and public buildings within the Area. The Area is especially valuable for its capacity to demonstrate the life style of this close knit community during the nineteenth century. Being surrounded by industrial land, the Bay and the Lagoon reserves, the Area retains its discrete geographical form and has value for its capacity to demonstrate past urban planning practices characteristic of the pre-automobile age. These include the Bay street strip shopping centre, the railway gardens and other reserves, the status given to public buildings and public transport services and the mix of residential and non-residential uses wherein street corner sites are invariably occupied by hotels and shops establishing a distinctive streetscape pattern.

Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table in the Port Phillip Planning Scheme

Assessment: Andrew Ward, June, 1998. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 59 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Plan of Township of Sandridge: 1859 Source: SLV Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 60 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Bay Street, Town Pier and Beach Street, c.1870, by R.Jenny. Source: La Trobe Collection, SLV, in Jacobs Lewis Vines: Port Melbourne Conservation Study 1979. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 61 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Port Melbourne: 1900. Source MMBW drainage plan Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 62 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

Bay Street, Port Melbourne, looking towards the Bay from Liardet Street with the building erected on the market reserve from 1883 to 1887 at right and the former “Port” Theatre at left.

Station Street, North Port, at Bridge Street, showing the now delicensed “Station” hotel and houses characteristic of this area. The Smith Reserve is at left. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 63 Prepared for the City of Port Phillip by Andrew Ward, Architectural Historian

“Queens Terrace and “Jubilee Terrace”, in Nott Street, are amongst the longest of the many terraces in Port Melbourne.

The Port Melbourne light railway, site of Australia’s first steam powered railway line, looking east across Walter reserve to houses in Evans Street. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 64 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

6.3 Port Melbourne - The Garden City Housing Estates - HO2

Existing Designations: Heritage Council Register: nil National Estate Register: nil National Trust Register: nil

Description: The Garden City Housing estates consist of five parts:

• The State Savings Bank estate east of Tucker Avenue (1927-29) • The Public Works Department estate east of Graham Street (1936) • The State Savings Bank estate west of Tucker Avenue (1937-48) • The Housing Commission of Victoria “quartets”, east of Southward Avenue (1940) • The Housing Commission of Victoria Fisherman’s Bend estate (1939-42).

All of the estates demonstrate a pre-occupation with the creation of a new landscaped residential environment in contrast with the confined and blighted housing areas that they were designed to replace. As a consequence the roads are of minimum width with emphasis being given to the nature strips and parklands incorporated in the developments. The State Savings Bank estates consist of two parts separated by the Garden City reserve now facing a new housing estate but originally overlooking the railway line to Princes Pier and associated wastelands. They consist typically of attached two storeyed pairs of somewhat picturesque design repeated throughout the estates and characterized by the use of rough cast walls, originally unpainted, hipped tiled roofs and tiny Arts and Crafts influenced porches. The upper levels are divided from the lower by a plain cement band and many of the chimney stacks retain their paired terra cotta pots. Today, their original low front and side fences and gateways have been replaced and many owners have painted over the dull grey rough cast walls but in spite of these changes the level of integrity is high.

The Public Works Department estate east of Graham Street is, by comparison, small, consisting of two streets: Griffin Crescent and Southward Avenue. The houses are built as two storeyed duplex units in the prevailing English Domestic Revival or English Cottage style with steeply pitched gable roofs. Typical elements include picturesque round arched front porches, half timbering, stepped and angled chimneys, rusticated clinker brickwork with contrasting stuccoed finishes, plain red and cream brickwork and gable end motifs. The roads are narrow and the nature strips wide and there are low brick and wrought iron fences. In recent years many of the original timber windows have been replaced in aluminium and the low front fences have given way to higher picket fences and brick fences along the Williamstown Road.

The Housing Commission of Victoria “quartets” are located on the Williamstown Road and numbered 444A/B to 478A/B. They consist of nine two storeyed gable roofed blocks of four dwelling units with clinker brick facebricks and timber double hung windows. The terra cotta tiled roofs have plain central chimney stacks as their most dominant features, the strength of the estate’s design being attained through the simplicity of the “quartets” in conjunction with their garden forecourt formed Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 65 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian by the manner in which they are stepped back from the Williamstown Road. Today, the forecourt is landscaped with a variety of mature trees including golden poplars and is further distinguished by the absence of front fences. There are later additions at the rear of each block.

The Housing Commission of Victoria’s Fisherman’s Bend estate is the largest of the estates, commencing at the western corner of the Garden City reserve and extending westward between Howe Parade and The Boulevard as far as Todd Road. The street layout is geometric with a central landscaped avenue having the Garden City service centre at the Williamstown Road end and the Ada Mary A’Beckett kindergarten of recent date at the other facing The Boulevard and the Bay. The streets are either laid out as courts or enclose the expansive open space areas now known as the Buckingham and Julier reserves. The houses are either of brick or concrete construction and demonstrate a self conscious avoidance of style in response to the influence of the emerging Modern Movement. Standard house types are repeated throughout the estate with planned relationships, the two storeyed units usually occupying the corner sites and the single storeyed units occupying the intermediate sites. At Central Avenue the two storeyed units are sited at an angle across their blocks either side of the entry to the avenue, thereby giving an architectural emphasis to it. Elsewhere, the courts are laid out symmetrically with one unit terminating the vista across the end of the court and flanking units of identical design facing each other across the roadway down to the corner units which are two storeyed. Design elements are gabled roofs with terra cotta tiles, clinker brick, red brick and concrete walls, plain centrally located chimney stacks in the manner of the “quartets” and timber gable ends. Original wire mesh fences survive although these have commonly been replaced with later brick fences. Many units have received minor and sympathetic changes, usually focusing on the entrance porches which were originally understated and are now larger affording a greater degree of weather protection. A number of houses along The Boulevard have sustained marked change. They are now unrelated to the cohesive architectural character of the estate and are characterized by the introduction of stylism in an otherwise architecturally “modern” environment. Recent public housing has also been completed between Barak and Beacon Roads.

History: The Port Melbourne Council, long aware of the over crowded and sub-standard nature of some of the houses within the municipality, had identified the land at Fisherman’s Bend as a possible future housing site from as early as 1912111. Its plans, however, were frustrated by the Harbor Trust which asserted its prior claim to the land. Nevertheless a 1914 Royal Commission into housing standards in Melbourne’s inner suburbs focused attention on the need for improved worker accommodation and in 1920 the Housing and Reclamation Act authorised the building of homes by public bodies. The State Savings Bank was the first agency to participate in this scheme through loans made by its Credit Foncier Department. It purchased 45 acres of land at Fisherman’s Bend between February 1927 and August 1929 and the first houses were built along Walter and Poolman Streets, Tucker and Crighton Avenues, east of the Garden City reserve in 1927. It became the first public authority to develop housing at Fisherman’s Bend and was strongly supported in its endeavour by the Port Melbourne City Council. The new estate was known as Garden City and 154 houses had

111 See U’Ren, N., Turnbull, N., A History of Port Melbourne OUP, 1983, p.227. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 66 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian been built by 1929. The name was not surprisingly called “Garden City” because of the emphasis given to the landcaped garden setting for the dwellings in the European traditions of Letchworth (1903), and Welwyn near London and Vreewyke near Rotterdam (1918). The houses themselves also borrowed from English precedents, the London County Council schemes at the St. Helier Cottage estate, Surrey (1928) and the Roehampton Cottage estate at Wandsworth (1921) along with others being highly comparable. They used two and three storeyed housing blocks lining landscaped streets and facing parklands usually in the English Domestic Revival manner112. The Bank continued its program of housing by commencing work west of the Garden City reserve after March, 1937113. Work was prolongued by the Second World War, the western portion being completed in 1947-48.

As a consequence of the Housing Investigation and Slum Abolition Board’s work commencing in 1936, premier Dunstan instigated an experimental housing project on the Williamstown Road. It consisted of 44 houses in the Southward Avenue/ Griffin Crescent area and constituted the State Government’s first housing scheme. It too owed something to the English Garden City tradition and to the precedents established by the State Savings Bank at Fisherman’s Bend. Nevertheless the houses themselves, though adopting the English Cottage style, were more in the builders’ vernacular of the day as it had been popularised in Melbourne rather than in line with English medium density housing practices better seen in the State Savings Bank estates.

In 1937 the Housing Act provided for the constitution of the Housing Commission of Victoria and the Slum Reclamation and Housing Act of 1938 set down its operational objectives which were to improve existing housing conditions, to determine minimum standards, to reclaim insanitary areas, to provide houses for persons of limited means and to determine areas for residential and other uses114. The Commission commenced immediately to secure land at Fisherman’s Bend and proceeded to reclaim it prior to commencing building works. Its newly appointed panel of architects made up of Frank Heath, Arthur C. Leith, Best Overend and John F.D. Scarborough, developed a master plan for the site and a range of standard dwelling types. The street plan had the appearance of similar English projects of the period such as one at Bermondsey where a central avenue with semi-circular crescents and expansive areas of open space were prominent. The main elements were the entrance, a shopping centre and square, open play areas and the dwellings themselves. The houses also reflected English practices of the 1940’s by demonstrating the abandonment of stylism in favour of somewhat austere gable roofed blocks and terraced rows. The architects panel successfully investigated the design and construction of houses in pre-fabricated concrete using a system developed by T.W. Fowler. They were built in groups to contrast with the more common brick dwellings that also conformed to standard designs. Work continued throughout the war years. By mid 1941 there were 68 houses in course of erection but the work had been completed and the estate finished by the middle of 1942.

The 1936-37 survey of the Housing Investigation and Slum Abolition Board disclosed that 15% of the occupants of substandard houses were couples without children. They were accommodated in one bedroom dwellings in groups of four called “quartets” on the Williamstown Road. The site was

112 See Forshaw, J.H. and Abercrombie, P., Country of London Plan prepared for the London County Council, Macmillan and Co., London, 1944, pp.74-83. 113 U’Ren, N., Turnbull, N., op.cit., p.236. 114 First Annual report of the Housing Commission of Victoria for the period 1.3.38 to 30.6.1939 Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 67 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian of two acres and there were nine blocks accommodating 36 separate living units. The project was carried out in 1939-1940.

References: Annual Reports of the Housing Commission of Victoria. Refer footnotes.

Thematic Context: Building settlements, towns and cities: • Planning urban settlement • Making suburbs • Living with slums, outcasts and homelessness.

Statement of Significance: The Garden City housing estates are of historic importance in that they demonstrate the entry of public authorities into the provision of housing for the first time in Victoria’s history (Criterion A). These authorities were initially the State Savings Bank of Victoria and the Public Works Department but from 1939 included the Housing Commission of Victoria which supplanted the Public Works Department in the field of public housing. In these respects the estates are symbolic of a watershed in government thinking whereby and as a consequence of earlier reports and enquiries the Government took on responsibility for accommodating persons of limited means at improved standards. The estates were also, for a period, the largest of their kind and demonstrated not only the elements of such estates (Criterion D) but also the extent to which the Commission and its panel of architects was influenced by English planning precedents. The areas had great social significance in Port Melbourne, representing the culmination of decades of agitation by the Port Melbourne Council for improved housing conditions within its municipality (Criterion G). Finally, the houses and their environments demonstrate good design practices for their period and the Government’s most advanced thinking in the field of public housing (Criterion E).

Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion on the schedule to the Heritage Overlay.

Assessment: Andrew Ward, May, 1998 Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 68 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

View looking west of the State Savings Bank’s Garden City development prior to the commencement of the work of the Housing Commission of Victoria. Source: “They can carry me out”, Vintage Port: Worth Preserving Project, 1991, p.41. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 69 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Standard designs prepared by the architects panel of the Housing Commission of Victoria for use at Fisherman’s Bend and elsewhere. Source: Annual Reports of the Housing Commission of Victoria. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 70 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Beacon Road, at the Crighton Avenue intersection, showing the narrow pavements and expansive lawns of the State Savings Bank estate commenced at this location in 1927.

Unpainted rough cast duplex units in Crighton Avenue, complete with crimped wire front fences. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 71 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The Public Works Department estate of 1936 off Williamstown Road, showing the English cottage style houses characteristic both of the era and the estate.

The Housing Commission of Victoria’s “quartets” of 1939-40, on Williamstown Road. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 72 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Looking across the Julier Reserve, Garden City, emphasising the garden suburb environment and the arrangement of the estate along English lines around a landscaped common.

Plantation at the shopping centre in Centre Avenue, showing the siting of two storeyed blocks either side of the point of entry to this important thoroughfare within the estate. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 73 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

6.4 South Melbourne, Albert Park, Middle Park and part St. Kilda - HO3

Existing Designations: Heritage Council Register: nil National Estate Register: nil National Trust Register: nil

Description: This Area is approximately bounded by Pickles Street, York Street and Kingsway at its northern extremity and by St. Kilda Road to the east and Fitzroy Street to the south. The shoreline of Port Phillip Bay forms its western boundary. Today, it occupies the localities known as South Melbourne, Albert Park and Middle Park with the northern portion of St. Kilda at its south end.

The principal north-south transport routes imparting character to the Area and subdividing it into compartments are the former St. Kilda railway line and parallel roadways, Clarendon Street, Beaconsfield Parade and Queens Road. The principal east-west transport routes are St. Vincent Street which bifurcates on a crescent shaped alignment to form Park and Bridport Streets, and Kerford Road/Albert Road. Within this framework are a number of civic spaces of great distinction. These are as follows: • the circus contained within Park and Bridport Streets and Howe Crescent and Nelson Road/ Cardigan Place, having the St. Vincent Gardens at its centre. • the South Melbourne town hall civic precinct centred on Perrins Street and Bank Street. • the triangular shaped Heather Street gardens. • Kerford Road. • Albert Park. • the Queens Road/St. Kilda Road corridor.

In addition to these pivotal elements, there are the remaining built up areas which are characterised by several industrial incursions at the northern limits. The principal shopping streets are Clarendon Street and Park Street, constituting the South Melbourne shopping centre; Victoria Avenue/ Bridport Street, being the Albert Park shopping centre and Armstrong Street, being the much smaller Middle Park shopping centre. The remaining areas are residential, the architectural character being primarily mid to late Victorian to the north of Mills Street and south of Mary Street and of the Federation period in between. In South Melbourne the main roads are wide thoroughfares but there are also narrow back roads, often with early surviving timber cottages, usually single storeyed but occasionally two storeyed. Herein lies much of the Area’s fascination, the contrasts between opulent and working class accommodation enriching it when viewed from today’s perspective. There are also some very early timber cottages, the house in Morris Street at the back of the former “Marine” hotel being just one example of several. The pre-fabricated iron houses in 399 Coventry Street (1853 and 1854) are also early115. The Queens Road/St. Kilda Road corridor is exceptional to the extent that although its origins are in the mid nineteenth century, it has been largely re-built since that time.

115 The 1854 house was relocated from Fitzroy by the National Trust in the 1970’s. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 74 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The St. Vincent Gardens area is characterised by the opulent residences built by Melbourne’s commercial classes from 1864 when the first land sales took place. “Rosebank” (1866) at 30 St. Vincent Place and 39-40 (1867) Howe Crescent, “Blinkbonnie” (c.1866) at 49-50 Howe Crescent are early surviving examples. The terrace at 41-42 Howe Crescent of c.1865 is especially noteworthy for its balustraded balcony surmounting a loggia. There are other examples that establish this area as a residential enclave of the highest order from an early date. The uninterrupted row of houses commencing at the corner of Ferrars and Bridport Streets and terminating at the former Congregational Church (1874) complex is without peer. Howe Crescent itself is a highly distinctive street not only on account of its houses but for the corner parks on Cecil Street and for Service Street which crosses it at right angles and is terminated at one end by the Memorial Hall (1924) and at the other by the St. Vincents Boys Home. This area has retained its status over the years with little change to the fabric of the streets. The house at no.83 St. Vincent Place is an exception, having been remodelled in 1905 and introducing a different architectural fashion to the street.

The tower of the South Melbourne town hall (1880) can be seen from all over South Melbourne; the height of the tower itself not only being considerable but its elevation on the top of Emerald Hill adding to its pre-eminence. The Renaissance influenced town hall façade overlooks Bank Street which is curved in deference to the status of the building. There is a memorial (1905) in the forecourt thereby created and it is further defined by the former Post Office (1912) on one side and the Police Station and Court House (1928) on the other. The residential terraces that surround the town hall though of architectural value in their own right are forced into a position of subordination by the stature of the town hall. Even the buildings located on the approaches at the corners of Perrins and Park Streets and Bank and Clarendon Streets are markedly similar, thereby helping to establish the setting for the municipal buildings.

The Heather Street gardens, formerly the La Trobe Reserve, once marked the eastern edge of Emerald Hill, the ground between them and St. Kilda Road being low lying and swampy. Park Street, which still bisects the gardens, was the main approach route from the east, and, as it crossed Eastern Road, the gardens imparted a sense of arrival in the township. They still do. The mature elms and the drinking fountain on the north side are important elements. The buildings overlooking them, however, have changed; only the terraces in Eastern Road between Bank and Park Streets offering a hint as to what this civic space once looked like. Most of the buildings are recent town houses and flats.

Kerford Road, although it failed to attract a standard of development comparable with Beaconsfield Parade or Queens Road, is remarkable on account of its width. It had been laid out from an early date as a wide thoroughfare giving access to the battery at the foreshore and today, its “high point” is still reached at the shore where the Kerford Road pier remains popular for fishermen and swimmers and the “Victoria” hotel is a commanding landmark.

Albert Park has been plundered over the years as is often the case with reserved land surrounded by intensive urban development. Today it is mostly given over to a range of active recreational activities Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 75 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian including the Albert Park Golf Course, the South Melbourne Soccer Ground, the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre and other allied pursuits. The old South Melbourne Technical School (1918) and the MacRobertson Girls’ High School (1934) occupy the north-eastern and north-western extremities. In their time they were innovative buildings and they remain so today, complemented by some very recent structures of equivalent stature. At the south end of the park, the St. Kilda Cricket Ground, the State School and the old Railway Station give definition and create the transition between parkland and shopping centre.

The St. Kilda Road/Queens Road corridor is another instance wherein the Albert Park reserve has been compromised. Leading last century to the construction of two rows of mansions in garden settings, the first facing St. Kilda Road and the second facing the park, the majority have either been demolished or subdivided at various times since the turn of the century with the result that neither boulevard makes a cohesive architectural statement. Nevertheless, there are survivors, especially in Queens Road, that point to the lavish and spacious life styles of its residents. Noteworthy early mansions are “Netherby” (1891) at no.8, “Lanark” (1887) at no.55, “Bendigonia” (1882) at no.25. In more recent times the tradition of architectural excellence has been maintained with “Gleneagles” (c.1939) at no.60 and “Newburn Flats” (1939-43) at no.30. The Albert Cricket Ground survives as a remnant of the larger parklands with a frontage to St. Kilda Road.

History: The high ground at Emerald Hill was seen as good residential land in the period following the gold rushes when a canvas town had sprung up to the south of the Yarra River. A new survey was prepared in 1852 with an extension to include the St. Vincent Place precinct in 1854. The St. Kilda railway was opened in 1857 and the South Melbourne lands sold off from 1852, the St. Vincent Place lots being released in 1864. Land grants were made to the Catholic, Presbyterian, Wesleyan and Church of England denominations. Development was rapid with 1,149 houses being assessed for rates by the Melbourne Corporation116 in 1855. The Borough of Emerald Hill was created on 26th. May in that year. James Service, later to become Victorian premier, was its first chairman. Importantly, independence carried with it freedom from the provisions of the Melbourne Building Act of 1850 and as a consequence, cheap pre-fabricated and timber cottages could be built.

