Fitzroy

Adjoining the eastern boundary of Carlton, 2 km. north-east of Melbourne’s centre, Fitzroy was Melbourne’s first suburb. The eastern boundary of Fitzroy adjoins Collingwood.

The name comes form Sir Charles Fitz Roy, Governor of New South Wales, 1846-1855. Alexandra Parade divides the former Fitzroy municipality into Fitzroy North and Fitzroy South.

In 1839 the area of Fitzroy south of Alexandra Parade was subdivided into lots of about 12 ha. and offered for sale. The area was called Newtown (which tended to extend eastwards into present-day Collingwood), and Newtown subsequently was called Collingwood. Present-day Collingwood was East Collingwood. In 1850 the area now known as Fitzroy was made the Fitzroy Ward of the Melbourne City Council. Three years after East Collingwood became a municipality, a separate Fitzroy municipality was created on 10 September, 1858, by severance of the ward from Melbourne. By then its population was about 10,000 persons.

The layout of streets was mostly in the lands of private subdividers: the government surveyor had prescribed only main arteries such as Nicholson, Brunswick, Smith, Gertrude and Johnston Streets. Building types were a mixture of masonry, timber and prefabricated, a few mansions and predominantly terraces after the gold rushes. Several terraces in Gore Street, Victoria Parade and Gertrude Street are registered buildings.

Early religion and education had a strong Wesleyan component. There were three Wesleyan/Methodist schools (1841,1858,1862) and a church at the corner of Brunswick and Moor Streets (1842). The earliest surviving church is St. Mark’s Anglican, Gore Street (1855), with the Christian Israelite church in Fitzroy Street being only six years younger. Fitzroy’s earliest surviving building is the delicensed Devonshire Arms hotel in Fitzroy Street (1850).

Brunswick Street became the main commercial sector, and Smith Street less so but lying on the route to Heidelberg. The route skirted Fitzroy North, which was laid out in the mid 1850s as a more gracious suburb.

Fitzroy (south) was well positioned for working men’s housing, as they could walk to work locally or in Collingwood, Carlton, North Melbourne or Melbourne. Local work site included flour mills, footwear factories, a brewery, joinery works and timber yards. There were cricket and bowling clubs, but in 1865 football was some time off.

The Presbyterian church opened in 1851, moving along Napier Street to a new building in 1871, and the Mercy Sisters Convent in Nicholson Street was formed around Bishop Goold’s house (1850). Non-church schools began in 1855. The present primary school in George Street dates from 1855. A town hall was built in Napier Street in the early 1870s. In 1875 The Australian Handbook described Fitzroy as –

During the 1880s Fitzroy (south) became increasingly working class. Mansions became boarding houses, and the single men in them attracted prostitution as a local industry. Other local industries included sly-grogging, cocaine dealing and internecine activities between pushes of under-employed larrikans. Coinciding with the descent into unlawful activity the Churches increased the charitable activities, focusing on ragged children, facilities for single women and the relief of distress. Much of the philanthropic initiatives, though, came from organisations outside Fitzroy.

In 1883 the Fitzroy Football Club was formed from the remnants of the local Normanby club. It joined the Victorian Football Association and was one of the break-away clubs which formed he Victorian Football League in 1896. Like the Collingwood club, Fitzroy’s best years were its early ones, winning five premierships before 1914.

In 1886-7 three tramlines were opened through Fitzroy – Nicholson Street, Brunswick Street and Smith Street. The Smith Street route extended beyond Fitzroy’s borders by 1890 and had retail catchments in Collingwood and Northcote. It became a regional shopping strip. Foy and Gibsons, beginning as a drapery business in the 1870s, later became a landmark department store. In 1884 the Fitzroy side of Smith Street had several large furniture emporia. Names lasting until the next century included Clauscens furniture, Treadways drapery and Moran and Cato’s grocery chain. Gertrude, Brunswick and Smith Street were nearly all retail, commercial or licensed premises. Railways, on the other hand, were in Fitzroy North, with a spur line running southwards to near the Brunswick Street oval but not reaching beyond Alexandra Parade.

The Fitzroy council opened a pioneering free public library in 1877. The following year Fitzroy was proclaimed a city and in 1888 it substantially added to the town hall building to provide for the library and a court house. Fitzroy was described in 1893 in The Australian Handbook as –

At about that time Fitzroy’s pre-eminent entrepreneur MacPherson Robertson returned from America to introduce new kinds of confectionery to the boiled-lolly business he had begun in 1880 in the bathroom of his family’s Fitzroy home. The “Great White City” factory for MacRobertson’s confectionery in Smith Street occupied half a hectare by the 1920s. Robertson became a renowned philanthropist, particularly during the Melbourne centenary celebrations in 1934.

