East Melbourne Historical Society

Directed by F.W. Thring, father of the famous Australian actor Frank Thring. Includes the Fitzroy Gardens and the Royal Botanical Gardens.

Melbourne Heritage Action is a new group created to provide a forum of people dedicated to preserving, protecting and promoting the ongoing use of significant heritage places such as buildings, streetscapes, laneways and interiors in Melbourne. The group wants to encourage owners...

If you have a strong interest in military history you may be interested in joining Military History and Heritage Victoria which currently has two vacancies on its executive committee. MHHV provides a forum for people and groups who are passionate about military history and herita...

Punt Road. The other photo shows the Franz Joseph Glacier, where some actual movement has been detected by scientists over the past 600 years.

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More than a Kindergarten

An interesting side-light on the changing demographic of Melbourne in the years after the second world war was the decision to relocate the existing City Free Kindergarten in Exhibition Street (on the corner of Little Lonsdale Street) to Powlett Reserve in East Melbourne. The dis...

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Old Men's Shelter

We usually think of public buildings as large and imposing structures such as town halls or railway stations but in Powlett Reserve, East Melbourne there is situated possibly one of the smallest public buildings in Melbourne.

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Ormiston Educational Establishment for Young Ladies

East Melbourne from its earliest days was full of schools. The larger, purpose-built church schools eventually grew too big for the small parcels of land available and moved to more spacious suburbs; and the smaller privately run schools generally died a natural death when their...

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Oscar Oeser - Man of Mystery

In 1946 Oscar Oeser, like many men who had fought in World War 11, migrated to Australia. His arrival had already been announced in an ‘Age’ article of 24 November 1945.

Pandora's Box is to acquire some new contents. And it relates to you! The East Melbourne Historical Society has agreed to a request from the State Library of Victoria for our website to be periodically archived on PANDORA, the web archive of the National Library of Australia. Thi...

There was an excellent attendance at our event on Wednesday 21 June 2017 when Phil Ruthven took us on a trip down Memory Lane looking back to Australia, Melbourne and East Melbourne in 1853 and 1953 to the present day. He also had the courage, audacity some might say, to predict...

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Policing East Melbourne

In 1883 the Police Department rented a house on a wide block of land in Darling Street, East Melbourne. This house would become the residence of the sergeant-in-charge of the new police station. Next door, on the undeveloped part of the land, a small two-roomed, wooden office was...

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Premier of Victoria passes the buck on Yarra Park

The tree versus the bull barThe EMHS referred its photographic essay on the devastation of Yarra Park to the Premier of Victoria. Similar letters were also sent to the Lord Mayor and the local State Member of Parliament, Bronwyn Pike. The Premier's office, unlike the local member...

It has been a topsy turvy year for us all but thankfully we seem to be headed in the right direction in managing the spread of the COVID virus.

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Pros and (Mod) Cons

In aid of the Red Cross and War Comforts Funds Melbourne City Council has transformed the Treasury Gardens into a Garden City with an extensive lighting scheme. It will be open on Monday at 1 p.m. for one month, with daily sessions from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Attractions will include...

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Protection of Yarra Park

Is Yarra Park being managed appropriately in accordance with its registration on the Victorian Heritage Register?

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Queen Bess Row and Madam Midas

Queen Bess Row, 72-76 Hotham Street, is possibly East Melbourne’s most remarked upon building. Its three red-brick, four-storey houses exhibit a rich decorative scheme of gables and arches which single it out among the smaller and more conservative houses around it.

"Widening roads to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity,"says Walter Kulash, a traffic engineer from Orlando, Florida - something to keep in mind when contemplating the planned roadworks on Hoddle Street.

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Reach for the Sky

Ask those who live in East Melbourne about the different styles of local architecture and they will identify the rare houses still existing from the 1850s and 1860s, the beautiful long lines of terraces in Powlett St and the iron lace-trimmed free standing mansions which are the...

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Remembering Joyeux

366 Albert St., East Melbourne, lies on the north side of the street between Lansdowne and Clarendon Streets. The house was built in 1909 for the Rev. Llewelyn David Bevan on the land which had once been the garden of the neighbouring house, No 364, which Bevan also owned. The ho...

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Remembering the Great War

On November 11 every year we remember the dead of the Great War and especially our Australian dead, those young men who, in loyalty to England and with a sense of adventure joined up in their thousands, leaving behind families, jobs, friends and thinking they’d be ‘home by Christ...

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Reopening of St Peter's Plaza Eastern Hill, 10 November 2019

On 10 November, St Peter’s Plaza and the restored ‘Cross of Sacrifice’ were re-opened to the public. Dating from 1924, the cross is a memorial to the fallen soldiers of World War 1, modelled on wayside crosses in France and is the only one of its kind in Australia. The ceremony w...

On Monday, March 9 2015 The Age ran an article by Clay Lucas under the headline 'Towers make city hostile. says minister'. In the article Mr Wynne said to have significant concerns over the levels of density that been approved for Melbourne's CBD. Asked about his favourite archit...