Emerald Hill remained surrounded by low lying poorly drained land at this time. Land at the rear of the Victoria Barracks as far west as Moray Street was established as a military reserve for a period whilst the Army acquired 77 acres at the foreshore near Kerford Road and at the rifle butts in Middle Park. The remaining ground served as a recreational resource for the growing city, a regular racecourse being laid out between Emerald Hill and the foreshore. Shooting in the swamps was popular and the Emerald Hill Cricket Club occupied six acres of Albert Park from as early as 1862.

The 1870’s and 1880’s witnessed further growth, the population rising from 25,000 in 1880 to 43,000 at the end of the decade117 The MMBW drainage plan of 1896 gives a graphic account of the

116 Allom Lovell Sanderson Pty. Ltd., South Melbourne Urban Conservation Study, vol.1, 5/1987. 117 Ibid, p.4/11. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 76 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian municipality’s expansion, City status having been conferred on the Town Council on 21.9.1883. All of South Melbourne and Albert Park was built up, only the low lying land east of Hanna Street (Kingsway) constituting a barrier to development. A cable tramway ran to South Melbourne Beach via Park and Montague Streets and Victoria Avenue whilst Kerford Road, Beaconsfield Parade, the St. Vincents Place circus and the Queens Road/St. Kilda Road corridor were indisputably the enclaves of the rich and powerful. In between, the rest of the city dwellers lived in cottages and row houses, above shops and in back lanes, never too far from their places of employment.

It was during this period that the Town Council proposed to buy out the Melbourne Orphan Asylum on Emerald Hill and to build a town hall financed by the provision of accommodation for a post office and court house and by erecting shops and offices to provide rental income. The opportunity to gain a large land holding enabled the present civic precinct to be realised as a model for other councils to aspire to but for few to achieve. The town hall was opened in 1880 and the development acted as a catalyst for St. Lukes Church of England on Clarendon Street to also engage in entrepreneurial activity, erecting shops on its frontage, thereby consolidating the role of Clarendon Street as the main shopping centre for Emerald Hill.

In 1875 the Council began an agitation to have Albert Park and Middle Park south-west of the railway surveyed for subdivision. Ferrars Street was extended to St. Kilda along Canterbury Road in 1876 and land sales followed soon afterwards. Development, however, lagged behind and by 1896 more than half the area between Mills Street and Cowderoy Street remained vacant. Nevertheless, the Army was persuaded to move out in 1879, opening up the beach as a recreation resort. The Kerford Road jetty was built between 1887 and 1889 and the “military road” linking the batteries between Sandridge and St. Kilda became known as Beaconsfield Parade. The “Victoria” hotel was opened in1887 and the Parade attracted prestigious residences.

It was also at this time that the Colonial Government moved with exceptional speed to alienate the land now occupied by houses and offices on the west side of St. Kilda Road and along Queens Road. The decision was taken in 1875 and as a consolation the balance of Albert Park was given the status of a permanent reserve. Furthermore, an attempt to create a boulevard of some civic grandeur was made by requiring that the lots be large and expensive with only mansions and larger villas to be tolerated.

Following the slump of the 1890’s depression, the Federation period witnessed new building activity on the vacant land of Albert Park and Middle Park, passed up by the land boomers a decade or so previously. By the outbreak of the Great War, the rush to populate the Municipality was all but over. When the hostilities ceased, the formation of the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board in 1919 heralded improvements in transport infrastructure. The South Melbourne/St. Kilda Beach electric tramway service was opened in October, 1926, and several apartment blocks were built along its route and within its sphere of influence. A similar process was underway along St. Kilda Road and Queens Road. Today, the blocks facing the sea and the parks continue to be favoured for high density residential living. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 77 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Thematic Context:‘ Building settlements, towns and cities:

• Planning urban settlement • Making suburbs • Learning to live with property booms and busts

Statement of Significance: The South Melbourne, Albert Park, Middle Park and St. Kilda north of Fitzroy Street area encompasses the Bay shoreline and is further defined by Fitzroy Street in the south, St. Kilda Road in the east and generally by Pickles and York Streets and Kingsway in the north. It is historically important (Criterion A) as one of Melbourne earliest suburbs, founded in response to the demand for accommodation arising from the Gold Rush of the early 1850’s. The layout of streets and parks is highly distinctive, recalling British planning practices at St. Vincent Place and the Heather Street gardens. The development of the plan is expressive of the boom times of the 1870’s and 1880’s and especially demonstrated by the Council’s Emerald Hill civic precinct development, the Queens Road/St. Kilda Road subdivision of parkland, and the development of the Beaconsfield Parade foreshore as a resort for the metropolis. The diversity of development within the discrete periods of growth characteristic of the Area constitutes a special heritage valued not only by its residents but by Melbourne at large Criterion G). This importance is due to the area’s ability to inform present generations about a way of life now past, when communities were to a large extent self-contained as a consequence of limited personal mobility.

Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table in the City of Port Phillip Planning Scheme.

Assessment: Andrew Ward, June, 1998. (Revised August, 2000) Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 78 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from Kearney’s 1855 Map of Melbourne prepared by Captain Andrew Clarke, Surveyor General, 1855. Source: SLV Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 79 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from Commander H. L. Cox’s Map of Hobson Bay and River Yarra Source: SLV Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 80 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

MMBW Litho Plan: c. 1990 Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 81 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The South Melbourne Beach tramway in 1965, at the Bridport/Montague street intersection (upper) and in Victoria Avenue (lower).

Source: A. Ward Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 82 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Montague Street (foreground) and Victoria Avenue, Albert Park, c.1975.

Source: A.Ward Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 83 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The Clarendon Street, Park Street intersection, looking at the buildings of the Emerald Hill estate, the two buildings nearest the camera having been built in 1881.

Clarendon Place demonstrates a contrast in scale characteristic of the residential environments of South Melbourne. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 84 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The built environment of the waterfront: Beaconsfield Parade, Albert Park, showing the “Victoria” hotel at left.

The Bridport Street shopping centre, Albert Park. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 85 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The Armstrong Street shops, Middle Park.

An Edwardian period terraced row in Armstrong Street, Middle Park, contrasting with the Victorian terraces of Albert Park and South Melbourne. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 86 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

6.5 South Melbourne City Road Industrial Area - HO4

Existing Designations: Heritage Council Register: nil National Estate Register: nil National Trust Register: nil

Description: This Area is bisected by the St. Kilda light railway embankment and bordered by Ferrars Street on its west side, the Westgate Freeway on its north side and by Market Street on its south side. City Road is the principal thoroughfare through the Area and it is terminated at one end by the elevated Westgate Freeway and at the other by the former St. Kilda railway bridge and embankment. Its visual integrity has been recently compromised by large advertising sky signs erected on factory roofs and on freestanding poles within the Area to be viewed at speed by motorists passing on the nearby freeway. South City Holden, formerly the assembly plant and central administrative offices for the General Motors Corporation of America, is the dominant building at the north-east end of City Road. It is a large two storeyed showroom and office complex of the inter-war period in the Classical Revival mode and its façade survives in a substantially intact state. At the rear, Blackeney Place is a fully pitched lane overlooked by Holden’s Quality Spare Parts building, formerly the premises of the Ballarat Brewing Company Ltd. No. 48 Cecil Street opposite also demonstrates the early-twentieth century origins of the Area, as do the present timber framed auction rooms, formerly the premises of Johns and Waygood, structural and general engineers. This section area marks the core of the Area, the auction rooms facing the former cable tram engine house, which is not only of historical interest but also of architectural interest as an ostentatious late Victorian Renaissance influenced building not unlike other engine houses in Melbourne. The railway bridge is distinguished by its bluestone piers and riveted iron girders and the curved embankment, which survives as a reminder of the South Bank viaduct, demolished in 1993 to make way for the Casino complex. This alignment is given emphasis by the fully pitched lane known as Railway Place that follows the embankment on its west side linking the industrial buildings previously noted with no. 129 Douglas Street, once a stores building for Elder Smith and Co. Ltd. and 21 Meaden Street, formerly Dunne and McLeod’s stores. Nearby, surviving early industrial buildings in Ferrars Street include the former premises of the Union Can Company Pty. Ltd. At the Ferras Street / City Road intersection, the “Wayside Inn” of 1915 recalls the role of South Melbourne’s hotels in accommodating, feeding and in other ways sustaining the local working population. Pitched kerbs remain in City Road and Cecil Street to complement the pitched lanes found frequently throughout this section of South Melbourne.

The name Ballantyne Street, formerly Grant Street, is an indicator of the presence of K.L. Ballantyne Pty. Ltd., wholesale grocers, whose clinker brick premises impart a domestic character to this otherwise commercial Area. Nearby is the two storeyed offices and warehousing space at no.9, formerly the premises of Marrickville Margerine Pty. Ltd. and resplendent today for its prestigious Moderne façade treatment. At the back of Ballantynes’ are massive industrial premises presently associated with Spotlight and a two storeyed bi-chrome brick (?) building occupied by H.W. Hoarse Pty. Ltd., Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 87 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian motor engineer as recently as 19501 . On the other side of Market Street are the red brick premises formerly occupied by D. W. Dalton and Co., engineers alongside the Modernist façade of the old Herald and Weekly Times stores119.

History: Kearney’s map of 1855 shows that the land north of City Road (then Sandridge Road) was poorly drained and avoided on account of its flood prone nature. To the immediate south was Emerald Hill. The Port Melbourne railway had been in existence for a year with the St. Kilda line following as far as Emerald Hill on 16.9.1858. Circumstances are substantially the same on Commander Cox’s map of 1866. There are industrial premises on the Yarra River bank and walking tracks connect them with the Sandridge Road and Emerald Hill across the land subsequently developed as a part of Melbourne’s industrial hub. The St. Kilda railway approached the Sandridge Road on a low presumably timber trestle bridge over a large pond, which in times of flood would have become a sheet of water. It was subsequently replaced by the present viaduct by the Victorian Railways when David Munro contracted to build the Southbank viaduct on 25.1.1886 between the surviving Falls Bridge and Clarendon Street followed by the City Road bridge erected by Mephan and Ferguson in 1899120.

The Port Melbourne cable tramway service was opened along City Road as the second last cable line to be opened on 20.6.1890. A new engine house was erected at nos. 357-61 City Road. Although a preferred location would have been at the junction of the Port Melbourne and South Melbourne lines, the present site was selected presumably on account of the inflated land prices of the day121. As a consequence, the South Melbourne cable had to be routed back through the Port Melbourne tunnels before being deflected back into Clarendon Street. When the Yarra River flooded, the tunnels and engine house pit would be filled leading to water damage to the cable. At this time, the south side of City Road was fully built up. West of the engine house were single storeyed terraces mixed with industrial enterprises running down to the level crossing at Whiteman Street. There were some houses on the north side of City Road and two industrial premises opposite the engine house. In Ferrars Street row houses were the order of the day. In Market Street houses were again numerically superior to factories and it can be concluded that South Melbourne’s nineteenth century industrial ascendancy was achieved without a significant impact on the land in this Area.

Priestley notes that “regenerated industry and business provided the basis for South Melbourne’s swift rise in population during the first decades of the twentieth century”122. The flood prone land around the railway line played a role in this growth. Port development at the time was paralleled by an extension of the riverside industry prompting the Council to embark on a program of pitching the main roads in the Area. In 1908 the Union Can Company purchased the terraced houses in Ferrars Street at the railway line and commenced building its manufacturing premises, close by the docks

118 Sands and McDougall directory. 119 Now occupied by Australia Post. 120 See Ward, A., “The St. Kilda Railway”, 1981. 121 Keating, J.D., Mind The Curve! A History of the Cable Trams, MUP, 1970, p.77. 122 Priestley, op.cit., p.240. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 88 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian where its sheet metal was offloaded. Johns and Waygood, later Johns Perry, established their premises in City Road in 1910. The main offices at the Cecil Street corner are recent but the workshops alongside recall the company’s long association with the Area. It was Peter Johns who built at least one of the iron houses in Coventry Street and the footbridge at South Melbourne station123. By 1926 the General Motors Corporation of America was building its assembly plant and national administrative headquarters in City Road. By the late 1930’s motor buses were seen to be an effective alternative to the provision of electric tramway services and when the Port and South Melbourne cable services closed on 13.3.1937, they were replaced by buses. The road surface in City Road was eventually reconstructed without the tramway lines that continue to be typical of Melbourne’s principal thoroughfares.

In recent years, the original builders of the factories in the Area have, with exceptions including General Motors Holden, merged or moved out, leaving their buildings to be torn down for redevelopment or converted into modern offices.

Thematic Context: Building settlements, towns and cities:

· Planning urban settlement · Making suburbs · Supplying urban services (transport)

Statement of Significance: The South Melbourne City Road Industrial Area occupies industrial land between the Westgate Freeway and the St. Kilda railway bridge over City Road. It is historically important (Criterion A) for its capacity to demonstrate South Melbourne’s industrial growth on the low lying land south of the Yarra River during the first four decades of this century. Some of the buildings demonstrate South Melbourne’s pre-eminence as a location for Melbourne’s leading manufacturing companies during this period. The Area is also of interest for the surviving evidence of the South Melbourne Council’s public works associated with the paving and draining of the Area as a necessary pre-cursor to its development. Finally, the survival of the railway bridge and embankment and the cable tramway engine house demonstrate the nineteenth century’s answer to transport problems, as does the Westgate Freeway demonstrate contemporary solutions.

Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table in the City of Port Phillip Planning Scheme.

Assessment: Andrew Ward, July, 1998.

123 Notes prepared by Dr. Peter Milner for the National Trust Industrial History Committee. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 89 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from Kearney’s 1855 Map of Melbourne prepared by Captain Andrew Clarke, Surveyor General.

Source: SLV Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 90 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from Commander Cox’s 1866 Survey of Hobsons Bay and the Yarra River.

Source: SLV Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 91 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

City Road in 1890, showing the cable tramway being installed with the engine house at left. Notice the absence of development on the right hand side of City Road.

Source:Cranston, J., The Melbourne Cable Trams 1885-1940,Craftsman Publishing, Melbourne, 1988, p.42. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 92 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

MMBW Litho Plan, c.1900. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 93 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

City Road, with the former cable tramway engine house at left and the former Johns and Waygood factory at right.

Former General Motors Corporation headquarters, City Road, looking towards the railway overbridge. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 94 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

6.6 St. Kilda Hill - HO5

Existing Designations: Heritage Council Register: nil National Estate Register: nil National Trust Register: nil

Description: This Area is bounded by Fitzroy Street to the north, Barkly Street to the east, Carlisle Street to the south and Port Phillip Bay to the west. These streets and the shoreline surround the area identified since the 1840’s as St. Kilda Hill.

Whereas Fitzroy Street has attracted commercial development with buildings surviving from periods representative of its entire history, The Esplanade is lined on its east side with apartment blocks erected principally during the inter war years. There are also some post war apartment developments and two hotels, being “The Esplanade” of 1875 and the recently built “Novotel Bayside” tower overlooking Alfred Square. The square itself is made up of lawns sloping towards The Esplanade with Arthur Peck’s remarkable Art Nouveaux influenced glazed ceramic tiled war memorial in the centre. It is overlooked on all sides by recent apartment developments, the surviving cottages at nos. 1 and 2 Alfred Square being extraordinary exceptions. Inter war apartments of note on The Esplanade include “Mandalay” in the Art Deco manner and “The Esplanade” (formerly “Belvedere”) at the Robe Street corner, being an arresting Spanish/Mediterranean block with faceted corner tower. Victorian period residential buildings on The Esplanade are well represented by “Hill Terrace” at the south end, complete with iron palisade fence and by “Marli Place” (1858) to the north.

The shoreline has the Carlo Catani memorial whilst further to the south is the Palais Theatre (1927) and the absurd architecture of Luna Park (1912) alongside the O’Donnell Gardens and the Baths, all of which amount to a supreme cultural statement from the inter war era. At the north end there is the St. Kilda pier which continues to attract metropolitan Melbourne in all seasons and has the fine Pavilion (1904) at the seaward end to beckon visitors.

Fitzroy Street is made up of commercial and apartment buildings with the “George” (former “Seaview”) hotel (1857, 1885, 1925) constituting a prominent monument representative of various periods in the evolution of the thoroughfare. The former Wesleyan Church (1857-58) at the Princes Street corner has long since ceased to be used for its original purpose but this massive bluestone and sandstone church in the Early English Gothic manner continues to occupy a pivotal site at the north- east end. There is a rash of multi storeyed inter war apartments and hotels on Fitzroy Street including the “Regal” private hotel, the former “Cricket Club” (now “The Ritz”), the “Ritz Mansions”, the “Kingsclere” private hotel and “Summerland Mansions”, facing “The Prince”. Interspersed amongst them are some opulent Victorian survivors including the Boom Style masterpiece now known as “Brooklawn Mansions”, “Clendore, and the State School (1882) ” on the north side. St. Kilda railway station, now frequented by trams, tells a story of transport commencing with the opening of the line in 1857 and punctuated by the arrival of the Victorian Railways electric tramway in 1906. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 95 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The centre span poles (1925) in Fitzroy Street enrich the scene, in spite of the defacement sustained over the years.

The Hill itself is occupied by highly distinguished residential developments representative of the major periods in the history of the Area. Amongst the earliest surviving houses is the architect, Samuel Jackson’s “Wattle House” (1840’s) in the Cottage Orne tradition of the mid Victorian gentry and “Eden Terrace” (1858) in Dalgety Street. Other mid Victorian terraces in this remarkable street are at 5-7, 9-13 and 15-17. “Marion Terrace” (1883), though slightly later and obviously so, is nearby in Burnett Street along with 6-8 (1866), the detached villa at no.7 (pre 1855), no.12, 30 and 34 “St. Leonards”. Other Victorian period villas include “Oberwyl” (1856), borrowing stylistically from Regency precedents in the mother country and “Berkeley Court” (1882), both of which uphold the hill’s reputation as a location for Melbourne’s gentry from the commencement of settlement. So too do the churches. There is Christ Church (1854, 1874, 1881) built from Point King Sorrento sandstone, on Church Square, and the associated hall and parsonage. On top of the hill, in Barkly Street, the Presbyterian Church (1885) in bluestone and freestone is a dominant element whilst the manse, originally “Stanthorpe” of c.1875, is of equivalent architectural status, though unlike the Gothic Revival church, in the Classical tradition. It is a large building placed in spacious grounds with a central pediment supported on Ionic columns and having flanking verandahs terminated by rusticated wing walls. The Sacred Heart Cathedral (1884) complex on Grey Street includes one of the City’s finest Italian Renaissance churches. These streets, which speak so eloquently of the past century, are by no means unique on the hill, Grey Street, Acland Street and Princes Street being highly comparable.

As the elevation drops, so too does the great age and aesthetic quality of the building stock. In Clyde Street, there are examples of the ubiquitous single storeyed late Victorian terrace, such as “Wawn Terrace”, 34-46 and 53-57. There are similar buildings in Jackson Street. Evidence, though, of the Area’s capacity to retain its prestigious position on Melbourne’s social scale is given by the Federation period houses and later apartments. The house at no.27 Gurner Street is a remarkable essay in the Arts and Crafts tradition, as are other houses in the same street. On Eildon Road, there are some exemplary inter war apartments and villas including nos.7-9 in the English Domestic Revival mode, no. 11 (Mediterranean), no 28 (Spanish Mission), and no. 39 (French Provincial?) whilst “Biltmore” at no.36 may well be earlier.