In Victoria Parade in 1893 the Irish Sisters of Charity began St. Vincent’s Hospital, which within twenty years became the second busiest in metropolitan Melbourne. One hundred years later it remained in inner Melbourne while several others had been closed or moved to outer suburbs, although the prospect of removal was canvassed in 1997. The Free Kindergarten Union (1908), began with a kindergarten in Fitzroy, and the Salvation army and the Presbyterian church established refuges for women. The impoverishment of the inner suburbs drew philanthropy, and the depression of the 1930s kept it there. The Methodist church’s Frederick Cato, a Fitzroy boy who established his grocery chain’s main warehouse in Brunswick Street, supported the Methodist Mission. The Aboriginal community had support from Pastor Doug Nicholls, who played for Fitzroy Football Club, 1932-37. The Brotherhood of St. Laurence, founded by Gerald Tucker in Newcastle in 1930, began in Fitzroy in 1933 when Tucker took over the Anglican Mission Church of St. Mary. He organised for the relief of distress and declared war on slums.

Tucker’s activity coincided with F. Oswald Barnett’s Slum Study Group, which led to the establishment of the Housing Commission in 1938. Fitzroy’s slum reputation was accompanied by the decline in the shopping areas as central Melbourne (Bourke Street) grew stronger and modern strips were built in newer suburbs.

When the Housing Commission built modern estates in outer suburbs in the postwar years some of Fitzroy’s population took advantage of the new houses. Their places were often taken by postwar immigrants. By 1954 about 12% of Fitzroy’s population was Italian-born; in 1966 33% were Italian or Greek-born, and Australian-born had fallen from two-thirds to one-half. The Italian-born and the population with an Irish background constituted a strong Catholic body. Within ten years, however, the numbers of Italian-born and Greek-born residents had halved and within another ten years they had halved again.

The first Commission estate was the mid 1950s St. Laurence Estate, off Hanover Street. The second was the high-rise block at Brunswick and Gertrude Streets, obliterating several streets of small cottages, mostly built before the more substantial terraces further east, but which would have been acceptable to gentry renovators in ten years time. The high-rise estate’s corner touches a Conservation Area which is on the National Estate Register. Moving up Brunswick Street from the estate there is the number-one store of the Cox Brothers retail empire which failed after the 1960s credit squeeze. Moran and Cato’s massive warehouses remain, but much else of Brunswick Street has been remodelled and redecorated to become an eateries and entertainment strip, picking up from Lygon Street, Carlton, where rents had forced out the zany and the esoteric.

Between 1947 and 1991 Fitzroy’s population fell by 44%, to 17,885. The non-Australian born component, however, moved from 42% in 1947, to a high of 49% in 1966 and back to 40% in 1976 and 1986. The ethnic composition moved from noticeably Italian/Greek to a wider range, with nearly 9% from Asia.

Fitzroy (south) has Catholic primary and secondary schools and a State primary school. Post-primary schooling is confined to the William Angliss College of TAFE.

In 1987 the median house price was 125% of the Melbourne median, and in 1996 it had moved to 175%. In 1997, however, it was reported that 49% of children in Fitzroy were in families on a welfare benefit or classified as working poor. This statistic reflects the long-term existence of people in Fitzroy who are on low incomes and who have experienced social inequality. In the 1970s secular welfare organisations were created – the Fitzroy Legal Service (Australia’s first independent free community legal service), the Aboriginal Legal Service, the Aboriginal Health Service and the Aboriginal Child Care Agency.

Fitzroy has class and ethnic diversity, the Brunswick Street retail and entertainment strip and housing stock ranging from solid bluestone foundations to high-rise estates on concrete columns.

Fitzroy municipality’s census populations were 11,807 (1861), 23,118 (1881), 34,938 (1921), 29,399 (1961) and 17,885 (1991).

On 22 June, 1994, Fitzroy city was united with Collingwood and Richmond cities to form Yarra city. On 18 November, 1993, part of Carlton North had been transferred from Melbourne city to Fitzroy.

Brunswick East

Brunswick East is an inner-urban suburb 6 km north of Melbourne. It lies between Lygon Street and the Merri Creek, and adjoins Carlton North and Fitzroy North at its southern border.

