Header
Introduction
  • Even the humblest houses outlive the people who build them or choose them.
  •  
  • While city buildings rise and fall, whole suburbs stay much as they were built.
  • You can stand in the street in East Melbourne and imagine what it was like in
  • 1900, or see the 1920s in a street in Essendon.
  •  
  • As you travel out from the city you can see growth rings (with denser knots
  • around railway stations) as house styles have changed over time, sometimes
  • gradually and sometimes with dramatic jumps.They reflect the attitudes and
  • ideas in the air at the time, and remain a built reminder of the collective
  • unconscious of each era in Victoria’s history.
  •  
  • When we choose to live in a house built in a period other than our own, we
  • usually want to preserve at least something of the original, and this booklet can
  • help achieve that objective. It describes the main styles of houses still present
  • in Melbourne, including their cultural background and key exterior and interior
  • features and colours. Knowing this helps us avoid mistakes when we are
  • renovating, like putting horizontal windows in a Queen Anne house, or terracotta
  • tiles on a Victorian house.
  •  
  • It also gives us a deeper appreciation of our built heritage, as we understand –
  • for example – that the starkness of modernism derives from a striving for purity
  • in the years after World War Two and that kangaroos replaced dragons on
  • rooftops at the hands of people flushed with patriotism in the early years of
  • Federation.
  •  
  • David Harvey
  • Architect, Illustrator and Historical Advisor to the What house is that?