The south-east corner of the Area has the “National” theatre as a focus at the Carlisle Street Barkly Street intersection. It has a massive opulent façade suggestive of the Beaux Arts School. Further north, Grey and Inkerman Streets intersect at the Barkly Street shops. They are overlooked by large inter war apartment blocks bearing such evocative names as “The Atlantic” (no.101) and “The Pacific” (no. 103). Today, Barkly Street as a residential location has been compromised by the heavy traffic which it carries, but the hostility of the other perimeter thoroughfares – Fitzroy Street, The Esplanade and Carlisle Street – is softened by Melbourne’s somewhat eccentric electric tramways.

History: The development of St. Kilda during the 1840’s and 50’s has its origins in the attraction which the place projected as a residential location by the sea and after the 1850’s as a well connected Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 96 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian residential area, served by a suburban railway from 1857 and with Yan Yean water from 1860. Lewis notes124 that being outside the influence of the Melbourne Building Act (1850), St. Kilda attracted its share of cheap pre-fabricated iron and timber cottages along with the prestigious villas that have stood the test of time. They have been almost completely swept away by apartments and replacement structures, the surviving house at no.7 Burnett Street offering a rare insight into this forgotten aspect of the hill’s history. Kearney’s Plan of 1855 shows that by this time development was concentrated along Acland Street and to the west, along Fitzroy Street, Robe Street and to the south. The sparse occupation of Grey Street was no doubt due to the large size of the holdings whilst the west side of Barkly Street, Dalgety Street, the triangles north of Princes (then Collegiate) Street and south of Fawkner Street and the ground now traversed by Eildon Street were mostly unoccupied. By 1866125 circumstances were not remarkably different. The Vardy Plan of 1873 gives an accurate account, showing that development in Havelock Street was finally underway and the consolidation of development along the principal thoroughfares with the exception of Barkly Street was also well advanced. By the time the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works had prepared its drainage plans in 1896, little had changed: the Eildon Street area was still vacant and Barkly Street had only attracted minimal development.

It was not until the interwar years that these areas were finally sold off for development. By this time, St. Kilda’s place in the metropolis as a resort and place of entertainment had been founded on a shore footing, confirmed by the electric tramway network. The Victorian Railways’ electric “street railway” service commenced at the railway station from 1906 and climbed up the Grey Street hill on its way to the “Village Belle” and points south. The Prahran and Malvern Tramways Trust even ran its own café on the site of today’s MacDonalds store at the terminus of the circuitous cross suburban route from Kew/Cotham Road. Luna Park had been an attraction since 1912 and the Palais Theatre from 1927. Apartment blocks, guest houses and private hotels were built in response to the demand for accommodation. The St. Kilda Council continued its program of foreshore improvements.

The development impetus has been sustained on the hill and especially on its seaward side in recent years. Today, the historic attraction of the sea and the elevated prospect offered by the St. Kilda Hill continue to attract the property investor’s dollars and a cross section of society more diverse than is found in the surrounding inland suburbs.

Thematic Context: Building settlements, towns and cities: l Planning urban settlement l Making suburbs l Learning to live with property booms and busts

Statement of Significance: The St. Kilda Hill area encompasses the Port Phillip Bay shoreline and is further defined by Fitzroy Street, Barkly Street and Carlisle Street. It has historical importance (Criterion A) as a seaside resort for the metropolis and location for marine villas since the

124 Lewis, Dr.M., “An Historical Introduction” in St Kilda Conservation Study Area One Final Report 9/82, pp.34- 35. 125 Commander H.L. Cox R.N., Surveyor, Plan of Hobson Bay and River Yarra: 1866, SLV. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 97 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian commencement of settlement during the 1840’s. This importance is demonstrated primarily by the privately owned building stock of houses, hotels and apartments but also by places of entertainment and other recreational facilities. Government and to a lesser extent privately funded infrastructure such as transport facilities, schools and churches also make a crucial contribution to the interpretation of life on St. Kilda Hill at various times in its history. The long history of the place has combined with its role as a resort to impart a diverse architectural character to the area that reflects its socio- economic profile and is highly valued by the community (Criterion G). Today, the Hill offers valuable insights into the housing styles of the rich from the 1840’s onwards, retaining important examples of architectural styles from each period in its history (Criterion C). It also includes unusual street layouts, with Alfred Square and Church Square demonstrating past planning practices.

Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table in the Port Phillip Planning Scheme

Assessment: Andrew Ward, June, 1998. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 98 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from Kearney’s 1855 Map of Melbourne prepared by Captain Andrew Clarke, Surveyor General, 1855. Source: SLV Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 99 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from Commander H.L.Cox’s Map of Hobson Bay and River Yarra (1866). Source: SLV Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 100 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

J.Vardy Plan:1873 Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 101 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from MMBW Litho Plan: 1896 Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 102 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Fitzroy Street: c.1864 (upper) and 1930 (lower).

Source: Cooper, J.B., op.cit., v.2, pp.140 and 142 Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 103 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Luna Park, Palais Pictures and Palais de Danse: 1930.

Source: Cooper, J.B., v.2., p.207. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 104 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Fitzroy Street at the Grey Street hill, showing the “George” hotel of 1889, erected on the site of the “Terminus” hotel, with the tracks of the St. Kilda light railway in the foreground and the former St. Kilda station building at right.

Fitzroy Street, showing “The Prince of Wales” hotel, designed by R.H. McIntyre and built in 1937 with “Summerland Mansions”, designed by Christopher Cowper and built in 1920-21: both temples to St. Kilda’s role as a seaside resort. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 105 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

6.7 St. Kilda East - HO6

Existing Designations: Heritage Council Register: nil National Estate Register: nil National Trust Register: nil

Description: This Area has Wellington Street and the Dandenong Road as its northern boundary and it extends to varying degrees southward to Alma Road and beyond. Its westernmost extremity is St. Kilda Road and its east end is at Orrong Road at the municipal boundary. The Area is dominated by the Dandenong Road as its principal thoroughfare and the development associated with it. Key sub-areas include the public buildings and villas situated on the high ground in Chapel Street and its vicinity, the St. Kilda cemetery, Alma Park (East and West) and the residential areas of Charnwood Crescent and Alma Road. Associated but geographically detached is the group in Alma Road at the Ravens Grove intersection.

The Dandenong Road is a remarkable boulevard on account of its very great width and landscaped plantation with central tramway reservation enriched by the row of decorative centre span poles. It is overlooked on its south side by an important ecclesiastical complex, the St. Kilda cemetery and some notable inter-war residences. St. Mary’s Church is an imposing bluestone building in the Gothic style set in spacious grounds with a presbytery and Elizabethan influenced red brick and stuccoed school building at no. 208A. These buildings occupy a corner of Alma Park East. The northern part of this reserve has an oval but the southern section has mature trees including Quercus suber, large Ficus macrophylla, Araucaria columellaris, Eucalyptus cladocalyx, Salix sp., Ulmus parvifolia and Quercus robur. The main path has an elm avenue alternating with pinus radiata and there is a mature row of pinus radiata near the rail cutting that marks the western edge of the park. Alma Park West adjoins on the west side of the same cutting and consists of more exotic garden elements. Much of the garden beds along the centre of the park are edged with volcanic rock typical of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At either side of the central garden beds are rows of mature elms and other trees. The park keeper’s lodge is a cottage in the domestic Gothic Revival mode at the Dandenong Road entrance. The garden pavilion near an avenue of olive trees is a distinctive element.

Further east along the Dandenong road is the St. Kilda cemetery, the memorials being glimpsed over the high brick fence along the roadway. There is an iron palisade fence to the entry gates set in a wide semi-ellipse with finely carved stone gate pillars. To the immediate south of the cemetery on Alma Road is “Olgmend Court” in a conservative Georgian influenced style with the Arts and Crafts bungalow at no.145 alongside. Though unpretentious, it is remarkably intact, complete with front garden layout and fence. “Holmwood”, now the Rabinical College Australian War Memorial premises at 61 Alexandra street is an important Victorian villa set in spacious grounds. They include six Phoenix canariensis, two Jacaranda mimosifolia and other trees accessible through a timber entry archway. The neighbourhood is made up of representative inter-war houses. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 106 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Between Wando Grove and Orrong Road is “Broxted”, one of a group of five large houses noteworthy for the manner in which they explore the potential of the Arts and Crafts Movement as it was popularised during the inter-war period.

Chapel Street is an ordinary thoroughfare by contrast with Dandenong Road, but one which is made especially noteworthy on account of the architectural quality of the public and residential buildings between Dandenong Road and Alma Road. Albert Purchas’ design for the St. Georges Presbyterian (now Uniting) Church is extraordinary on account of its slender bell tower and Sienese banded brickwork. To the south is the Municipality’s largest timber building: the drill hall, arranged in a manner representative of many but distinguished not only by its company in the street but also by its intact state. All Saints Anglican Church in this group is an imposing bluestone church with a stylistically innovative Arts and Crafts Hall, erected in 1909-1911 in red brick and stucco and having a pressed copper cartouche. They face the “Astor” theatre which has landmark status on the Wellington Street corner, adopting the late inter-war period’s penchant for variegated brickwork. There are also important early Renaissance influenced villas on Chapel Street and in the area, demonstrating the attractiveness of the higher ground to Melbourne’s elite last century. To the south and south-west there are also large late Victorian houses, particularly in Alma Road and inter-war houses and apartments throughout the area. This is particularly true of Charnwood Road. There are workers’ cottages in the side streets as one proceeds further down the hill from Wellington Street.

The Alma Road group at Ravens Grove is dominated by the early two storeyed villa: “Alma House”, at no.134, and by the English Domestic Revival apartments: “Clovelly”, at no. 136. It is architecturally rich, also including a noteworthy bungalow on the south side.

History: A focal point of this region is the St. Kilda Cemetery. Established in 1855, it is one of Melbourne’s oldest cemeteries and is closely associated not only the settlement of St. Kilda, but of greater Melbourne, being the principle cemetery during the nineteenth century south of the Yarra River. Settlement during this period was generally spreading in a south easterly direction, and by this time the area west and north of Chapel and Argyle Streets respectively was subdivided to some extent126.

One of the early residences from that time is an unusually intact timber cottage at 63 Argyle Street, which was built in 1853. It is representative of the large number of timber houses erected during the first period of major growth in Melbourne. Most have now disappeared and the survivors invariably have been substantially altered. This building is illustrative of the first buildings erected in this area: modest cottages, generally housing people in the services sector, which is in contrast to the large terraces and houses on the nearby St. Kilda Hill.

Nearby Lambeth Place has a distinctive environmental character as a result principally of the row of Edwardian semi-detached houses. Number two is very unusual and important timber portable house

126 1855 Map. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 107 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian built in the 1850’s. “Oberon” has planning and design unlike any other portable building in Victoria and most probably Australia127 .

Immediately to the east, Odessa Street contains a variety of late nineteenth century houses, creating a street of particular local interest. In accordance with the historic development of this general area, buildings generally become less affluent the further away they are from Alma Road. On the corner of Odessa Street and Alma Road is a residence of state importance. Originally a boarding house for Priory Ladies’ College, this 1890 building is in the American Romanesque style and a very early example of its type. Almost all of the detailing bears little or no similarity to contemporary practice in Victoria. Architect E.G. Kilburn designed this residence on return from the United States in 1889.

In 1911 the Prahran and Malvern Tramways Trust opened its route to Windsor along Dandenong Road, facilitating the construction of inter-war houses and especially apartment blocks. “Belmont Flats”, in Alma Road, were constructed in 1923. They were designed by Architects Richardson and Wood and constructed in 1923. The iron palisade fence served the previous building on the site and was retained with some modifications when the flats were built.

The Government had reserved the area of land bounded by Chapel and Westbury Streets, and Dandenong and Alma Roads. From this land the Government excised reservations for churches. The Catholic Church was first to build, and St. Mary’s Catholic Church was opened in 1853. It was the oldest church in St. Kilda and was originally a small brick construction. The completed present church was dedicated in 1871, and consecrated in 1887, the first church consecrated in Victoria, and the second in Australasia128 .

By 1866 there had been little further development of this eastern region. However the railway had been built, opening in 1859. St. Mary’s had since been joined on that block by All Saints Anglican Church and the Free Presbyterian Church. The latter both fronted Chapel Street. All Saints was opened in 1861, and after two additions, was consecrated in 1892, whereas the new Presbyterian Church was opened in 1864. The opening service of St. George’s Presbyterian church was in 1877, also on the Chapel Street frontage of this block. They had been meeting in the “Orderley Room” just to the south of the present church since the previous year.

“Holmwood” which is now the Rabbinical College of Australia and New Zealand situated at 61 Alexandra Street is significant for its internal arrangement around a central hallway. Although fairly typical of the last years of the 1880’s, unusual features including a room with elaborate boarded timber ceiling supported by trusses, and an Egyptian mantlepiece reinforce the building’s importance.

Thematic Context: Building settlements, towns and cities:

• Planning urban settlement • Making suburbs

127 Bick, D, et. al., St. Kilda Conservation Study: Area Two, (vol. 1; [unpublished], 1984), p. 189. 128 Cooper, J.B., The History of St. Kilda: From its First Settlement to a City, (vol 1; Melbourne: Printers Oproprietary Limited, 1931), p.352. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 108 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Statement of Significance: The East St. Kilda Area is located south of Dandenong Road and Wellington Street, extending to Alma Road and beyond. It is historically important (Criterion A) for its capacity to demonstrate how the high ground associated with Dandenong Road and Alma Road attracted the finest public buildings and residences last century whilst the lower land to the south was populated by workers’ cottages. The reservation of land in the vicinity of the Alma Parks is unusual in Melbourne for the extent to which it attracted the imposing church complexes that today dominate the locality and are close by the St. Kilda Cemetery. This area recalls the status enjoyed by the Churches at the time (Criterion A) and expresses it not only in architectural terms but also in the number of churches located within close proximity of each other. The presence of the synagogue in Charnwood Crescent recalls the long standing presence of the Jewish community in the Area. The Area is important also to the extent that Dandenong Road is expressive of the pioneering work of the local councils that combined to form, the Prahran and Malvern Tramways Trust, the resultant boulevard still being recognised today as a high point of urban planning achieved in the years immediately prior to the Great War. Finally, the Area demonstrates the popularity of apartment living introduced during the inter-war period.

Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table in the City of Port Phillip Planning Scheme.

Assessment: Andrew Ward, July, 1998. (Revised August, 2000) Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 109 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from Kearney’s 1855 map of Melbourne prepared by Captain Andrew Clarke, Surveyor General.

Source: SLV Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 110 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from Commander Cox’s 1866 Survey of Hobsons Bay and the Yarra River.

Source: SLV. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 111 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian Extract from from J. Vardy’s Map of St. Kilda: 1873 Extract from J. Vardy’s Source: City of Port Phillip Archives. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 112 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian Extract from from J. Vardy’s Map of St. Kilda: 1873 Extract from J. Vardy’s Source: City of Port Phillip Archives. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 113 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Dandenong Road, pre-eminent among Melbourne’s Boulevards, marks a northern boundary of the Municipality and imparts civic importance to the buildings on either side.

St. George’s Uniting (former Presbyterian) church of 1877-80 and the former St. Kilda Orderly Room dominate the Chapel Street hill along with All Saints Anglican Church and some of St. Kilda East’s finest villas. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 114 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

6.8 Elwood, St Kilda, Balaclava, Ripponlea - HO7

Existing Designations: Heritage Council Register: nil National Estate Register: nil National Trust Register: nil

Description: This Area, though fragmented, occupies the land bounded by Carlisle Street in the north and Glenhuntly Road in the south, extending to Hotham Street in the east and Mitford Street/ Broadway in the west. It has the Brighton Road as its principal north-south thoroughfare but is also traversed in the same direction by the Sandringham railway. “Corridors” of architecturally important buildings radiate from the St. Kilda Botanical Gardens whilst other parts of the Area are oriented on the Brighton Road and Carlisle Street. This area includes two isolated sub-areas, the first on Carlisle Street in the vicinity of Hawsleigh Avenue and the second being a group of buildings on Hotham Street at The Avenue intersection.

Important elements include the St. Kilda Botanical Gardens, the public buildings precinct and the Ripponlea and Carlisle Streets shopping centres. The Botanical Gardens, formerly known as the Blessington Street Gardens, contain many mature exotic and some native trees and shrubs including golden privet hedges, Ficus macrophylla (c.1916), two Quercus suber, Podocarpus falcatus, Phillyrea latifolia and Olea europea ssp. africanus. There is a rose garden, ponds and path system of rolled gravel with red brick spoon drains. There are gates with decorative cast iron and masonry pillars at the north end, a red brick and timber lattice pavilion (1929) and a recent conservatory. The streets enclosing the Gardens have been a favoured location for villas since the Victorian period, the Blessington Street frontage being especially noteworthy in this respect. “Sun Blest” at no 42, nos.50, 62 and 74 (“St. Albans” – now much altered) are examples. The street maintained its popularity during later periods, no. 57 being an ostentatious Federation period villa, whilst “Garden view” at no. 60 is a distinctive cement and clinker brick Art Deco apartment block. “Clairvaux” at no.44 is in the Arts and Crafts manner of the inter-war period with circular shingled corner bay windows and a shady two storeyed porch. Tennyson Street on the east side of the Gardens is distinguished primarily for its apartments and inter-war villas. “Himalaya” at no.10 has its origins as a large Victorian villa, transformed into apartments during the inter-war period whilst the house at no.8 has the symmetry of the Australian Colonial Revival. The absence of high front fences in these streets reinforces the link between buildings and Gardens. Dickens and Herbert Streets have experienced substantial redevelopment during the post war period although the apartments at nos. 23 and 25 are important survivors from the inter-war years, the former having a Mediterranean touch and the latter being Moderne with curved and stuccoed banding contrasting with clinker brickwork giving vertical emphasis.

The public buildings precinct is a pivotal element in the Area and well known throughout the metropolis. The façade of the massive Classical Revival Town Hall built for the Borough of St. Kilda in 1888 (portico 1925) looks back to Palladian Classicism and the English post Renaissance period and faces expansive public gardens with mature exotic trees that separate it from the Brighton Road/Carlisle Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 115 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Street intersection. Alongside is the old Brighton Road State School complex, representative of the best work of the Education Department in the mid – late Victorian period and having a characteristic bell tower surmounting the principal entry. The third important building attracted to this site and also taking advantage of the Brighton Road prospect is the freestone Holy Trinity Anglican Church with conical tower over the baptistry as its most unusual feature. To the north facing Chapel Street is the former Wesleyan (now Uniting) Church with a façade ascending from its north end to the bell tower on the south-east corner. These architecturally and historically noteworthy public buildings are encircled by main roads and electric tramway services, thereby creating a prominent island site.

The Ripponlea shopping centre has the timber Arts and Crafts influenced station buildings and footbridge overlooking the railway gardens at its west end. The shops along Glen Eira Road commence at this point with nos.15-27, built with a corner tower in the fashion of the day and extending in a consistent row along the north side of the street to no.73; Brinsmead’s remarkable pharmacy having domed entries and show cases, lead light work and metal framing (1913). The south side of Glen Eira Road is also distinguished for its high level of integrity and is enhanced by the group of three former banks built for the State Savings Bank, the English, Scottish and Australian Bank and the Bank of Australasia.