Brunswick East is within 900 metres of Sydney Road which formed the spine of Brunswick when it was first settled. An early industry in Brunswick East was bluestone quarrying, and there were numerous farms. In 1882 land subdivision centered on Evans Street was released for residential purposes.

The swampiness of some of the land was modified by drainage works, and a primary school near Lygon Street (named Brunswick South), was opened in 1886. Another subdivisional sale at the northern end of Lygon Street occurred in 1887, and another school opened in 1888, and the East Brunswick Omnibus Company began its horse bus service along Lygon Street the next year.

Lygon Street became a successful shopping strip, wider than Sydney road, and retaining its period character one-hundred years later.

An old stone quarry was filled in and became Fleming Park, the home of the East Brunswick cricket and football clubs (1919). In 1916 the tram along Lygon Street was electrified, putting the site of Brunswick’s first textile factory, Prestige Hosiery (1922), within easier reach of its workforce. A returned servicemen’s housing area was begun in 1923, identifiable by the Maori Street names, probably in acknowledgment of the Anzac War tradition.

There are eight neighbourhood parks and reserves in Brunswick East, with another being formed over the former Brunswick tip. Next to the Merri Creek is the Brunswick Velodrome, and in the 1980s the Council began its support of CERES, a site for low-energy demonstrations and sustainable ecology, also near the creek.

Another tram service, along Nicholson Street, was opened in 1956.

Brunswick East has a primary school (1893), and the Brunswick East Secondary College, which closed in 1992, was actually in Brunswick.

Carlton North

Carlton North is a residential suburb 4km. north of Melbourne. Its southern boundary is Princes Street/CemeteryRoad. On its west is Princes Park, next to which is the Melbourne General Cemetery.

In 1853 both the Melbourne General Cemetery and a penal stockade came to Carlton North. Melbourne’s first cemetery at the Flagstaff Gardens was over-full by 1849, and a 8 ha. site was laid out to the north. By 1853 the very obvious increase in population persuaded the Government to also close Melbourne’s second cemetery (now the Queen Victoria Market site), to all except those claiming a grave or vault there. The 8 ha. site in Carlton North was doubled and the resulting MelbourneGeneral Cemetery was laid out by the Government Botanist, Ferdinand von Mueller.

The stockade (called the Collingwood Stockade, as Carlton was not named in 1853), was opened beside a bluestone quarry. These sites are now the Lee Street primary school and the Canning Street neighbourhood reserve respectively. Carlton North’s geological structure fortunately had the basaltic land ending just east of the cemetery, which is on mudstone or sandstone.

Carlton (south of Grattan Street) was subdivided and the stockade madean asylum for the next seven years.

Carlton North was subdivided in 1869 between Princes and Fenwick Streets.The final subdivision was at Princes Hill, north of the cemetery, in 1876-9.The settlement was almost all residential, brick, and much of it two storeyedor terraced. The standard was a step up from many of the timber cottagesin Carlton. Around the north of the suburb some of the architecture wasFederation period and Californian bungalows.

Public transport provided three north-south tram services: NicholsonStreet (1887), Rathdowne Street (1889-1936) and Lygon Street (1916). Therewas also an east-west train service at the very north – the Inner Circle(1888-1948). Shopping strips in Carlton North reflect the tram routes, thestrongest areas being in Rathdowne and Nicholson Streets.

Carlton North’s first primary school was opened on the Lee Street asylumsite in 1873. The present building (1877) is on the Victorian Heritage Register.The Princes Hill primary school was opened in 1959.

At its border near Carlton, Carlton North became involved in the HousingCommission’s slum reclamation program when the Lee Street block was proclaimedin 1968. The block was near Princes Street, also threatened with becominga conduit for traffic off the Eastern Freeway. In 1969 Princes Hill residentsparticipated in the formation of the Carlton Association, soon to becomean influential body for changing Government and Council policies. The Commission’sLee Street proposal was stopped and the Association went on to influencetraffic-restraint programs brought in by the Council.

The extremely successful gentrification of Carlton North led a newspapercolumnist to observe in 1992 –

On North Carlton’s gracious streets the student’s bicycles viefor footpath supremacy with well-dressed thirty-something mothers. Pushingtheir pricey strollers, their offspring dressed in Osh-Kosh, these womenhead out of their heritage-coloured terraces en route for banana and gingercake at Cafe Paragon . .

