Asked to name a favourite Victorian building in Melbourne, you might choose the Royal Exhibition Building, the Windsor Hotel or one of those crazy Gothic revival buildings on Collins Street. I’d chuck in a vote for the shot tower on Alexandra Parade, Clifton Hill, a masterpiece of industrial architecture. Continue reading
To walk around Collingwood, more than perhaps any other suburb, is to be made aware of change.
Changes in society, architecture, industry. Changes in where we live, what we wear, what we drink.
There used to be dozens of factories here. Boot and shoe manufacturers. Wool carders, spinners and scourers. They’ve gone, to be replaced by fashion wholesalers selling imported threads.
The massive Foy and Gibson buildings on Oxford Street are home to apartments and coffee houses, rare and fine wine merchants.
Spaces get reinvented, sometimes imaginatively. Continue reading
Melbourne Circle: stories from the suburbs 