The Carlisle Street shopping centre extends from St. Kilda Road to Westbury Street and is punctuated by the Chapel street tramway and the railway overpass, with its metal girders and sweeping bluestone abutments, now mostly concealed by shops. The public buildings precinct is located at its west end facing the recent municipal library, the discordant additions to the north wall of the Council Offices being strange companions with the self conscious pretensions of the library. Proceeding east, prominent buildings include the two storeyed red brick and stuccoed shops at the north-east corner of Carlisle and Chapel Streets. They were designed to address this important intersection and mark the point of entry to the main part of the centre when approaching from the west. The face a row of shops of similar date on the south side of the street at nos.109-123. There is powerful evidence of the centre’s nineteenth century origins between this point and the railway bridge. On the north side, no.232 is a two storeyed Boom period row of three shops whilst on the south side there is the “Balaclava” hotel and the shops at nos. 153-157 and 173-175. Nearer to the bridge are the very simply stated two storeyed shops at nos. 187-189 and 191-193 alongside. In this “hub” area of the centre is the “Carlisle Hall”, imparting historic interest as well as architectural presence to the street. Beyond the bridge, the ostentatious offices of William H. Creed, estate agent of c.1889 stand tall with their French style mansard roof and cast iron “widow’s walk” from which one might well see the sea. “Pittard’s Buildings”, possibly built around the turn of the century are nearby as one moves eastward out of the identified Area and towards the Hawsleigh Avenue sub-area.

The residential areas associated with the key elements described vary greatly. To the west of the Brighton Road, and especially on this boulevard, there are imposing residential buildings of all periods, demonstrating that it has always been a sought after locale. “Sherwood Hall” at 14 Hennessy Avenue is an exceptionally large Boom period villa residence in the grand manner, foreshadowing the high standard of construction that was to follow and being noteworthy for its two storeyed loggias, one of which, facing west (formerly to Tennyson Street) is bayed. It is, however, the inter-war apartments Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 116 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian which overwhelm the neighbourhood. “Arawa” at 15 Wimbledon Avenue retains its unpainted rough cast surfaces and is characteristic of many with its shady balcony, low front fence and name, artistically placed over the lower porches. There are two triangular corner parks in Broadway which have mature Platanus sp., as does the street, and were planted during the inter-war period. They are overlooked by inter-war apartments and successfully demonstrate the highest civic planning and architectural standards of the period. “Belmac”, at 77 Mitford Street facing the Dawkins Reserve as if it were the expansive domain of its residents is an example. Amongst the many extraordinary apartments in the nieghbourhood are “De Mont Rose” at 1 Broadway, “Sante Fe” at 45 Mitford Street and “Las Palmas” alongside. They either face the reserves or are nearby. The tradition of apartment living has been carried through to the post-war period, the blocks at 76 Mitford Street, 39 and 44 Southey Street being exemplary.

Circumstances are different on the east side of the Brighton Road where the railway made possible suburban living from an early date. The houses to the north and east of the public buildings precinct are predominantly nineteenth century workers cottages. To the east, in the area subdivided c.1890 as “Blenheim Park”, there are many late Victorian and Federation period cottages, now invariably defaced whilst apartment blocks have made significant inroads in recent years. Nevertheless, the terraced row in Gourlay Street at nos. 4-22 has withstood the pressures for change, presumably on account of its size and aesthetic appeal, and now forms the boundary of the identified Area in its neighbourhood. Nearby, the terraced rows facing the railway embankment running south from the Nightingale Street railway bridge form a discrete area, the bridge itself being unique for its evidence of knee braces in the bluestone abutments. “Grosvenor Mansions” at nos. 74-88 William Street show that apartment living found its way into this area during the inter-war period alongside the terraced row at nos. 58-72. To the north in the same street there are some fine Victorian detached villas demonstrating that Williams Street was and still is seen to be an attractive location. Still on the east side of the Brighton Road / St. Kilda Road alignment, the workers’ housing in Duke, Lynott, Glenmark and a section of Pakington Streets survives with a high level of integrity and is enhanced by the pitched drain and park at the north end of Lynott Street.

The nature of the urban landscape changes to the south of the old “Blenheim Park” area. Grosvenor and Bunning Streets mark the end of the period of late nineteenth century development and they merge, as one proceeds south, into a predominantly inter-war area with spacious tree-lined streets and detached villas between Brighton Road and the railway line in the vicinity of Ripponlea station. The Victorian villas in Glen Eira Road including “Tringingham” at no. 2 are more the exception than the rule, the apartments at no. 3 and the detached houses in Monkstadt Avenue (?) being more typical. To the east of the railway station the houses to the north of Glen Eira Road are more commonly of the Federation period with some late Victorian villas. To the south, inter-war bungalows surround ““Quat Quatta”, demonstrating the sequence in the development of the area in a manner not unlike Glen Eira Road.

History: Kearney’s map (1855) of this Area shows Carlisle Street, then “Beach Road” passing through open country with isolated residences until reaching St. Kilda Road at which point it takes Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 117 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian on the character of a suburban street, but only on its north side. To the south were isolated houses located on extensive holdings. Around this time, though, Council was clearing the tree stumps in Southey Street, erecting street lamps, constructing pitched crossings and paving the streets in the vicinity of the Gardens with red gravel obtained from the Blessington Street area129. The St. Kilda Botanical Gardens had been mostly laid out by 1861. By the time Cox’s map of 1866 had been published the St. Kilda and Brighton Railway Co had extended its line from St. Kilda through Albert Park to Chapel Street (Windsor) and on to Beach (Brighton Beach)130. It passed mostly through open country between Carlisle Street and Hotham Street. The map also shows that there were many new houses facing Carlisle Street and many cottages had sprung up in Marlborough, Rosamond and Nightingale Streets. Further south between Grosvenor and Maryville Streets there are several houses on land that was on land that was mostly vacant in 1855. Extant public works include the main drain running via Bothwell Street and through the market reserve (the present public buildings precinct) and, of course, the Botanical Gardens. Finally today’s street grid can be much more easily recognised in the 1866 map, demonstrating that by this stage the principal thoroughfares had been laid out to serve a small number of property owners. The maps do not extend sufficiently far south to show the Glenhuntly Road / Brighton Road intersection but it is known that the “Elsternwick” hotel was in existence on its present site from 1854/55131. It was and still is prominently situated on the Arthurs Seat road whilst the “Grosvenor” hotel, situated at the Grosvenor Street intersection, is a second early landmark, having been built in 1860. Another early hotel is the “Village Belle” at the Acland Street / Barkly Street intersection. The original building was erected in 1855 and the present structure in 1891. Bonwick’s “Hofwyl House Academy”, opened in 1862, was accommodated in the surviving bluestone building at 188 Barkly Street just up from the “Village Belle” from late in 1866 or early in 1867132.

J. Vardy’s map of 1873 confirms that the northern half of the identified Area was expanding rapidly at this time. All of the land north of Carlisle Street and west of the Westbury Street is closely subdivided. Development is continuing to occur in the “Blenheim Park” estate and William Street and, curiously, there is a house on the present reserve in William Street next to the railway. To the east, the blocks are large and the occupants few. The market reserve is vacant and there is a small building noted as the “Trinity Church”, facing the Brighton Road / Chapel street intersection. To the north of the Botanical Gardens there is considerable suburban development whilst to the south circumstances are relatively unchanged from the time of Cox’s map. There are two houses on large lots facing the Gardens on the Tennyson Street side. The northern house appears to be unpretentious and was presumably demolished at the time of the Bundalohn Court subdivision but the southern house, “Corinella” had a verandah to its triple fronted façade overlooking the Gardens and appears to have been on the site of present Mozart Street. These houses, now long demolished, represent the first stage in the use of land facing the Gardens. It would appear that only the house at no. 55 and possibly “St. Albans” at no. 74 Blessington Street survive from this time.

129 Cooper, J.B., The History of St.Kilda (1931), v.1, p.140. 130 The line was opened in its entirety on 21.12.1861. 131 Bick, D, et. al., St. Kilda Conservation Study: Area Two, (vol. 1; [unpublished], 1984), p 115.

132 Bick, D., op.cit., p.103. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 118 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

On the old market reserve, the State School had been opened in 1874 and the addition of a second floor followed in 1887. The present Holy Trinity Church was built in 1882-83 and the municipal chambers and hall followed in 1890.

The consolidation and expansion of housing and commercial development throughout the Area continued throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Brighton Road cable tramway was opened on 11.10.1888 with a depot at the Brunning Street terminus alongside the “Grosvenor” hotel. The Prahran service, which terminated in Chapel Street outside the present Holy Trinity Church from 26.10.1888, had a depot close to the Carlisle Street intersection on the site of the present two storeyed shops. The surviving nineteenth century housing stock and the shops in Carlisle Street and St. Kilda Road owe their existence, in part, to the opening of these routes. To the west, development was greatly facilitated by the opening of the Victorian Railways’ “electric street railway” from St. Kilda station down Barkly and Mitford Streets in 1906. By this time, Mitford Street, and Southey Street north of Milton Street was quite intensively occupied. There was a railway station at Ripponlea. Several houses on Glen Eira Road east of the railway had been built but the land on which the Glen Eira Road shops were to be built remained vacant. Carlisle Street was intensively built up as a shopping street, commencing at Chapel Street and finishing at Blenheim Street, just east of the railway bridge. The William Street and Gourlay Street terraces noted above had been built and the house by the railway embankment, situated on the present gardens in William Street, was soon to have another three houses to its immediate north. Gourlay Street and The Avenue were almost fully built up all the way to Hotham Street whilst the land to the north as far as Carlisle Street was, with the exception of the big houses facing the principal thoroughfares, unoccupied. The Hotham Street houses at nos. 113-125 were in existence. At the State school on the Brighton road an infant school building was provided in 1914.

It was during the inter-war years that the character of the remaining undeveloped land was transformed by the construction of detached villas and apartments. The route of the Victorian Railways tramway and its immediate surrounds was popular for apartments and houses as was the land between this area and the Brighton Road. “Hartpury Court” at 11 Milton Street is of special note as an Elizabethan style complex, having been erected in 1923. The electric tramways of the Prahran and Malvern Tramways Trust tapped the cable routes at their termini and eventually took over altogether. The Brighton Road cable tramway was replaced on 29.8.1926. Its extension beyond the old terminus facilitated the development of the vacant land south of Brunning’s extensive nursery in Maryville Street all the way to Glenhuntly Road. The “Queens Arms” hotel recalls the expansion associated with the improvements to public transport services having been opened in 1924.

In recent years, the popularity of the land around the Botanical Gardens has attracted considerable re-development resulting in a post-war transformation in the character of Herbert, Dickens and Tennyson Streets. The same is true elsewhere to the west of the Brighton road whilst on the east side, the old “Blenheim Park” subdivision has sustained considerable change, together with the workers’ cottages east of the railway. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 119 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Thematic Context: Building settlements, towns and cities: • Planning urban settlement • Making suburbs • Supplying urban services (transport)

Statement of Significance: The Elwood – St. Kilda Botanical Gardens – Balaclava Ripponlea Area is both extensive and architecturally diverse. It is culturally important especially on account of the influence of the St. Kilda Botanical Gardens, the Brighton road, the Brighton Beach railway and the public buildings precinct at the site of the former market reserve which collectively impart civic distinction. The residential areas are noteworthy for their late Victorian, Federation period and inter-war housing; the apartments of the latter period and the terraces of the former being especially noteworthy. The capacity of the Area to inform the observer about past lifestyles and living standards is important, there being great diversity evident during the major contributory development periods. The Brighton road has further distinction for the manner in which it has attracted residential development of a high standard. Finally, the street trees and smaller parks are invariably important elements, having their origins in the inter-war period and on occasions being also overlooked by buildings of the period to create urban landscapes representative of the highest urban planning standards of the day. The shopping centres are also distinguished for their high levels of integrity, Carlisle Street reflecting through its buildings the phases in its growth. The Glen Eira Road centre, in conjunction with the railway station and railway gardens, is highly representative of the era of the Great War, enhanced by the group of inter-war banks towards its east end.

Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table in the Port Phillip Planning Scheme.

Assessment: Andrew Ward, July, 1998. (Revised August, 2000) Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 120 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from Kearney’s 1855 Map of Melbourne prepared by Captain Andrew Clarke, Surveyor General.

Source: SLV Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 121 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from Commander Cox’s 1866 Survey of Hobsons Bay and the Yarra River.

Source: SLV. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 122 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian Extract from H. Vardy’s Map of St. Kilda:1873. Extract from H. Vardy’s Source: City of Port Phillip Archives. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 123 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian Extract from from J. Vardy’s Map of St. Kilda: 1873 Extract from J. Vardy’s Source: City of Port Phillip Archives. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 124 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Carlisle Street, looking west from the railway bridge c.1862.

Source: Cooper, J.B., op. cit., v.1, p.208. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 125 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The Red Bluff, c.1875.

Source: Cooper, J.B., op. cit., v.1, p.20. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 126 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Brighton Road, 1931.

Source: Cooper, J.B., op. cit., v.2, p.132. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 127 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The St. Kilda City Hall dominates the Carlisle Street/Brighton Road intersection and forms a group of public buildings with the St. Kilda School and the Holy Trinity Anglican church

The St. Kilda Botanical Gardens, Blessington Street gates. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 128 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The Glen Eira Road centre commences at the railway line with this group of shops erected in 1912. Though transformed by the present coat of paint, the façade treatment is representative of the centre yet enhanced by the corner tower.

Voguish Los Angeles Court recalls through its name the years of American West Coast influence on villa styles and forms a distinctive urban environment today with Monkstadt Avenue, behind the camera. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 129 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

6.9 Elwood:Glenhuntly and Ormond Roads - HO8

Existing Designations: Heritage Council Register: nil National Estate Register: nil National Trust Register: nil

Description: This Area has Glenhuntly Road as its east-west spine. It extends to the north just beyond Shelley Street between Marine Parade and the Elwood Canal and to the south-east generally between Ormond Road and Ormond Esplanade as far as Vautier Street. The foreshore reserve at Point Ormond is also included. The Area occupies the southern end of Elwood.

The Point Ormond reserve includes the sites of Victoria’s first quarantine station and the former Point Ormond tram terminus, still defined by the palm trees planted on its north side. The Robinson Gardens adjoin the Point Ormond reserve. The plantings suggest that this reserve was laid out during the 1920’s, the Phoenix canariensis and Tamarisk trees being mature.

To the north of Glenhuntly Road, the Area is occupied predominantly by inter-war houses and apartments with a number of post war buildings and a small number of Federation period houses near Glenhuntly Road. Amongst the most architecturally distinguished inter-war apartments are “The Desboro” at 61 Shelley Street, facing “Shelley Court” at no.59, across Addison Street. Comparable buildings in Shelley Street include “St. Catien” at no.28 and “Valona” at no.14 on the Goldsmith Street corner. There is a recognisable development pattern wherein the most ostentatious complexes are located on the corner blocks. “The Wandsworth” at the corner of Glenhuntly Road and Addison Street and the flats at the Barkly Street corner are no exception. Street trees are of special note in this area, mature Planes forming canopies over many of the streets with the exception of a part of Shelley Street which has mature Metrosideros excelsa trees.

South of Glenhuntly Road a small number of Italianate houses including “Tiuna” (1884) and “Elwood House” (1850’s) bear testimony to the development of isolated marine villas here last century. There are several Federation period villas recalling the Area’s closer subdivision following the opening of the electric tramway in 1906 and many inter-war houses and apartments. Considerable post-war redevelopment has also taken place, the number of newer buildings helping to define the boundaries of the Area. The Ormond Esplanade is made up principally of inter-war apartment blocks with new complexes under construction at the time of the survey.

There are two small shopping centres associated with the Area; the first at the Glenhuntly Road/ Broadway intersection and the second in Ormond Road between Beach Avenue and Pine Avenue. The former is centrally situated within the Area whilst the second is located approximately one street block further east. The Glenhuntly Road centre is noteworthy on account of the manner in which the roads intersect and the resultant prominence given to the buildings overlooking the space thus created. The key buildings are “The Alderley” (1920) with its twin oriel towers, the Post Office, the former State Savings Bank (1922) and the St. Columbas Church (1929) group. Collectively, they set the Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 130 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian character of the place as an inter-war centre of civic distinction: in spite of the loss of both the Point Ormond and Brighton Beach tramways which crossed at this intersection until 1959. There are, however, some former M&MTB metal tramway poles to recall the existence of the Point Ormond line.

The smaller centre on Ormond Road has been only partially included in the Area, the reason being that although the majority of south side buildings survive, they are mostly of low aesthetic value and have invariably been compromised by the replacement of their original shop fronts. On the north side, however, the former “Broadway” theatre is an interesting inter-war public building associated with some shops of architectural value.

History: Land to the south of Glenhuntly Road was initially subdivided during the 1850’s and later again in the 1880’s. “Elwood House” located at what is now nos. 30 and 30A Vautier Street was completed in 1855, and is the oldest in the Area. Its construction reflects on the nature of contemporary development in St. Kilda and the expectation that such building would also occur in Elwood. “Elwood House”, however, remained exceptional and was converted into a single house in the 1870’s, into flats in 1917/18, and back to two terrace houses in 1978. The villa “Tiuna”, a private residence situated at 8 Tiuna Grove, was built in 1884. It recalls a subsequent phase in the growth of the Area as a fashionable address for “marine villas” and illustrates the nature of land use in this part of Elwood during the nineteenth century. Substantial houses, mostly set in large grounds and orientated towards the sea were characteristic. Nevertheless, not many were built and the intensive development of the first half of this century saw them invariably demolished. Henry V. Duigan, the barrister, built “Tuina” and lived there until the 1890’s, his widow Marian remaining there in the twentieth century.

The land bounded by Ormond Road, Glenhuntly Road and St. Kilda Street was subdivided into 173 “villa sites” known not surprisingly as the “Sea Side Estate” and auctioned off as early as 15.11.1884. At that time there was a general store at the Ormond Road/ Docker Street (then South Elwood Street) intersection. It was the only indication that this section of Ormond Road might at a future date be suitable for commercial development. Yan Yean water was available. To the north was the Elwood swamp. By 1905 the entire area had been drained and the Elwood Canal formed133 . Land sales continued from the 1900’s to the late 1920’s, as Elwood became a popular bayside residential precinct. Broadway was the principle road in the Elwood swamp subdivision, hence its width. An electric tramway operated by the Victorian Railways Department ran down the Broadway and Ormond Road to Brighton Beach from 1906. Its construction lead to the earliest phase in the suburban development of the Area along with the formation of shopping centres along its route during the inter-war period. On 4.6 1915 the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board introduced its Point Ormond tramway service along Glenhuntly Road, commencing at the Elsternwick railway station and terminating in the foreshore reserve at Point Ormond. Here, a restaurant offering patrons fine views of the Bay met the needs of tramway patrons and motorists at least until the cessation of tramway services in on 22.10.1960134

133 Longmire, A., St. Kilda: The Show Must Go On: The History of St. Kilda, (vol. 3; Melbourne: Hudson, 1989), p. x. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 131 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The intersection of the Broadway with Glenhuntly and Ormond Roads became known as Elwood Junction from the time of the opening of the Point Ormond tramway. It remains at the heart of Elwood and provided the shopping and community facilities for the recently subdivided lands. “The Alderley”, built in 1920-21 at the corner of Glenhuntly and Ormond Roads has been a local landmark and meeting place since that time. The design by Nahum Barnet for a Mr. Bailey, is rather conservative for its time, but stands today as a distinctive building at the intersection, having its shopfronts almost totally intact. When it was under construction, the “Elwood Motor Garage” operated by Mrs. McShanag was already in operation135. By 1930 it had closed. The State Savings Bank building, erected in 1922 at no. 6 Ormond Road, was one of the finest examples of the Bank’s work of the period and is a key element in the Elwood Junction shopping centre precinct. Banks built during the First World War and into the 1920’s are usually in a heavy banded Classicism style and this building epitomises the work of one of its two leading exponents, architects Sydney Smith, Ogg and Serpell136. The Elwood Post Office, built around 1925, is another of the key corner buildings of the Elwood Junction precinct, and is representative of the Commonwealth Government’s work of the period.