Princes Park is west of Carlton North. It was tentatively reserved as parkland in 1844, permanently reserved in 1854, and the Melbourne council was made one of its joint trustees in 1873. In 1897 the Carlton FootballClub gained permissive occupancy of an oval as its home ground. The Councilbecame the park’s Committee of Management in 1917 and under a special Actleased the oval to the Club in 1966. The oval later became a home groundfor the Hawthorn Football Club, which was replaced by the Footscray FootballClub. In 1993 the oval was named Optus Oval, arising from a sponsorshipdeal. Enlargement of the oval’s capacity and car parking in the park havecaused some friction with local residents.

The Inner Circle railway line ran across the top of Carlton North. Therailway stations lay unmanned after 1948, until the goods line was lastin used in 1980. In 1983 the Carlton North railway station was made a communitycentre and a linear park created along the former train line. The open spacewas contested when the State Labor Government built housing on it in 1992,the Government being opposed by an alliance between residents and left-wingunionists. Ultimately a number of units were built, several on railwaysland that had been commercially leased.

The median house price in Carlton North in 1987 was 38% above the medianfor metropolitan Melbourne and in 1996 it was 85% above the metropolitanmedian.

Carlton North had a census population of7,977 persons in 1986. Over 25% had a degree or higher qualification.

Further Reading:

Carlton

Carlton is a residential, commercial and educational area adjoining the northern boundary of central Melbourne at Victoria Street. Its other boundaries are Elizabeth Street/Royal Parade, Cemetery Road/Princes Street and Nicholson Street. The University of Melbourne is in the postcode area of Parkville, but is treated here as being in Carlton. The area north of Cemetery Road/Princes Street is Carlton North.

The subdivision and settlement of Carlton came later than that of Fitzroy and Collingwood.. By the gold rush, 1851, two thirds of those suburbs were subdivided, often in a hap-hazard way calculated to maximize profit on the resale of land. When Robert Hoddle, Government surveyor, came to survey Carlton in 1852, care was taken to lay out streets in an orderly grid, with reserves for open space and religious institutions.

His survey was bounded by Royal Parade, Grattan Street, Nicholson Streetand Victoria Street, but with the University provided for in a reserve north of Grattan Street. The churches’ precinct was in Queensberry Street, between Lygon and Rathdowne Streets (Anglican, Free Gaelic and Wesleyan), and one block north in Pelham Street (Catholic). There were no school or hospital reserves, but Lincoln Square, Argyle Square and Carlton Gardens were shown.The two squares provided a distinctly English tone for the new suburb.

Carlton, thought to have been named after the residence of the Prince of Wales, was relatively elevated, and attracted several notable homes. Justice Redmond Barry lived in Rathdowne Street, equi distant between the City Court and the University of which he was the first Chancellor in 1955.

By 1860 Carlton had five schools of which one, in Faraday Street, was a National School (1858), and ran continuously until 1972.

By 1884 there were four government schools: Lygon Street, 1870-1908, Queensberry Street, 1881-1932, Faraday Street (already mentioned) and Rathdowne Street, which was opened in 1884 and is the sole survivor. Four non-government schools closed between 1863 and 1884.

The number of schools is indicative of the size of the local population.Whilst some large homes were built, speculators subdivided blocks of landfor cottages, forming narrow streets and narrower lanes for house frontages,overcoming Hoddle’s vision for a spacious suburb. In any event, the gold-rush immigrants wanted houses within walking distance of their workplaces, many of which were in central Melbourne.

In 1858 one of Carlton’s best known landmarks began. In Bouverie Streetthe North Melbourne Brewery was opened. (The name North Melbourne was appropriatebecause for some years after Carlton was surveyed all the land north ofVictoria Street was “North Melbourne”.) The brewery failed and was sold in 1864 to Edward Latham, who secured the services of a skilledbrewer. Carlton Ale never looked back. The bluestone offices (1864) in Bouverie Street remain, after the brewery site was cleared in the late 1980s.

Other landmarks which began in the 1850s include the Melbourne University(1855), the Catholic Church and St. Georges school (1855), the lying-inhospital (1856 – later the Royal Women’s Hospital), and the land grant forthe Trades Hall at the corner of Lygon and Russell Streets. In 1866 St.Judes Church of England in Keppel Street was built. Nine years later theFree Hospital for Sick Children was opened when it moved from Spring Street,Melbourne, to Redmond Barry’s residence in Pelham Street, between Drummond and Rathdowne Streets. St. Nicholas’s Hospital was built on the site in1899, the forerunner of the Royal Children’s Hospital, Parkville.