By 1930, the number of businesses in the vicinity of Elwood Junction had grown to 19 and included a dentist, cigarette manufacturer, and the “Maison de Luxe Dance Palais”137.

Another of the landmarks of the Elwood Junction centre, and indeed of Elwood is St. Columba’s Catholic Church, built in 1929. Its tower can be seen from many parts of the suburb. A number of Roman Catholic churches of similar scale and varied detailing were erected around this time and this building is one of the finest examples138. A school was already on the site and it was enlarged when the hall was added in 1937. Augustus Fritsch (1866-1933) was the architect and Reverend M.F. McKenna was the first incumbent. St. Bede’s Church of England, situated on the corner of Ormond Road and Byrne Avenue is the oldest church in Elwood, having being built in 1916139. It was intended to serve as the church hall for a larger church at the Tiuna Grove corner. The architects were North and Williams, and the builder was James Brown.

By, 1910, there were no shops on Ormond Road between Beach Avenue and Pine Avenue. A chemist shop was opened at no. 90 (south side) in 1913 and a shop and residence followed at no. 121 in 1915. The original occupants were grocers and the building was designed by the architect W.H. Smith. By 1920 the number of shops completed or under construction had grown to 9, including a dentist and a knitter. Later that year two shops at nos. 157 and 159, designed by the engineer John Marshall, were erected in mass concrete. By 1930 the number of shops on the north side had

134 It was in existence when the tramway closed. 135 1920 Sands and McDougall Directory. 136 Bick,), Op. Cit., p. 221. 137 1930 Sands and McDougall Directory. 138 Bick, D., Op. Cit., p. 181. 139 The schoolroom at the rear was built in early 1918, and by the end of 1921 the vestries, guild room, and porch were completed. See Bick, p. 223. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 132 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian increased to 29 and included an ironmonger, a motor garage, police station, library and the “Broadway Theatre” (1919, façade: 1933).

Whilst the early buildings of Elwood were houses, intense growth during the 1920’s and 1930’s saw a dramatic increase in the number of blocks of flats being built. “Windemere” (1936) at 49 Broadway, “Shelley Court”, “The Desboro” and “Rochelle” in Shelley Street were all representative of this important period. It marked the final phase in the development of the Area and has since been overlaid with post war reconstruction especially concentrated near the shore line where pressures for change have most recently been the greatest.

References: Bick, D., St. Kilda Conservation Study (Area two): Individual Elements and Conservation Areas, (vol. 1; [unpublished], 1984). Longmire, A., St. Kilda: The Show Must Go On: The History of St. Kilda, (vol. 3; Melbourne: Hudson, 1989). Sands and McDougall Directories.

Thematic Context: Building settlements, towns and cities: • Planning urban settlement • Making suburbs • Supplying urban services (transport)

Statement of Significance: The Elwood – Glenhuntly and Ormond Roads Area has historical value (Criterion A) for its capacity to demonstrate the attraction of the Port Phillip Bay coastline as a location for marine villas during the mid-late Victorian period. In this respect it compares with nearby St. Kilda, Brighton and Sandringham which sustained similar coastal development from an early date. It is important also as an Area founded on the first of the Victorian Railways’ two “electric street railways” promoted by the premier and minister of Railways Thomas (later Sir Thomas) Bent. The Area has aesthetic value for the diversity of its villas and inter-war apartments often evoking romantic images of the period. Its tree lined streets are also a distinctive characteristic. The juxtaposition of fine commercial and public buildings and spaces at the former Elwood Junction centre has landmark value. The Ormond Road centre assists to underscore the Area’s distinctive inter-war character, the former “Broadway theatre” recalling the importance of the suburban picture theatre prior to the advent of television in 1956.

Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table in the Port Phillip Planning Scheme.

Assessment: Andrew Ward, July, 1998. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 133 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Parish Plan showing pattern of early land subdivision in Elwood (nd). The subdivision between Ormond Road and the Ormond Esplanade was for a period identified as “North Elwood”.

Source: SLV Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 134 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from Commander Cox’s 1866 Survey of Hobsons Bay and the Yarra River, showing the swamp in the vicinity of Glenhuntly Road.

Source: SLV. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 135 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Plan of the “Sea Side Estate”, Elsternwick, of 1884.

Source: SLV Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 136 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Plan of the Area prior to the boom prompted by the draining of the swamp and the opening of the electric tramway in 1906.

Source: MMBW litho. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 137 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Two views at the Elwood Junction shopping centre in 1960 showing the Point Ormond Tram in Glenhuntly Road at “The Alderley” (above) and at the “Maison de Luxe Dance Palais” (below). Also notice the abandoned tracks of the former Brighton Beach tramway, closed in 1959, in the foreground of the lower view.

Source: A.Ward Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 138 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The shops at Elsternwick Junction, a name recalling the junction of the former Point Ormond and Brighton Beach electric tramways that passed through this intersection until 1959.

Shelley Street, looking west from the Elwood Canal, showing the plane trees and flat blocks characteristic of the area. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 139 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The Ormond Road shops and façade of the former “Broadway” theatre at left. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 140 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

6.10 Inkerman Street (east) - HO 315

Existing Designations: Victorian Heritage Register: nil National Estate Register: nil National Trust Register: nil

Description: This Area consists of places facing both sides of Inkerman Street between Chapel Street and a short distance east of Evelyn Street, St. Kilda East. The Chapel Street tramway is a defining element at the west end and the Sandringham railway overbridge, whilst beyond the Area to the east, terminates the vista in this direction. Inkerman Street is a busy thoroughfare with a bicycle way on the south side and a painted median. Many of the residents within the Area have erected high front fences to protect themselves from the noise of the traffic.

The most visually dominant elements that give distinction to this otherwise nondescript street are the two storeyed late Victorian terraces on the south side and the two storeyed late Victorian corner store at the south-east corner of Chapel and Inkerman Streets. Together they establish a late Victo- rian environment forming a discrete section of Inkerman Street which has been mostly rebuilt since the Second World War. The terraces at nos. 275-281 have pediments and window details which are identical with the terrace at nos. 255-269. The window heads have very slightly segmental forms with drip moulds and bracketed sills. At nos. 275-281 they occur in pairs but at nos. 255-269 they are arranged in groups of three. The parapets are characteristic of their time with central curved pediments supported on pilasters and ornamented with anthemions and volutes. There are identical urns giving emphasis to the party walls and punctuating the skyline but many of these are missing. The street level facades are in two forms, nos. 275-281 and 269 having shop fronts and the nos. 255- 267 having loggias with Romanesque arcaded treatments. There are palisade iron fences to the loggias and whilst some of the front doors have been replaced, these dwellings survive with a high level of integrity. The same cannot be said of the shops, however, all of the shop fronts with the exception of no. 179 having been replaced. The verandahs have also been removed, the reconstruc- tion of the kerbs and channels destroying any evidence of the columns types and locations. To the immediate west of no. 255 is a terraced pair adopting a similar form to the other terraces. It runs to the corner of Camden Street and is important in this respect giving the longer terrace at nos. 255-269 an enhanced presence in the street. There is a corner splay and elaborately decorated upper level windows with aedicules and bracketed sills. The parapet is plain, however, and may have been sim- plified over the years. At street level, the shop fronts have been replaced and the presumed verandahs removed.

The corner store at Chapel Street marks the point of entry to the Area from the west. Its parapet treatment with shallow pediment is suggestive of an earlier date than the terraces further to the east, the form and ornamentation being characteristic of the mid Victorian period. There is quoining to the corner splay and upper level façade corners and the window surrounds are understated in the manner of the period. There is a later cantilevered verandah to the defaced shop fronts but the balance of this imposing building is substantially intact. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 141 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

The remainder of this Area is made up of isolated Victorian period buildings and Post Federation dwellings with some recent houses and flat blocks. There are two polychrome brick villas, one being two storeyed in the terraced form facing no. 251, a timber cottage with posted verandah and ashlar front at no. 233 and a stuccoed villa on the north-east corner of Inkerman and Chapel Street which has interesting intaglio work. The latter dwelling reinforces the late Victorian point of entry to the Area from the west whilst all of the buildings powerfully underscore its nineteenth century origins.

The Post Federation dwellings are of both timber and brick construction and often in pairs in the manner of the period. The majority is situated on the north side of the street and is frequently concealed from view by high front fences. These houses are representative of their period having dominant overhanging gable ends, window hoods, red brick and stuccoed surfaces and small porches, the dwelling pairs usually being mirror reversed. The timber picket fence at no. 196 appears to be original.

During the Post War period the level of visual amenity has declined as a result of increased traffic flows leading to the construction of high front fences and as a consequence of the demolition of contributory buildings and their replacement with flat blocks. Minor works that have compromised the integrity of the Area include the replacement of shop fronts and posted verandahs as has been noted, window replacement and the overpainting of face brick surfaces. The flats at nos. 247-249, whilst not contributing to the cultural values of the Area are of architectural value for their use of cement block in the manner popularized by the manufacturers of these materials during the 1960s. The façade elements are cleanly defined in the Modernist tradition whilst highly representative in- stances of the use of cement block products occur in the end walls, screens and textured walls.

Inkerman Street, south side, looking east from Chapel Street at a point of entry to the Area Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 142 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Terrace at nos. 255-269 Inkerman Street.

Terrace at nos. 275-281 Inkerman Street. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 143 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Inkerman Street, north side, showing the Post Federation period dwellings and Victorian buildings in the middle distance.

History: The Kearney Map of 1855 shows that Inkerman Street beyond Chapel Street was on the edge of the urban area of the metropolis, there being no buildings within the area under considera- tion. The first land sales occurred in October, 1857 when blocks of almost an acre were successfully auctioned at the Inkerman/Chapel Streets corner. The land was advertised in glowing terms and on the basis that it was soon to be the centre of St. Kilda1 . Inkerman Street was one of the first named streets, but by the end of 1857 it had been joined by Little Inkerman Street (Evelyn Street) and Little Alma Street (King Street). Queen Street was soon formed out of the allotment situated on the north- east corner of Chapel and Inkerman Streets and in the same year, the next block east was for sale2

Although the Windsor to North Brighton railway extension was opened in December, 1859 with a railway station at Balaclava on Carlisle Street, development followed slowly. By 1860 there were six properties east of Chapel Street on the north side of Inkerman Street, including Mrs Heath’s Ladies School, the “National School” and a Mr. Holland, who was a wine and spirit merchant. However there were only two houses east of Chapel Street on the south side, with vacant land between them. Queen, King, and Evelyn Streets were yet to be listed in the Sands and McDougall Directory of 1860, presumably having no settlement. Commander Cox’s Plan of 1866 shows that houses had been built in Queen, Evelyn and Camden Streets whilst Inkerman Street remained comparatively

1 Cooper, p. 112. 2 Plan of Building Allotments at St. Kilda, SLV Vale Book 4A, p.146, dated 1857. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 144 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian vacant.

By 1873 J.E.S. Vardy’s survey plan showed that the number of houses in Inkerman was gradually increasing but the site of the present terraces at nos. 251 and 255-269 was vacant and occupied in 1879 by Brunning’s(?) Nursery3 . None of the surviving early houses in this area had been built at the time Vardy’s plans were prepared.

A new era in the consolidation of development in the Area occurred following the opening of the Prahran cable tramway along Chapel Street on 26th. October, 1888. By 1890 the north side of Inkerman Street was occupied by 6 houses between Chapel and Evelyn Streets. It is thought that the majority of these survive. The south side by this time had become a focus for commerce and included two groceries, a centre for “professional dancing”, two butchers, a fruiterer, a baker and a dairy. The terraced shops in which these businesses were situated are extant, having been built in 18894 .

By 1911 the final phase in the initial development of the Area was well underway, there being 11 dwellings on the north side of Inkerman Street between Chapel Street and Evelyn Street, with four vacant lots immediately after Evelyn Street. The south side had twenty-four dwellings/shops be- tween Chapel and Nelson Streets. Although there was a dress maker and a music teacher on the north side, commerce still predominated on the south side, with eleven businesses, mostly towards the railway line.

The Chapel Street cable tramway service was closed on 28th August, 1926 and replaced by the present electric service on 19th. December of that year.

Extract from Kearney’s map of 1855. Source: SLV

3 MMBW plan, 1879. 4 Sands and McDougall directories. Rate book information to be added to this draft. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 145 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from commander Cox’s map of 1866. Source: SLV.

Extract from J.E.S. Vardy’s survey plan of 1873. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 146 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Thematic Context: Building settlements, towns and cities: • Planning urban settlement • Making suburbs

Statement of significance: Settlement of the Inkerman Street (East) Area commenced in 1857, attaining its present form following the opening of the Prahran cable tramway along Chapel Street in 1888. This Area is limited to Inkerman Street between Chapel Street in the west and places associ- ated with Evelyn and Linton Streets in the east. It is historically and aesthetically significant.

It is historically significant (Criterion A) for its capacity to demonstrate the impact of the late Victo- rian Land Boom in the suburbs of the Metropolis served by the cable tramway network. The villas and terraced developments constitute a striking testimony to the impetus for development provided by the cable tramways and the momentum of the Land Boom. This significance is enhanced by the mix of residential and commercial development of the Victorian and Post Federation periods which demonstrates the patterns of settlement characteristic of a society dependent on public transport systems for medium distance journeys and walking for other trips including daily shopping trips.

It is aesthetically important (Criterion E) principally for the dominant terraced developments of the Land Boom era which whilst being representative of their time in many respects are also exception- ally large for their locality. This dominance imparts identity to Inkerman Street which has been largely rebuilt in the Post War period. The Post Federation period houses have aesthetic value to the extent that they demonstrate different housing forms characteristic of the succeeding period of de- velopment, their importance lying in the ability to compare one with the other.

Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table in the Port Phillip Planning Scheme.

Assessment: Andrew Ward, August, 2000 Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 147 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 148 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

6.11 Carlisle Street (east) - HO 316

Existing Designations: Victorian Heritage Register: nil National Estate Register: nil National Trust Register nil

Description: This Area is situated at the east end of Carlise Street at Hotham Street and encompasses Hawsleigh Avenue. Whilst there is representation from the nineteenth century and Post Federation periods, the Area is dominated by Inter-War structures, most notably the St. Colman’s Catholic Church complex and the walk-up apartments of Carlisle Street and Hawsleigh Avenue. Both the church and church hall are dominant Italian Romanesque Revival structures in red brick and unpainted cement highly representative of the church’s best work of the day. Their gable roofed facades are balanced by pavilions intended to support towers, only one of which has been built, its distinguishing cupola being a local landmark. Both buildings are connected by a high brick wall of the Inter-War period that conceals more recent buildings behind. There are several dominant two storeyed Inter War apartment developments formed around courtyards. They have low front fences and spacious garden settings. “Hawsleigh Court” is in the Mediterranean Style with Tuscan columns to two storeyed loggias facing Hawsleigh Avenue. They are located at the end of wings enclosing a central courtyard. Comparable developments include “Triona Court”, “Hillsden Court” and “Merri Court” whilst others of the period that contribute to its importance are “Waikato” and “Charters Towers”. “Astolat” is a remarkable English Cottage style Inter War apartment complex prominently situated at the Hawsleigh Avenue corner. Its picturesque gabled roofs, tall chimney stacks, half timbering , shingles, porches and ironmongery represent best practice of their time, the extensive use of rustic clinker bricks establishing links with other contemporary buildings, including “Charters Towers” and the Kollel Beth Hatalmud Yehuda Fishman Institute opposite as well as a number of other buildings further afield. There is stylistic diversity here, Georgian fanlights, lancet archways, drip moulds, cast cement lamp posts, Tuscan columns, picturesque roof lines and the heavy handed Romanesque forms of the Catholic Church being typical of elements imparting aesthetic value.

The buildings of earlier periods have a subordinate but nevertheless important role. The presence of large nineteenth century villa residences is demonstrated by “Oakview”, recently named presumably after the large oak tree in the expansive front garden, and the “Meryula Guesthouse, defaced at the time of its conversion into a guesthouse but being readily recognizable as a substantial modified Victorian villa. The east side of Hawsleigh Avenue is dominated by Post Federation duplex dwellings with characteristic highly decorated gable ends, fretted verandah ornamentation, casement windows with lead lit upper lights and red brick walls with rough cast banding.

Whilst the Inter-War period buildings have survived with a remarkable degree of completeness, changes to the Post Federation period houses include overpainting, the removal of front fences and the replacement of some verandah posts. There are also instances where the formerly pretty cottage front gardens have been paved to accommodate off street parking and one example of a carport built in the diminutive frontage setback. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 149 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Carlisle Street, looking east from the St. Colman’s Catholic Church and demonstrating their importance in the streetscape.

“Meryula Guesthouse”, formerly “Meryula”, demonstrating the impact of the 7/Eleven store and car park alongside. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 150 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

“Astolat”, 1934.

The north side of Carlisle Street, looking east from the Kollel Beth Hatalmud Yehuda Fishman Institute which is diagonally opposite “Astolat”. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 151 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

“Hawsleigh Court” apartments, showing the courtyard development form characteristic of the Inter war years.

The east side of Hawsleigh Avenue. Notice the cars parked in the frontage setbacks. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 152 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

History: Carlisle Street was one of the first named streets in St. Kilda, having been officially proclaimed in July 1857. Before this time the western section was known as Beach Road, and the eastern section Balaclava Road. The Area was vacant, Kearney’s map of 1855 showing some fence lines and “Springfield House”, the only residence close by, facing west across Hotham Street. By 1860 only Andrew Murray’s house stood on the north side of Carlisle Street east of the railway line. However there were six residences on the south side east of the railway line, with a further two east of Bull Street1 . J.E.S. Vardy’s map of 1873 shows that there were three villas on the south side of Carlisle Street, since demolished, and three on the north side, present no. 366 surviving as the only remnant of this formative period in the settlement of the Area.

By 1890 there were six properties on the north side of Carlisle Street, one of them being Walter William’s “Meryula”, surviving today as the “Meryula Guesthouse”. There was another five between Julia Avenue (now Carlisle Avenue) and Hotham Street.

The Prahran and Malvern Tramways Trust, opened its Hawthorn Road to The St. Kilda Esplanade electric tramway in April 19132, conveying the residents of the burgeoning south-eastern suburbs to the waterfront. It paved the way to the redevelopment and closer settlement of the land through which it passed leading to the subdivision of the larger holdings into Carlisle and Hawsleigh Avenues with their attendant Post Federation period duplexes and Inter War apartments and bungalows. The Catholic Church erected its church and hall at St. Colman’s in 1929 and 1939 respectively, architect Leslie J. Reed’s design for “Astolat” being prepared in 1934.

Extract from Kearney’s map of 1855 Source: SLV

1 Sands and McDougall directory, 1860. 2George, B., Storey, D., Birch, J., et. al., Time-line History of Melbourne’s Government Cable and Electric Trams and Buses, (Melbourne, Association of Railway Enthusiasts), 1997. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 153 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from J.E.S. Vardy’s survey plan of 1873.