In 1864 a local football club was formed and won premierships in 1873-5 among local competition, before the formation of the Victorian Football Association in 1877. The Carlton Football Club was a founding memberof the Victorian Football League in 1897, the year it moved its home ground to Princes Park. It won five premierships between 1906 and 1914 and eight more, including three in its best postwar decade, the 1980s.

In 1878 eight hectares were set aside in the Carlton Gardens for a building for Melbourne’s International Exhibition in 1880-1. The international event was Melbourne’s sixth exhibition, and its grandest. The building with its prominent dome became the venue for exhibitions, motor shows, home shows,the first federal Parliament and countless public examinations for secondaryand tertiary students.

In 1887-8 tram lines were opened along Swanston Street, Elgin Street, Rathdowne Street and Nicholson Street. There was no tram along Lygon Street,but it had substantial rows of shops and commercial buildings.

In 1903 The Australian Handbook described Carlton as –

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By the turn of the century Carlton was home mostly to artisans, workmenand small industries. Emigrants found employment and affordable housingthere, and two main groups were Jews and Italians. Jewish residents had synagogues in Bourke Street West, Melbourne, and in East Melbourne, but by 1919 their increasing numbers in Carlton brought about a synagogue in Pitt Street. It ushered in the peak Jewish population in south Carlton during the inter-war years.

Not long after Jewish residents began arriving Italians settled in central Carlton. Their numbers grew during the inter-war period, and the early postwaryears saw the greatest Italian influence in Carlton. They left or influencedseveral landmarks: Bosari’s Emporium, Lygon Street (1940), the Valmorbida family’s grocery shops (Agostinos and King and Godfrees), University Cafe,an early espresso bar (1951) and Toto’s pizzeria, Lygon Street (1966). Italianinfluence came to the fore with the first Lygon Street Festa in 1978.

Another expanding postwar population was students at Melbourne University.The university had had residential colleges since 1871, on an arc of land north of the University granted to the Presbyterian, Wesleyan, Catholicand Anglican Churches, but student digs in low-rent houses were popular.Their presence added variety to the burgeoning cafe life in LygonStreet, several beginning life-time associations with Jimmy Watson’s winebar. (Watson came from an Italian family and bought his wine saloon in 1934,upgrading it to a place of high reputation. Remodelled by Robin Boyd with a stunning white facade (1963), the business is run by the family’s third generation and is commemorated by a premier annual wine trophy.)

The Catholic reserve at the corner of Pelham and Rathdowne Streets became the Scared Heart Church (1897). The Lourdes Grotto in its ground was built by Italian craftsmen during the 1940s. Behind the church is one of Carlton’soldest buildings, the bluestone St. George’s school (1855). The site was noted for festivals and processions during the early postwar years. In the late 1980s the property was transferred to Our Lady of Lebanon Catholic Church and primary school, a sign of changing ethnic composition as Italiansfound more spacious residences in Bulleen and other suburbs further fromcentral Melbourne.

Carlton’s southern boundary has three prominent sites facing central Melbourne. The Carlton Gardens, with notable tree-lined paths, and decorative gardens with a fountain fronting the refurbished Exhibition building. Various annexes to the Exhibition were removed during the 1990s and a site at therear will house the new State museum (The Aquarium, a popular commercial annexe, was burnt down in 1953.) Further to the west, there is the bluestone Bouverie Street brewery buildings, beside one of Melbourne’s longest-lasting demolition sites.

Across middle Carlton are University, Lincoln and Argyle Squares, two of them partly occupied by bowling clubs. Argyle Square fronts Lygon Street,with shopping strips north and south of it. Many shops have been convertedto cafes and restaurants, and the wide road provides a spacious outlookand room for kerbside cafes. The Lygon Court Plaza (1988) has 35 shops innearly 9,000 square metres of space.

North of Grattan Street there are the University, the Royal Women’s Hospitaland a blend of commercial and residential premises. Neighbourhood Macarthurand Murchison Squares make for attractive precincts. The University has spread beyond its reservation, consuming numerous residential and commercial properties.

The north area of Carlton, adjoining Princes Street, is predominantly residential. It was once targeted for slum reclamation. By the mid 1960s the Housing Commission had defined 81 ha., bounded by Swanston Street, CemeteryRoad/Princes Street, Nicholson Street and Grattan/Carlton Streets, as appropriatefor redevelopment. Ultimately two high-rise estates were built in Rathdowne and Palmerston Streets.