Thematic Context: Building settlements, towns and cities: • Planning urban settlement • Making suburbs Developing cultural institutions and ways of life

Statement of significance: The Carlisle Street (east) Area was established during the late 1850s and consolidated during the late nineteenth century Land Boom. Closer subdivision followed Federation and the opening of the Prahran and Malvern Tramways Trust electric tramway service along Carlisle Street in 1913, leading to the erection of several apartment developments and the Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 154 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

St. Colman’s Catholic Church complex during the Inter-War period. The Area is historically and aesthetically significant.

It is historically significant (Criterion A) for its capacity to demonstrate the periods of growth char- acteristic of the Carlisle Street corridor and including the mid Victorian period, the late Victorian Land Boom, the Post Federation recovery and the Inter War years during which flats were regarded as smart and progressive accommodation causing the City of St. Kilda in one year during the 1930s to attract one third of all metropolitan flat development3.

It is aesthetically important (Criterion E) for the manner in which the Inter War period apartments and institutional buildings dominate the area, their high standards of design imparting a strong sense of identity and stylistic diversity. Important contributory elements include the St. Colman’s Italian Romanesqe Revival Church complex, the courtyard apartments in the Mediterranean and related styles, English cottage style apartments and other buildings along with the garden residential envi- ronment.

Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table in the Port Phillip Planning Scheme.

Assessment: Andrew Ward, August, 2000

3 Port Phillip Heritage Review, p.33. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 155 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

6.12 Brighton Road (Elwood) - HO 318

Existing Designations: Victorian Heritage Register: nil National Estate Register: nil National Trust Register: nil

Description: This Area occupies most of the triangle formed by the Brighton Road, Glen Huntly Road and Burns Street, Elwood. It is situated at the point where the Brighton Road is renamed the Nepean Highway. Glen Huntly Road marks the Municipal boundary with the City of Bayside, facing Elsternwick Park.

The architectural themes that recur in this Area and establish its character are those of the Arts and Crafts movement and more particularly a product of that movement: the Californian Bungalow. Whereas Heaton Avenue and Burns Street are occupied almost exclusively by houses, Inter War apartments punctuate the Glen Huntly Road and Brighton Road streetscapes. A small number of flat blocks has been built in Heaton Avenue and Burns Street during the Post War period.

The Brighton Road streetscape has the Elsternwick hotel at its south end. This exceptionally early two storeyed hotel is a prominent land mark, now compromised by advertising signage. There are recent flats on the site of “Normanhurst” to the immediate north but the majority of the remaining buildings are of the Inter War period, exceptions being the Post Federation period villas at nos. 243 and 231 on the corner of Heaton Avenue and Burns Streets respectively. “Taradale” at no. 229 marks the commencement of the Area at the north end. It is a prominent three storeyed Moderne apartment block with a stepped façade, low front fence and wrought iron gate. The prominence of this building plays an important role in the definition of the Area, the housing stock to the immediate north being either defaced or replaced by Post War flats.

Glen Huntly Road is dominated at its western end commencing at Heaton Avenue by Arts and Crafts bungalows, nos. 153, 155, 159 “Kilwex” and 161 “Maytime” being important contributors to this streetscape character. The use of bungalow roof forms, clinker bricks and rough cast, tapered chimneys, cement sheet shingles at “Maytime” and cobble stones at “Kilwex” as well as many other devices firmly establishes the presence of the Arts and Crafts idiom in this locale. Further east, Inter War apartments at nos. 167 and 173 “Greenmount” constitute a consistent change in their use of Moderne forms.

Burns Street and Heaton Avenue slope gently to the south-west and have mature plane tree avenues with asphalt footpaths in common with many of Elwood’s Streets. The high ground in Burns Street has been captured by “Broadhinton”, a distinguished two storeyed asymmetrical Victorian villa with cast iron decoration recalling the work of John A.B. Koch seen also at “Narellan” in Brighton and elsewhere. On the north side of the street are Edwardian period duplexes and Arts and Crafts apartments (“Arranmore” at nos.24-26) and bungalows. On the south side, Californian Bungalows predominate with transverse gabled roofs, dormers and a massive cypress hedge at no. 15. In some instances doors and windows have been replaced and car spaces have been provided in the front gardens. Picket fences have been erected in front of bungalows and there are some upper level Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 156 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

“Taradale” at no. 229 Brighton Road defines the northern extremity of the Area.

“Maytime” is an exceptional Arts and Crafts influenced bungalow amongst others facing Glen Huntly Road. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 157 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian additions set well back so as not to intrude on the streetscape.

In Heaton Avenue Californian Bungalows dominate, often demonstrating Arts and Crafts influences. There are ship lapped low front fences, occasional replacement picket fences and an Indian bunga- low at no.11. This street survives with a high level of integrity.

History: Whilst the Arthur’s Seat Road had been in existence from at least the 1840s and the railway to North Brighton from December, 1859, the only building to be erected in this Area was the Elsternwick hotel, from 1854. The original portion survives today to the north of the higher and more grandiose corner section. By 1873, J.E.S. Vardy’s survey plans of the Borough of St. Kilda show that this Area had been subdivided, Burns Street had been formed but the land was mostly vacant. J. T. Nankivell’s house on Brighton Road to the north of Burns Street occupied an L shaped block with a secondary frontage to Burns Street where there were outbuildings. Further west, the low lying swamp lands of Elwood would not be drained until 1905 with the construction of the Elwood canal.

The opening of the Brighton Road cable tramway on 11th. October, 1888, whilst stopping short of the Glen Huntly Road corner at Chapel Street, prompted expectations that it would be extended. An auctioneer’s poster of the era advertised land facing the Brighton Road with the cable tramway in the form of an “extension” running down this roadway and turning south in front of the Elsternwick hotel along New Street in the direction of Brighton. Further west, an extension of the St. Kilda railway was anticipated with stations at Elwood and near New Street. In spite of the high hopes, though, Brighton Road had to settle for the plateways of the market gardeners conveying produce from the south-east to the City from the 1880s well into the twentieth century. In 1906 Melbourne’s first successful electric tramway service was opened by the Victorian Railways along the projected route of the St. Kilda railway extension. By this time, there were three houses on the north side of Burns Street, including “Broadhinton” and another on the south side. Heaton Avenue had been formed and subdi- vided, although no development had taken place, and there were four houses facing the Brighton Road, including “Normanhurst” alongside the Elsternwick hotel. Today, only the hotel and “Broadhinton” demonstrate this phase in the history of the Area.

In 1913 the Prahran and Malvern Tramways Trust opened its Glen Huntly Road electric tramway from Darling Road, East Malvern, to Brighton Road outside the Elsternwick hotel. It was extended to Point Ormond along Glen Huntly Road on June 4th, 1915, thereby connecting Melbourne’s south- eastern suburbs with the beach but doing little for the residents in the vicinity of Brighton Road in terms of their travel times to the City. It was not until August, 1926 that the present electric tramway along Brighton Road was opened. By this time, the Area was substantially built up, many of the apartment developments, including “Taradale” on Brighton Road following in the next decade.

Thematic Context: Building settlements, towns and cities • Planning urban settlement • Making suburbs Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 158 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Auctioneers’ poster for land facing Brighton Road capitalizing on the prospect of tramway and railway services being extended south from existing termini, (pre 1906).

Source: SLV: Vale Collection. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 159 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

An extract from J.E.S. Vardy’s survey plan of 1873 showing the absence of development in the vicinity of the Brighton Road/Glen Huntly Roads corner. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 160 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from MMBW litho no. 48 showing the extent of development shortly after the opening of the Victorian Railways electric tramway service to the west in 1906. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 161 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

1960 view in Glen Huntly Road at Tennyson Street showing the Point Ormond tramway, closed later that year, and inter-war period bungalows, since altered, facing the park.

Source: Andrew Ward

Statement of significance: The Brighton Road (Elwood) Area occupies the triangle defined by the Glen Huntly and Brighton Roads and Burns Street. It remained sparcely settled during the nine- teenth century, being successfully subdivided and developed in its present form by the 1920s. It is aesthetically significant.

It is aesthetically significant on account of its tree lined residential streets and Inter war house forms showing Arts and Crafts influence and which together demonstrate residential planning practices in middle class areas during the early years of the Garden Suburb Movement in Australia. This signifi- cance is enhanced by the stylistic diversity of the houses which include representative Californian Bungalows and bungalows and Federation period villas having exceptional Arts and Crafts details. Less prominent but valuable contributors to the aesthetic values of the area include the Elsternwick hotel and “Broadhinton” and the Moderne apartment developments of the 1930s. The aesthetic values of the Area are strengthened by its intact state.

Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table in the Port Phillip Planning Scheme.

Assessment: Andrew Ward, August, 2000 Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 162 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 163 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

6.13 Hotham Street (Balaclava) - HO 317

Existing designations: Victorian Heritage Register: nil National estate Register: nil National Trust Register: nil

Description: This small area is made up of a group of prominently situated houses on the east side of Hotham Street to the immediate north of The Avenue intersection. Together with other houses in Hotham Street they mark the edge of the closely settled suburbs of the Land Boom years that followed the Brighton Beach railway and which contrast in this locale with the villa residences established in spacious grounds to the immediate east in the same period. Of the seven dwellings in the Area, four are built as a two storeyed terrace and the remaining three as detached asymmetrical villas. They have similarities in that they are stuccoed and have Romanesque arched windows with vermiculated ornamentation. The detached villas have further similarities including the use of cabled colonettes to the windows and faceted window bays, the house at no. 125 being further distinguished by the cast iron lace ridge cresting to the roof of the faceted front bay.

Today, hedges and high front fences partially obscure the houses from view although the corner aspect of no. 125 and the two storeyed terraced form of nos. 113-119 cause this group of buildings to stand out in the Hotham Street streetscape.

The terrace at nos. 113-119 showing the Romanesque window heads that are a characteristic of the houses in this Area. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 164 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Looking north from The Avenue corner with no.125 nearest the camera.

History: The Kearney Map of 1855 shows that the three houses situated on the west side of Hotham Street south of Carlisle Street were close by “Springfield House” to the north-east but in every other respect remote from settlement. Hotham Street was overlooked by vacant paddocks and remained so following the opening of the Windsor to North Brighton railway on 19th. December, 1859. The situation was unchanged when J.E.S. Vardy prepared his survey plans in 1873, closer suburban settlement at that time being nearer to Balaclava railway station in William Street.

It was not until the height of the Land Boom that speculative builders Philip Corkhill and William and Leigh Farr made substantial land purchases in the area. Corkhill was associated with John E. Gourlay after whom nearby Gourlay Street was presumably named and who was a director of James Miram’s Premier Building Association. When the Premier was liquidated in 1890, Gourlay was accused of conspiring to grant loans to Corkhill among others on the pretended security of certain lands and in excess of their value via a pretended sale1 . Whilst Corkhill had purchased the land on which nos. 121 and 123 Hotham Street were to be built, it was one of the Farrs who actually built the present houses in 1888, ownership being in the name of Thomas Farr by 1889. Farr also built the terrace at nos. 113-119 as well as other houses in the locality. Their speculative activities had trans- formed this section of Hotham Street, extending west to William Street; The Avenue and Gourlay Street being almost completely built up by the onset of the depression of the early 1890s. By the turn of the century, nos. 121-125 were in the hands of the Northern Assurance Company.

1 See Cannon, M., The Land Boomers, Lloyd O’Neil, 1972, pp.158-157. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 165 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Extract from J.E.S. Vardy’s survey plan of 1873 showing the land on which the houses in this Area were to be built at that time. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 166 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

An extract from MMBW drainage plan no.47 showing the results of the Land Boom in the Area.

Statement of significance: The Area occupied by the houses at nos. 113-125 Hotham Street, Balaclava, whilst initially occupied from the 1850s, did not take its present form until 1888 when all of the houses were erected. This area is historically and aesthetically significant.

It is historically significant (Criterion A) for its capacity to demonstrate the activities of a locally prominent family of speculative builders and investors by the name of Farr, William, Thomas and Leigh being involved in the construction and financing of these quite ostentatious houses as well as others in the locality.

The Area is aesthetically significant (Criterion E) for the manner in which all of the buildings incor- porate details, especially including the Romanesque arched windows, vermiculated ornamentation and cabled colonettes, that identify them as the work of the one builder and which as a consequence offer insights into the interpretation of the history of other houses in the locality. They are important also for their prominence along Hotham Street, the greater part of this thoroughfare having been re- built during the Post War era. They survive today to mark the limit of the sphere of influence of the Brighton Beach railway as a catalyst for suburban development during the late nineteenth century. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 167 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Recommendations: Recommended for inclusion in the Schedule to the Heritage Overlay Table in the Port Phillip Planning Scheme.

Assessment: Andrew Ward, August, 2000 Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 168 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