The Commission’s threatened redevelopment and the prospect of the Eastern Freeway funnelling traffic through Carlton gave rise to the formation of the Carlton Association in 1969. The Association, linked to the gentrification process under way in Carlton, rapidly grew and its intellect and numbersbrought about rapid changes in Government and Council policies. The suburb’s nineteenth century building stock was substantially saved.

Saving Carlton from through traffic was achieved incrementally during the 1980s as traffic barriers and one-way routes were installed.

The median house price in Carlton was 22% above the median for metropolitanMelbourne in 1987 and in 1996 it was 48% above the metropolitan median.

Carlton had census populations of 152 (1861),13,119 (1911) and 17,052 (including 7,977 in Carlton North 1986).

Further Reading:

  • Among the Terraces, “Carlton Forest Project, c.1991”, (sixbooklets on Carlton).
  • “Between Two Worlds: Jews, Italians and Carlton”, Museum ofVictoria and other, 1992.
  • Logan, William S., “The Gentrification of Inner Melbourne: A PoliticalGeography of Inner City Housing”, University of Queensland Press, 1985.
  • Nigel Lewis and Associates, “Carlton”, North Carlton and PrincesHill Conservation Study, 1984.
  • Australian Paper Mills, “Alphington”, Heidelberg, 1937.

Fitzroy North

Fitzroy North, 4 km. north-east of Melbourne, is separated from Fitzroy (South) by Alexandra Parade. Its other boundaries adjoin Carlton North, Brunswick, Northcote and Clifton Hill.

It was laid out in the 1850s, by and large to a design developed by government survey staff in contrast to the under-dimensioned thoroughfares and allotments arising from private speculation and development south of Alexandra Parade. The design was fitted around the north-easterly thoroughfares of Queens Parade and St. Georges Road, the latter running over the Yan Yean water-supply pipe (1857). An unrealised suburban design from the government survey department was “Merriville”, but the name is acknowledged by the locality of Merri in Northcote, just over the border. The border is, in fact the Merri Creek.

Suburban allotments were not sold until the 1860s and 1870s. Near Merri is Rushall, the site of a housing development begun in 1869 by the Old Colonists’ Association. The idea of the Association and the houses seems to have been that of the theatrical entrepreneur, George Coppin, who was concerned about accommodation for elderly Port Phillip pioneers and for retired actors. The two hectare site has houses ranging from bluestone cottages to 1960s home units.

In the middle of Fitzroy North is Edinburgh Gardens, a circular site with a sports oval at its southern end. The oval was the home ground of the Fitzroy Football Club from its formation in 1883, entry to the Victorian Football League in 1897 until its departure from the oval in 1967. The Gardens had the Brunswick Street/St. Georges Road tram alongside (1887), and railway lines from Preston and Carlton North, which converged on a spur which ran through the Gardens. The railway line from Carlton North was part of the inner circle which became superfluous when radiating suburban lines were finally run through other inner suburbs to connect directly with central Melbourne.

Churches and schools were opened: St. Luke’s Church of England (1874), the Alfred Crescent primary school (1875) and St. Brigid’s Catholic church and school in Alexandra Parade (1880s). In 1891 the Merri primary school in the very north of the district was opened.

The tram in Nicholson Street, along the western boundary, was begun in 1887 and the service along Queens Parade in the same year. Shopping strips developed along the three tram lines, Nicholson Street, St. George’s Road and Queens Parade, the last one being the strongest and having the attraction of a plantation and service road protecting it from the main traffic.

In 1915 a central school was opened in Falconer Street, becoming a high school/secondary college in 1956 and changing in 1992 to a campus of the John Batman TAFE.

The inner-circle railway lines were kept for goods traffic, but in the 1980s and 1990s they were given over to linear parks. The spur line down to the former Fitzroy station has been treated in the same manner. The football club’s homeground became a community oval.

In 1987 the median house price in Fitzroy North was 14% above the median for metropolitan Melbourne and in 1996 it was 46% above the metropolitan median. Housing types in Fitzroy North are similar to those in Clifton Hill – mainly brick with a solid look about them – and their price levels and movements closely mirrored those in Clifton Hill.

Further Reading:

Barrett, Bernard, “The Inner Suburbs: The evolution of an industrial area”, Melbourne University Press, 1971.