7. HORTICULTURAL ASSESSMENT

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State Turner Railway Station St. L c1900-1920 Well planted park of predominantly exotics. Low rock walling out of Area /Hester reserve Port at west end, Cedrus deodara, old Schinus molle var. areira, old 03 & 04 Reserve Melbourne Ficus macrocarpa, Cupressus sempervirens, Populus deltoides, P. nigra 'Italica', Platanus sp., Eucalyptus ficifolia. Walter Railway Evans St. L c1900-1920 Mainly exotic planting, street edge lined with row of mature Area 03 Reserve reserve Schinus molle var. areira. Avenue of elms c1920s in centre of reserve (incomplete), with bitumen bike path. Railway planting includes mature Arbutus unedo, golden privet, cotoneaster, elms and gums. There is some modern play equipment. A very large single specimen of Ficus macrophylla is planted in a fenced-off reserve in the centre of Raglan St; another smaller specimen nearby. Gill Railway Raglan to L planting Mature Schinus molle var. areira on street side, mixed Area 03 Reserve reserve Ingles St. c1920s Cupressus sempervirens, Lagunaria patersonii, old Arbutus Port unedo, row of Platanus orientalis. Melbourne Howe Railway Raglan to L c1920s Mature Schinus molle var. areira & Ficus macrophylla on street out of Area Reserve reserve Ingles St. side, avenue of elms in centre, some golden privet & 03 & 04 Port cotoneaster on rail line side. Melbourne Smith Railway Port L c1920s Mature Schinus molle var. areira & Ficus macrophylla on street out of Area Reserve reserve Melbourne side, avenue of planes in centre, Populus deltoides on rail line 03 & 04 side. Some newer inappropriate plantings - Robinia sp. group and 2 x Eucalyptus citriodora. Plantings of Cupressus torulosa, Lagunaria patersonia, Cedrus deodara, Grevillea robusta, palm (Washingtonia sp.?). Cook Railway bounded by L c1900- 1920 Mature Schinus molle var. areira & native grasses. Area 03 Reserve reserve rail line & (Evans St Evans St west ) Turner Railway Evans Ave, L c1900- Railway reserve with mature exotic and native plantings. Area 03 Reserve reserve Farrell St. 1920s Populus nigra 'Italica', Populus deltoides, Populus canescens, (Evans St Port reserve, Cotoneaster serotinus, Salix sp., Lagunaria patersonia, east) Melbourne 1940s Cupressus glabra, Araucaria heterophylla planting street Clark St, T-L c1920-30 Mature street trees - planes (Platanus sp.) on both sides of Area 03 trees Graham St to street, some gaps in planting Bridge St street Farrell St, T c1960s Mature Agonis flexuosa in pavement; local landmark tree Area 03 tree x 1 cnr Clark St street Farrell St, L c1900 or Five mature Schinus molle var. areira along street off railway Area 03 trees Ross St to older reserve. reserve Unnamed public Farrell St,, T-?L ? Triangular reserve/neighbourhood park with some play Area 04 reserve reserve Liardet & equipment, seats and bluestone base to drinking fountain. Stoke Sts. Mature trees include Schinus molle var. areira, elms and mature but recent plantings of eucalypts. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 169 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State Unnamed public Reserve T-?L c1920s? Mature street trees - four planes (Platanus sp.) now in triangular Area 05 reserve reserve bounded by reserve/neighbourhood park with some play equipment and SEC Princes St, substation. Raglan & Nott Sts. street Esplanade T-?L c1920s -40s Some mature poplars (Populus deltoides) x 4 & mature but Area 06 trees East, more recent plantings of native trees (eg Eucalyptus nichollii) between in centre median reserve and footpaths Raglan St & Spring St street Esplanade T c1920s -40s Mature poplar (Populus deltoides) x 1 & mature but more Area 06 trees East, Spring recent plantings of native trees (eg Eucalyptus sp.) in centre St to Bridge median reserve and footpaths St street Esplanade T c1940s? Mature poplars (Populus deltoides & P alba) in centre median Area 06 trees East, Bridge reserve and side footpaths. St to Richardson St Gasworks public Pickles St L 19C; Arts and theatre park set in former industrial site with Area 06 Park reserve redesigned sculptures, open lawn areas & planted garden beds of native c1980s trees & shrubs. Site very altered from former gas works plant with new lawn areas, groups of trees (manily gums) and native shrubs. Metal mesh furnishings (tables, seats, lamps) & new play equipment, gravel paths. Washingtonia filifera x 2 at west/Graham St entrance either relocated or original. Lagoon Public Richardson nil? 19C; re Land fill site created in recent times. Planting of natives - Area 06 Reserve park and St, Esplanade designed Callistemon, eucalypts, mainly immature 1970s, 80s; open grass recreatio- East & c1980s areas. Some modern play equipment on eastern (Richardson St) n reserve Esplanade side, bbq and red brick recently constructed toilet. West bowling Esplanade T-L c1950s? Planting typical of c1950s and earlier includes Phoenix Area 06 club & East canariensis (dwarf), Prunus sp. and Populus nigra 'Italica'. senior citizens centre Holy trees, 162 Bay St, R, L c1880s Mature trees and garden associated with two churches (1886 & just out of Trinity garden cnr Graham 1898) and manse. Very large Ficus macrophylla at front of 1886 Area 06 & Anglican St church, old Buddleja at side. Photinia serrulata at front of 05 Church/Pt. manse. Mature Ficus rubiginosa, Brachychiton populneus, Melbourne Arbutus unedo, Populus nigra 'Italica', Nerium oleander x 2, Community Euonymus sp, cotoneaster, Cytisus sp., Pinus radiata x 2, and Church numerous Phoenix canariensis. Edwards public Esplanade L+ c1910-20 Unnamed public reserve - avenues of distinctive tall Phoenix Area 06 Reserve reserve East, Liardet canariensis and beds of roses. Some new play equipment and St & two public shelters - one timber c1920s and other rubble stone Esplanade base and timber c1940s. Mature trees on street side of Liardet West St. are Populus alba and a group of planes. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 170 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State street Boundary T-L c1930s Mature street trees are elms (Ulmus sp.) Area 07 trees Rd, Normanby St to Woodgate St ? Woodgate railway adjacent to T-L c1920s Some mature Schinus molle var. areira; newer planting of Area 07 St reserve reserve Woodgate St eucalypts, banksias & native shrubs trees, Gladstone L+ c1920s Row of mature Schinus molle var. areira along railway reserve Area 07 railway La. reserve Page Railway Gladstone St, L-R c1920s Mature trees include rows of elms (Ulmus sp.), no Schinus Area 07 Reserve reserve Ingles to molle var. areira on street but on rail line. Some newly planted Boundary. Schinus molle var. areira and Lagunaria patersonia on street side of reserve, also mature plane (Platanus sp.) and poplars including Populus nigra 'Italica'. Random rubble stone wall and indented seating on Ingles St. Fennell railway Evans St, L-R c1920s Mature Eucalyptus ficifolia, Schinus molle var. areira, Populus Area 07 Reserve reserve between deltoides, Populus nigra 'Italica', elms, Arbutus unedo. More Ingles St & recent planting of eucalypts. Random rubble stone wall and Boundary Rd indented seating on Ingles St. street Montague St L c1920s Mature lilypilly (Acmena smithii) at various locations both Area 07 trees sides of street. street Normanby T-L c1920s? Mature street trees - elms (Ulmus sp.) both sides of street Area 07 trees St, Doran to Montague St street Normanby T-L c1920s or Mature street trees - elms (Ulmus sp.) both sides of street Area 07 trees St, Montague later to Boundary St street Normanby T-L c1940s? Mature street trees - planes (Platanus sp.) both sides of street Area 07 trees St, Boundary to Ingles St trees Montague St, L c1920s Italian cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) at hall corner of Area 07 between City Montague & Gladstone St. Rd & Gladstone St. street Montague St, T-L c1920s Mature elms (Ulmus sp.) on west side of street. Area 07 trees between Normanby St & Woodgate St. street Montague St, L c1920s Mature elms (Ulmus sp.) on west side of street. Area 07 trees between Munro St & Normanby St. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 171 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State Alma Park public Bounded by R 19c The western part of Alma Park comprises more exotic garden outside of West park Alma Rd., elements and is more of a garden than the eastern park, although Area 12 Dandenong recent planting particularly at the northern section is altering the Rd and historic character. Much of the garden beds along the centre of railway line. the park are edged with volcanic rock typical of 19c-c1920s. At either side of the central garden beds are rows of mature elms and other trees. A small slate-roofed house c1880s is adjacent to the Dandenong Rd. entrance but intrusively fenced from the park. Nearby are inappropriate CCA-treated posts next to the path to the house. In this area are many inappropriate modern plantings of natives such as wattles, Melaleuca sp., etc. which limit views into and out of the park. Elms may indicate former carriage drive through park?. Extensive range of exotic plantings in beds and grassed surrounds have been replaced in many instances with inappropriate natives. Mature trees include Phoenix canariensis, Platanus sp. (dieback?), Grevillea robusta, Cedrus deodara, rows of Pinus radiata, Populus deltoides, mixed Eucalyptus sp., Garden beds include Tecoma stans, Pittosporum undulatum (overgrown), Photinia serrulata, Cotoneaster serotinus, Nerium oleander, Garrya a elliptica, hollies, Raphiolepis sp.,Viburnum tinus, Arbutus unedo, cannas and at the southern end a section of succulents. The most distinctive feature of the park is a small garden pavilion in the garden beds near an avenue of olive trees, (another former carriage drive?) and golden privet hedging, 2 x Pinus pinea, and underneath a large Cedrus deodara. The pavilion has no plaque but a bitumen base, silver metal onion-top dome roof with timber seating and cross bracing. At the southern end of the park is an open lawn area with mixed specimen trees including Brachychiton populneus, Phoenix canariensis x 3, a very large Ficus macrophylla near the rail line, and a bitumen bike path between the rail line and a row of mature Schinus molle var areira. Alma Park public Bounded by R 19c Northern part of park has oval and southern section mainly outside of East park & Alma Rd, passive recreation with mature trees throughout the park Area 12 sporting Westbury St., including numerous Quercus suber, large Ficus macrophylla reserve Dandenong (adventure play equipment connected into tree/?damage), Rd and Araucaria columellaris, Eucalyptus cladocalyx, Salix sp., Ulmus railway line. parvifolia, Quercus robur. Gravel paths, major path bitumen, small play equipment pieces within large area devoted to adventure play, oversized tyre structure, sculpture, bbq, grasses, pond with creek running through it, modern lights (?inappropriate modern teardrop shape). Main path/road avenue of elms alternating with mature Pinus radiata. Mature row of Pinus radiata on west side of park near rail cutting c1920s. Seedling Quercus suber on rail embankment. Northern part of park near Dandenong Rd., entrance contains two old Quercus suber, Grevillea robusta, Lagunaria patersoni, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, Pinus radiata and elms. Newer planting of native trees, shrubs and grasses. Memorial plaque dated 14.5.1975 at base of large gum to Dr Harry Ireland, councillor of St Kilda 1966-73, died 28.2.1974. Poor screening from flats & buildings on eastern side of park. Main bitumen path in poor repair for many elderly users of park. Use of recreational facilities in southern part of park too intensive and considerable compaction and wear evident. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 172 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State St Kilda public Fitzroy St, St R-S 1860s+ Melbourne Water/outside of study. Many mature trees including out of Area Cricket reserve Kilda Rd Eucalyptus camaldulensis, Pinus radiata, and elms. Corroboree 12 Ground/Al- tree and memorials such as a drinking fountain. bert Park street Crimea St, L c1900 Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 12 trees between Alma Rd & Wellington St street Redan St, T-L c1900 Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 12 trees between Crimea & Chapel St street Charnwwod T-L c1900 Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 12 trees St, between St Kilda Rd & Crimea St J Talbot public Barkly St., T ? c1920s Probably developed in association with the National Theatre. Area 13 Reserve reserve near Carlisle Park contains mixed native and exotic trees including ash, St Eucalyptus maculata, mature Schinus molle var. areira x 2 next to the National Theatre also two large Eucalyptus cladocalyx, Cupressus macrocarpa, Populus nigra 'Italica', Phoenix canariensis, elm, Cupressus torulosa. Golden privet hedges define paths and in centre of park, newer planting of tree rows in the centre of the park is inappropriate. Some play equipment, gravel paths. Row of Cupressus torulosa at northern boundary. street Irymple St T-L c1900-20 Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 14 trees street Foster Ave T c1940s Mature liquidamber (Liquidamber styraciflua) trees both sides Area 14 treees of street garden 74 Barkly St, L c1920s Front garden of flats includes 2 x mature Phoenix canariensis Area 14 cnr Waterloo (Canary Island date palm), Coprosma repens, Pittosporum Cresc. undulatum, scoria rock edging, and tapered rough cast entry pillars. street Raglan St T c1920-40 Mature plane trees both sides of street (incomplete avenue) Area 16 trees street Godfery Ave T c1920-40 Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 16 trees Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 173 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State St Kilda public Dandenong R-S 19c Some damage to bricks and mortar and footings of brick wall on Area 17 Public cemetery Road St Dandenong Rd. Wall of red brick panels and pillars of basalt (rough Cemetery Kilda & detailed),with bluestone capping. Dandenong Rd. cast iron two rail fencing, golden privet hedge behind for entire length of wall. Alma Rd. wall same as Dandenong Rd. wall. Frederick D Michaelis lawn and gardens at Dandenong Rd. entrance. Side walls (Hotham St. & Alexandra St.) of cemetery of red brick with bluestone base and capping. Planting of Platanus sp. and Eucalyptus ficifolia (not Cupressus torulosa). Small Jewish section just within the southern entrance and another pavilion. (P) Pedestrian entrance gate with bluestone pillars & 2 x Cupressus torulosa inside (1920s or earlier). Front main wrought iron gates need repair. Plantings mainly mature evergreen exotics but newer plantings of natives & others (Eucalyptus maculata, Alnus jorullensis, Acer sp., Eucalyptus botryoides) largely inappropriate and causing damage to graves, brick gutters and surfaces. Additional damage caused by seedlings such as plan and ash trees in graves. Subsidence of graves is also a problem. Older trees include Cedrus deodara, Platanus sp., Cupressus macrocarpa, Cupressus sempervirens, Acmena smithii, 2 x very old red flowering Eucalyptus ficifolia, large Cinnamomum camphora. Main drive of bitumen edged with red brick gutters and raised red brick edge. Side paths are of red brick and are often stepped. A number of pavilions (c1930s?) including a rectangular timber pavilion near the Dandenong Rd. entrance, and others along the central drive. The central drive splits around a timber shelter & 2 x Cupressus torulosa (rubbish stored here - relocate). A number of cypress stumps are evident amongst graves off the main path. Planting in the southern section includes Trachycarpus fortuneii, camphor laurels, Cupressus torulosa, Acmena smithii & recent mature Eucalyptus botryoides (falling apart). An excellent collection of unusual/notable headstones and graves including: 1. James J Kelly, on main drive, late Major in Victoria Militia Infantry and for 10 years Captain of the Prahran City Fire Brigade, died 5.2.1891 (39 yo), Memorial restored and rededicated during the Metropolitan Fire Brigades centenary year (1991) to commemorate the death of Captain James Kelly, an active instigator of the Melbourne MFB. Stone by Inwood & Geraghty, Footscray; 2. Captain Albert Jacka, VC, MC & Bar. The first Australian VC in the Great War, 1914-18, died 17.01.1932 (39 yo); 3. Granite stone & headstone by HB Corban & Sons 4. Sir Archie Michaelis (19.12.1889-22.4.1975)& wife Claire Esther (20.1.1893-8.10.1973); 5. JA Panton, CMG, FRGS, Commissioner of Gold Fields Bendigo 1852-58 & first metropolitan Police Magistrate, Melbourne. Died Carranya, St Kilda, 25.10.1913; 6. Decorative wire railing to bluestone based grave of Susan, wife of Peter Young, wire worker, Melbourne, died 17.10.1878 (46 yo). Also Peter, died 9.8.1893 (66 yo). Headstone by Stamford, Windsor; 7. Very large monument to Richard Annesley Billing, QC, Judge of County Courts, died 21.6.1882 (66 yo), by JW Brown & Co. Also his wife Mary Elizabeth, barrister at law, died 22.1.1865 (54 yo). Bluestone base & steps, iron railing; 8. Very large monument and decorative bluestone base, granite and marble obelisk, by Fitzpatrick & Sons, Glasnevin, Scotland, erected by Andrew Tobin, Wingadee, St Kilda, in memory of his wife Mary, died 16.7.1894. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 174 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State trees ?10 Westbury L c1900-20 Mature Araucaria heterophylla (Norfolk Island pines) x 3 in Area 17 /private Gve rear garden garden street Westbury Gve T-L? c1920s Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 17 trees street Booroondarra T-L? c1920s Mature plane trees both sides of street (?disease/phytophthora) Area 17 trees Gve 4 x removals street Montague Ave T-L c1920s, Mature lilypilly alternating with younger golden ash both sides Area 17 trees c1940s of street street Holroyd Ave (a) T-L c1920s Mature pin oak (Quercus palustris) alternating with lilypilly Area 17 trees both sides of street street Holroyd Ave (b) L c1920s Mature liquidamber, pin oak & lilypilly alternating both sides Area 17 trees south of Alma Rd of street street Holroyd Crt L c1920s Mature camphor laurel (Cinnamomum camphora) x 4 Area 17 trees street Nottage St L c1920s Mature pin oak (Quercus palustris) alternating with lilypilly Area 17 trees both sides of street street Dean Ave L c1920s Mature liquidamber trees both sides of street Area 17 trees street Alma Rd, T-L c1900-1920s Mature plane trees & other species such as Lagunaria sp. north Area 17 trees Lansdowne Rd to side of street only Orrong Rd street Orrong Rd, T-L c1900-1920 Mature plane trees Area 17 trees between Alma Rd & Dean Ave street Orrong Rd, T c1940 Sparse plantings of ash trees Area 17 trees between Hughenden Rd & Alma Rd street Orrong Rd, T-L c1900-1920 Mature plane trees Area 17 trees between Dandenong Rd & Hughenden Rd street Orrong Rd, T-L c1900-1920 Mature plane trees Area 17 trees between Alma Rd & Dean Ave street Lansdowne Rd, R c1900-1920 Mature holm oak (Quercus ilex) x 2 Area 17 trees between Alma Rd & Kurrajong Ave trees 45 Lansdowne L c1920 Mature Cupressus sempervirens x 3 and row of Populus nigra Area 17 Rd Italica on street street Lansdowne Rd, T-L c1920s Mature lilypilly alternating with mixed Quercus sp. also newer Area 17 trees south of Lophostemon confertus at south end of street Kurrajong Ave tree ? 0 Lansdowne L c1920 Large mature Eucalyptus citriodora in front garden Area 17 Rd, cnr Marne St street Marne St T c1940 Mature ash trees (incomplete) both sides of street Area 17 trees Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 175 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State Unnamed public 202-206 Alma Rd nil Reserve next to Neighbourhood Centre with seats and play Area 17 reserve equipment, some plantings tree 406 Inkerman Rd L c1920 Mature landmark Cupressus sempervirens Area 17

street Wenden Gve T-L c1920 Lilypilly trees both sides of street Area 17 trees street Dandenong Rd, L-R c1920+ Mature plane trees, some elms between Shirley Gve & Area 17 trees Hotham St to Alexandra St.; gap with no trees for eastern section outside Shirley Gve cemetery. Also plane trees in central median. street Dandenong Rd, L-R c1920+ Mature plane trees. Also plane trees in central median. Area 17 trees Hotham St to Westbury St garden, 228 Alma Rd T-L, L c1920 Mature garden which includes rock edge to gravel drive (no Area 17 tree garage). Phoenix canariensis is a local landmark tree; other mature garden plants are lilypilly, cotoneaster & cordyline. street Orrong Rd, T c1940 Mature ash trees, incomplete plantings Area 17 trees between Hughenden Rd & Alma Rd street Orrong Rd, L c190-20 Mature plane trees Area 17 trees between Hughenden Rd & Dandenong Rd trees 13 Hughenden T-L c1930s Mature liquidamber trees x 2 & golden elm in front garden Rd street Hughenden Rd L c1930-40 Mature liquidamber trees both sides of street Area 17 trees street Celeste Ct T c1940 Lagunaria patersonii & liquidamber tree plantings Area 17 trees street Te-Arai Ave L c1920 West side liquidamber; east side 2 x mature Eucalyputs ficifolia Area 17 trees garden 22 Shirley Gve L+ 19C Phoenix canariensis x 2 and other mature trees, lilyppily, Ficus Area 17 macrophylla (obscured). Inspection required street Alexandra St L+ c1900 Mixed age plane trees. north end oldest; newer planes to south Area 17 trees but west side only; east side young Lophostemon confertus street Murchison St L c1900-20 Mature plane trees both sides. Note plaque in street to Albert Area 17 trees Jacka, first Australian VC medal, former Mayor of St Kilda 1930-31, former resident of Murchison St 1925-1932, buried in St Kilda Cemetery 1932 tree 27 Murchison St L+ c1900-20 Mature Eucalyptus ? calophylla in front garden Area 17

tree 29 Murchison St L+ c1900-20 Mature Eucalyptus ? calophylla in front garden same as 27 but Area 17 smaller Rabinical garden 61 Alexandra St L-R c1880 Large front garden includes Phoenix canariensis x 6, Jacaranda Area 17 College mimosifolia x 2, Cupressus torulosa, front gates and timber Australian entry arch, concrete curving driveway War Memorial Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 176 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State tree 15 Mooltan Ave L c1880 Mature Cupressus sempervirens Area 17

tree 16 Mooltan Ave L c1920 Mature Cupressus torulosa (Bhutan cypress) Area 17

street Mooltan Ave T? c1950s Spanish Mission houses with Betula pendula street trees & Area 17 trees Alnus jorullensis x 2 Sante Fe garden 45 Mitford St L c1920s Front garden of flats includes mature Phoenix canariensis Area 18 (Canary Island date palm), clipped privet hedge at front and two privet shrubs at entrance, Jacaranda mimosifolia, Nerium oleander and red brick cruciform shaped paving at entrance. trees 38 Southey St, L c1920s Cupressus torulosa, Cupressus sempervirens x 2 associated with Area 18 cnr Mitford St flats street Barkly St, south T-L c1920+ Mature & mixed age plane trees both sides of street with some Area 18 trees of Blessington St gaps. Extends from south of Blessington St to Ormond Esplanade. street Mitford St, L c1900-20s Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 18 trees between Dickens St & Byron St street Goldsmith St L c1900-20s Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 18 trees street Ruskin St, L c1920s Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 18 trees between Dickens St & canal EC Mitty public Broadway St, L c1920 Small triangular neighbourhood reserve; open grass area with Area 18 Reserve reserve Goldsmith St & mature plantings of Phoenix canariensis and Platanus sp. x 4. A Gordon Ave. bed of annuals surrounds the central palm tree. Elwood FL public Broadway St. and L c1920 Road reserve with large mature plantings of Platanus sp. (also Area 18 Dawkins reserve Mitford St. in street) Phoenix canariensis x 6, pair of 100 yrs + Reserve Elwood Brachychiton populneus (one sick or dead, one with possum guard), 100yrs + Melia azederach. street Meredith St, L c1920s Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 18 trees between Broadway & Barkly St street Addison St, L c1920s Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 18 trees between Dickens St & canal street Milton St, T c1940s Mature liquidamber trees both sides of street Area 18 trees between Broadway & Barkly St street Baker St, T-L c1920-30s Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 18 trees between Dickens St & Wordsworth St street Blessington St, T-L c1920s Mature plane trees both sides of street, some gaps Area 18 trees between Chaucer St & Barkly St Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 177 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State Peanut public Blessington St. L-R c1900-1920s Public parkland with recreational facilities such as bitumen Area 18 Farm park & St Kilda basketball area, cricket enclosure, wall fro ball hitting, brick Reserve sporting sports pavilion and a large grassed oval, and an open grassed reserve area. There are excellent views across the park to Luna Park. Mature planting of Araucaria columellaris (stunted), perimeter of park planted with Phoenix canariensis, and groups of gums (Eucalyptus cladocalyx). Renfrey large Blessington St. L-R 19c, 1920s A large neighbourhood park with new play equipment and Area 18 Gardens neighbo- St Kilda mature trees dating from c1920s period. Phoenix canariensis, urhood Phoenix sylvestris, large Ficus macrophylla at entrance on park northern side, Cupressus macrocarpa, Syncarpia glomulifera; newer plantings of natives such as Eucalyptus botryoides. St Kilda public Blessington St, R-S est. 1859 Plaque at Blessington St. entrance states gardens established just out of Botanical reserve/- Herbert St, 28.9.1859, later called the Blessington St. Gardens and re- Area 18 & Gardens botanic Dickens St, & named 21.10.1984 by Cr. John Callanan, Chairman of Friends 19 gardens Tennyson St of the St Kilda Botanical Gardens. The main Blessington St. gates are decorative cast iron with masonry pillars. The Gardens contain many mature exotic and some native trees and shrubs including golden privet hedges, Ficus macrophylla, planted c1916, two Quercus suber, Podocarpus falcatus, Phillyrea latifolia (mock privet) and Olea europea ssp. africanus are NTA listed Significant Trees. The Gardens also have a collection of buildings include red brick & timber lattice pavilion, a gift to citizens from Mr & Mrs Alfred Levi, February 1929, and the more recent St Kilda Conservatory built in recent years. There is a large rose garden, ponds and paths are rolled gravel with red brick spoon drains. See separate conservation study. street Dickens St, T c1920 Mature plane trees only south side of street Area 19 trees between Mitford St & Tennyson St street Dickens St, T-L c1920s Mature plane trees only both sides of street Area 19 trees between Brighton Rd & Tennyson St Clark public Mitford St, L c1920s Larger reserve mainly grass and mature exotic and native trees, Area 19 Reserve reserve corner Clarke St bluestone edged gravel paths, flat metal bench seats, some new play equipment. Some old gums (Eucalyptus cladocalyx) date from c1920s. Note that a large 100 yrs + Brachychiton populneus is on park boundary. tree Mitford St L c1890-1900s Mature Brachychiton populneus on vacant land adjacrent to the Area 19 Clark Reserve street Tennyson St, T c1920s Inconsistent trees include mature plane trees and others such as Area 19 trees Dickens to ash and Queenland brush box (Lophostemon confertus) Byron St tree 48 Tennyson St T-L ? Mature Araucaria heterophylla (Norfolk Island pine) in front Area 19 garden street Lindsay St T-L c1900s Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 19 trees Janette garden 2 Albion St R c1940 Spanish Mission house, garage & associated garden. 4 x Area 20 Bangalow/? Nikau palms, a weeping standard elm, star magnolias and a low front hedge of azaleas. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 178 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State street Albion St L c1920-30 Metrosideros excelsa (NZ Christmas tree) alternating with Area 20 trees Acmena smithii (lilypilly) both sides of street garden 8 Somers St L-R c1920-30 Formal garden of clipped privet hedge, topiary Coprosma Area 20 repens, Phormium tenax, clipped cypress, concrete path, rockery edge to beds, pebbles embedded in side path, garage. street Somers St R c1920-30 Mature Celtis occidentalis (nettle tree) on both sides of street Area 20 trees street Bothwell St T c1940s Mature ash (Fraxinus sp.) in grassed centre median reserve Area 20 trees street Dickens St L c1900-20 Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 20 trees Unnamed public 33 Rosmund St, nil Small neighbourhood park with mature gum trees such as Area 20 reserve cnr Woodstock St Eucalyptus citriodora street Westbury Ave T-L c1920+ Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 20 trees street Westbury Ave T-L c1920+ Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 20 trees street Carlisle Ave T-L c1920+ Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 20 trees garden 23 Hawsleigh L c1930-40 Central courtyard garden associated with flats; 2 x mature Area 20 Ave liquidambers, silver birch and bed of camellias tree 305 Carlisle St L c1880-1900 Large mature oak (Quercus sp.) in front garden associated with Area 20 house street Goldsmith St, L c1920s+ Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 21 trees between canal & Glenhuntly Rd street Shelley St, L c1920s+ Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 21 trees between canal & Broadway St street Broadway St, L c1920s+ Mature plane trees both sides of street Area 21 trees between canal & Glenhuntly Rd street Shelley St, L-R c1920s+ Mature Metrosideros excelsa trees both sides of street Area 21 trees between Barkly St & Broadway St street Ruskin St, L c1920s+ Mature plane trees both sides of street, a few gaps Area 21 trees between Glenhuntly Rd & canal street Addison St T c1920s+ Mature plane trees both sides of street; some gaps, two mature Area 21 trees Eucalyptus ficifolia street Bluff Ave T c1920s+ Both sides of street at south end Lagunaria patersonii then Area 21 trees street becomes plane trees near Glenhuntly Rd trees 9 Bluff Ave T c1920s Mature Cupressus sempervirens trees x 2 at entrance to flats Area 21

WE road Spray St and L c1910 Small triangular road reserve with mature Phoenix canariensis. Area 21 Dickeson reserve Wave St., Elwood Reserve Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 179 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State Robinson public Shelley St, R c1920s Mature Phoenix canariensis & Tamarisk Area 21 Reserve reserve Barkly St & Ormond Esp street Austin Ave T c1920s+ Mixed immature & mature plane trees both sides of street Area 22 trees between Mitford St & Tennyson St street Poets Gve T c1920s+ Mixed tree species both sides of street; immature & mature Area 22 trees plane trees & mature Eucalyptus sp. street Daley Ave T c1930s Mixed immature & mature plane trees & some gaps Area 22 trees street Mitford St L c1920s Mature plane trees both sides of street. Area 22 trees street Byron St, L c1920s Mature plane trees both sides of street. Area 22 trees between Mitford St & canal street Rothesay Ave, T-L c1920s Mature plane trees both sides of street. Area 22 trees between Mitford & Tennyson St Elwood/St garden, 87 Tennyson St L+ c1880s Front garden of mature trees and shrubs including Araucaria Area 22 Kilda trees heterophylla, cordyline, Jacaranda, lilypilly, Grevillea robusta, Neighbour- and Nerium oleander. hood Centre garden, 83 Tennyson St L+ c1880s House c1920s but mature trees at rear probably relate to former Area 22 trees garden of 87 Tennyson St. Trees are large Schinus molle var. areira and Phoenix canariensis. street Tennyson St, T c1920s Mostly mature plane trees both sides of stree; some gaps and Area 22 trees between Byron St some younger Lophostemon confertus especially at Glenhuntly & Glenhuntly Rd Rd end. street Kendall St T c1930s Mixed age plane trees with some gaps Area 22 trees street Burns St T c1930s Mixed age plane trees with some gaps Area 22 trees street Kendall St T c1930s Mostly mature plane trees with some gaps Area 22 trees street Heaton St T-L c1930s Mature plane trees with some liquidamber at the Tennyson St Area 22 trees end JT Berkley public Tennyson St, L c1920s-30s Triangular road reserve mainly grass, old Phoenix canariensis x Area 22 Reserve reserve Glenhuntly Rd 6, Melia azederach. Newer planting of Melaleuca armillaris inappropriate. tree 155 Glenhuntly L-R c1920s Large blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus) landmark tree outside of Area 22 Rd, cnr. Heaton property fenceline St street Brighton Rd L-R c1920s Mature Eucalyptus ficifolia in central median, some on service Area 23 trees roads. Most service road trees are plane trees. trees 20 Fuller Rd, cnr L c1900 Mature elm tree in side garden Area 23 Lyndon St Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 180 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State Burnett public Glen Eira Rd. R c1900-20s Public railway gardens adjacent to the Ripponlea Station. Lawn Area 23 Grey garden Ripponlea areas bisected by bitumen paths and plantings of Phoenix Gardens canariensis, Butia capitata and shrubberies of yuccas and grasses. Golden privet hedges line the paths with a number of clipped golden privet shrubs in the lawn. An intrusive element is the modern aluminium shed, advertised for lease, on the station which impacts on a mature palm and is a visual intrusion on the park. garden 3 Glen Eira Rd L c1930 Mature Magnolia grandiflora, privet, Cupressus torulosa & Area 23 concrete pond street Glen Eira Rd, T c1930+ Mature plane trees north side of road; mature liquidambers Area 23 trees between Brighton south side of road Rd & Lyndon St tree/gar- 247 Bible St L c1900 Nikau palm and large Schinus molle var. areira in garden Area 23 den street Morres St T-L c1970s Mature but recent plantings of Alnus sp (alder) on west side of Area 23 trees street street Monkstadt Ave L c1930s Mature liquidambers both sides of road Area 23 trees street Victoria Ave T c1920-30 Row of Quercus palustris (pin oaks) north side of road; mature Area 23 trees plane trees south side of road street Fuller Rd T c1940s Plane trees both sides of road; trees not very large & some gaps Area 23 trees street Erindale Ave T-L c1930-40s Mature plane trees both sides of road Area 23 trees street Lyndon St T c1930-40s Mature plane trees west side of road; younger ash trees east Area 23 trees side of road tree opposite no 11 L 19C Very large peppercorn tree (Schinus molle var. areira) at rear of Area 23 Bell St/rear flats property on Brighton Rd ?creche/ primary Victoria Ave, cnr. T-L c1870s Grounds of school contain mature plane trees, elms and Area 24 school school Cardigan St & peppercorn tree (Schinus molle var. areira) Moubray St street Bridport St West, L c1870s Mixed age trees mostly old Ulmus sp. Area 24 trees Moubray St to Richardson St street Glover St , St L c1870s Large mature pollarded planes Area 24 trees Vincent Place to Iffla St street Glover St ,cnr L c1870s Two mature planes Area 24 trees Pickles St street Henderson St, L+ c1920s Mature plane trees Area 24 trees Pickles St to St Vincent Place street Henderson St L+ c1920s Single mature peppercorn tree (Schinus molle var. areira) in Area 24 tree street reserve street Victoria Ave, T-L c1870s Mature elm trees (golden elms in other sections of Victoria Area 25 trees Moubray St to Avenue are more recent inappropriate plantings) Richardson St street Richardson St, L+ c1880s Mature avenue of plane trees Area 25 trees Phillipson St to Kerferd Rd Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 181 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State street Kerferd Rd L c1900 Mixed age plane trees Area 25 & trees 29 street Danks St, Kerferd L c1900 Planting in central median of Mahogany gum (Eucalyptus Area 25 trees Rd to Victoria botryoides) Ave street Beaconsfield Pde, T-L Recently planted mature Phoenic canariensis Area 25 trees Victoria Ave to Pickles St St Vincent public St Vincent Place S Extensive historic public gardens with collection of rare and Area 27 Gardens gardens unusual trees and planting, various buildings and recreational facilities (see separate studies & NTA classification report) Sol Green public City Rd L c1947 Triangular reserve bounded by City Rd, Nelson St & Montague Arrea 27 Reserve reserve St. Mature planes (Platanus sp.) along west street; mature street trees - elms (Ulmus sp.) east side of reserve; most other trees are recent natives. Plaque on damaged scoria stone wall and iron railing on City Rd in appreciation of gift by Sol Green of £2,000 in 1947 to establish a playground. Some new playground equipment, netball area with bitumen, bbq & Sol Green mudbrick building. Eastern public Eastern Rd, north L+ c1900 Triangular road reserve; open lawn area with perimeter planting Area 28 Road reserve corner Heather of mature elm trees. Memorial basalt drinking fountain dated Reserve St. & Park St 1906 & presented to the citizens of South Melbourne by former Mayor Donald McArthur. Eastern public Eastern Rd, south L+ c1900 Triangular road reserve; open lawn area with perimeter planting Area 28 Road reserve corner Heather of mature elm trees. Children's play area fenced off (opposite Reserve St. & Park St kindergarten). Play equipment, brick toilets & timber pavilion. public Howe Crescent. L c1880s Mature elms Area 28 reserve cnr Cecil St & Park St public Howe Crescent. L c1920 Mature group of mixed species: row of Phoenix canariensis, Area 28 reserve cnr Cecil St & elms, and 2 x Pinus radiata Bridport St street Ward St, Dorcas L c1920 Mature elm trees forming avenue Area 28 trees St to Bank St tree 143 Bank St R c1860s Very large and mature Quercus ? canariensis in rear garden Area 28

street Albert Rd L-R c1920s Mature Phoenix canariensis in centre median alternating with Area 28 trees younger Lophostemon confertus. Service street planting of ash not significant. street Kerferd Rd, L c1920s Plane trees in central median, younger Lagunaria patersonii at Area 29 trees Clarendon St to kerb Neville St street Kerferd Rd, near L c1920s No plane trees but two mature Eucalyptus ficifolia in central Area 29 trees Page St median, some Lagunaria sp at kerb street Kerferd Rd, near T Group of mixed age Araucaria heterophylla in central median Area 29 trees Beaconsfield Pde street Page St, L c1920s Mature plane trees, gaps in some sections of street Area 29 trees Kerferd Rd to McGregor St Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 182 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State street Richardson St, L+ c1920s Mature plane trees in consistent avenue along street Area 29 & trees Kent St to Fraser 30 St tree Erskine St, cnr T c1920s Mature Phoenix canariensis in central median Area 30 Page St & Canterbury Rd street Park Rd, T-L c1920s Short section of street planted with mature plane trees Area 30 trees Langridge St to Fraser St HR public Canterbury Rd. L c1920s Public park with open grass, play equipment, native trees and Area 31 Johnson reserve nw corner shrubs. Some Populus deltoides, Populus canescens, Populus sp, Reserve Cowderoy St. very large Pinus pinea. South Melbourne Jacoby public Cowderoy St L trees L- c1920s or Older plantings include Ficus rubiginosa x 4, Eucalyptus Area 31 Reserve reserve corner Deakin St. R earlier calophylla, Araucaria heterophylla x 1, gravel paths, play South Melbourne equipment, seats, SEC substation red brick building used as works shed, new planting of Australian natives mainly shrubs and trees on park perimeter. Metrosideros tomentosa on Cowderoy St., plane trees on Deakin St. street York S t, T-L c1920s Mature plane trees one side of street, mixed species on other Area 31 trees Cowderoy St to Deakin St street Loch St, Deakin L c1920s Mature ash avenue, other species also Area 31 trees St to MarySt street Loch St, Deakin L c1920s Mature ash avenue, other species also Area 31 trees St to Mary St street Mary St, L-R c1920s Excellent avenue of mature plane trees Area 31 trees Beaconsfield Pde to Canterbury Rd street Park St, Fitzroy L c1920s Plane tree avenue, some elms near Fitzroy St end Area 31 trees St to Mary St ? Reserve public Fitzroy St. corner R+ 19c Triangular road reserve planted with mature Ficus macrophylla Area 31 reserve Beaconsfield Pde. x 4 and Lagunaria patersonia x 1 trees. One fig tree very large St Kilda and visually significant. Basalt memorial (Knox c1906). Possible Aboriginal social significance. street Beaconsfield Pde, L c1920 Mostly Phoenix canariensis along beach front. Central median Area 31 trees Fitzroy St to (Cummins Reserve) groups of Lagunaria sp., Metrosideros Fraser St tomentosa and tea tree. A few Washingtonia filifera Catani public Beaconsfield Pde. R-S 19c, 1920s Public park with sea frontage with mature trees, band rotunda, Area 31 Gardens park & St Kilda gravel paths, concrete park benches and flat metal circular seats reserve around trees, volcanic rock walling on sea front. Building of band rotunda (?restoration) an Australian Bicentennial project, 1988. Mature planting includes Cupressus macrocarpa, Washingtonia filifera on Beaconsfield Pde, avenues of Phoenix canariensis, very large Ficus macrophylla, group of golden privet, small Jubaea chilensis, sandstone war memorial. Introduction of new materials and elements includes new Lister -style timber benches, visually prominent public toilet block. trees Canterbury Rd, L 1920s Row of Phoenix canariensis associated with rail line Area 32 cnr Fitzroy St street Fitzroy St, Grey L c1920s North side row of mature elm trees, south side mature plane Area 32 trees St to Princes St trees Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 183 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State Alfred public The Esplanade L c1920s or Central war memorial (by Arthur Peck arch, nd). Reserve Area 32 Square reserve earlier planted with mature Phoenix canariensis, some older shrubs & Gardens trees - olives x 2, Metrosideros tomentosa, Pittosporum crassifolium, Lagunaria patersonii, scoria rock edging to beds. Also rock pillar and plaque noting site of first building in St Kilda - a stockman's hut erected c1840 by Capt. Benjamin Baxter. public Lower Esplanade L c1920 Carlo Catani Memorial clocktower (d. 20.7.1918) in linear Area 32 reserve terraced reserve of scoria rock edged beds and paths, rock columns and seating areas. Reserve planted with mixed trees and shrubs including Metrosideros tomentosa, Pittosporum crassifolium, Lagunaria patersonii, coprosma, golden privet, tamarisk and agapanthus. Alma trees 18 Duke St L c1920s Phoenix canariensis x 3 in row Area 33/1 Court street Glenmark St T-L c1920s+ Avenue of plane trees Area 33/1 trees street Cintra Ave L+ c1920s Excellent plane tree avenue Area 33/2 trees street Charlotte Place L c1920s+ Avenue of plane trees Area 33/2 trees street Marlton Cresc. L+ 1870s Mature elms x 3 in street; rest of street trees are younger Area 33/2 trees lilypilly (not significant) O'Donnell reserve Acland St R-S c1930s Garden with mixed planting predominantly palms, Phoenix Area 34 Gardens canariensis, Washingtonia filifera, Phoenix ? sylvestris, Trachycarpus fortuneii, Livistona sp. Also golden privet and coprosma hedging, scoria edging to lawn areas, concrete winding paths, sections of rock walling. Major feature is O'Donnell Memorial, central concrete art deco-style monument to Councillor Edward O'Donnell, six times mayor of St Kilda, councillor for West Ward for 44 years & foundation member of St Kilda Foreshore Committee, died 7.7.1933. trees Marine Pde, cnr L c1920s? Group of Phoenix canariensis in road reserve Area 34 Shakespeare Gve trees Marine Pde, cnr L c1920s? Group of Phoenix canariensis (some dwarf form) along road Area 34 Cavell St reserve. More recent plantings of native species not significant. trees/res- Marine Pde, L Phoenix canariensis and Washingtonia filifera. Areas Area 34 erve Jacka Blvd to underplanted with natives (not significant). Shakespeare Gve St Kilda public Carlisle St R pre 1900 Garden associated with St Kilda Town Hall. Triangular shaped Area 35 Town Hall reserve land off Brighton St and Carlisle St. containing many mature exotic trees. At the southern boundary with the St Kilda Primary School are two excellent specimens of Araucaria bidwillii and Pinus canariensis. 2 x Cupressus torulosa are planted adjacent to the driveway entrance off Brighton Rd and another pair on Carlisle St. Other old plantings include Melia azederach, Cercis siliquastrum, Populus nigra 'Italica', Magnolia grandiflora, and Fraxinus ornus. A Ficus rubiginosa on Brighton Rd next to another bunya is probably one of the largest specimens in Melbourne and should be nominated to the NTA Significant Tree Register. Either side of the Town Hall frontage are a pair of Araucaria heterophylla. Most planting of any age and significance is on the north and west sides of the building with little to none on the south or east. Port Phillip Heritage Review, Version 2, 2000 184 ANDREW WARD Architectural Historian

Francine Gilfedder & Associates CITY OF PORT PHILLIP HERITAGE ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW NAME TYPE ADDRESS VALUE Approx. DESCRIPTION MAP T = Typical AGE L = Local R = Regional S = State St Kilda public Chapel St. L c1875 School grounds with some mature exotic planting, more recent Area 35 Primary school corner Dickens school built plantings of Australian native trees, shrubs and grasses. At School St. St Kilda 1875 Dickens St. 2 x old Schinus molle var. areira, Cupressus sempervirens (now incorporated into play area - may cause compaction and drainage problems). North of the school building, near the town hall, is a very large elm tree with a bbq at the base and seating for the adjacent grassed oval. Most other plantings of any maturity are gums and a Cinnamomum camphora. St Kilda public Blessington St. St R-S est. 1859 Plaque at Blessington St. entrance states gardens established Area 35 Botanical gardens/ Kilda 28.9.1859, later called the Blessington St. Gardens and re- Gardens botanical named 21.10.1984 by Cr. John Callanan, Chairman of Friends gardens of the St Kilda Botanical Gardens. The main Blessington St. gates are decorative cast iron with masonry pillars. The Gardens contain many mature exotic and some native trees and shrubs including golden privet hedges, Ficus macrophylla, planted c1916, two Quercus suber, Podocarpus falcatus, Phillyrea latifolia (mock privet) and Olea europea ssp. africanus are NTA listed Significant Trees. The Gardens also have a collection of buildings which include red brick & timber lattice pavilion, a gift to citizens from Mr & Mrs Alfred Levi, February 1929, and the more recent St Kilda Conservatory built in recent years. There is a large rose garden, ponds and paths are rolled gravel with red brick spoon drains. See separate conservation study. trees/gar- 148 Brighton Rd T-L c1920s OBSCURED Mature garden. Mature Araucaria heterophylla & Area 36 den Eucalyptus ficifolia Elwood canal Addison St to L c1920s Tree species vary in each section of canal reserve. Broadway Area 37 Canal Goldsmith St St to Goldsmith St has Phoenix canriensis and Araucaria heterophylla. Other sections poplars, Cupressus macrocarpa and tamarisk.