Precinct 7: The Top End

The former Alexandra Club (1887), opposite St Michaels Church, was originally the palatial residence of colourful surgeon James Beaney, who flaunted his rejection of anti-septic ideas by operating in a blood-soaked coat.

Collins Street East remained partly residential into the early 20th Century. Maie Casey, daughter of a doctor who grew up at 37 Collins Street, recalled lying in bed listening to the sounds of music and dancing drifting from the houses across the street through her bedroom window. Most of the brass plates have now disappeared as doctors moved to consulting rooms near the main hospitals, but new apartment houses are drawing residents back into the city.

Stop 18
Collins Street East was once a fashionable residential address. Even today a handful of townhouses and terraces remain amongst shops, clubs, offices and consulting rooms. In the 1870’s the residents of Collins Street led the movement to shade the street with elms and plane trees. Wooden blocks coated with tar were laid to smooth the carriageway and quieten the rumble of traffic. Trams pulled by underground cables floated past almost noiselessly.

Stop 19
Brass plates hung outside the terrace houses at 86-88 Collins Street, built in 1873 for doctor and pastoralist, Robert Martin, and for the townhouse on the corner of Exhibition Street, built by surgeon John Wilkins in 1867.

Stop 20
Australian powerbrokers
The Melbourne Club was founded by young squatters (sheep farmers) in 1839 and moved to this London-style clubhouse designed by Leonard Terry in 1858. The Club at first looked down on the gold generation (‘the wealthy unwashed’), but quietly welcomed many of them in later years. This is the headquarters of the Melbourne Establishment and — according to legend — a powerful backstage influence in national life.

Stop 21
A city home for bush painters
Grosvenor Chambers (1887), opposite at 9 Collins Street, was built for the decorative painter Charles Stewart Paterson and the skylit studios on the second floor were used by several of the famous ‘Heidelberg School’ landscape artists. ‘Shearing the Rams’ by Tom Roberts was painted here and Arthur Streeton exhibited his newly completed ‘Golden Summers’ in his studio in 1889.

Stop 22
The echoes of Gallipoli
The townhouse at 1 Collins Street, was designed by Leonard Terry and built in the 1870’s by pastoralist, riverboat owner and politician William Campbell. After 1901, it was turned into offices for the new Commonwealth government. Prime Ministers Alfred Deakin, Andrew Fisher and Billy Hughes had their offices here. It was here that the War Cabinet heard the news of the Australian troops landing at Gallipoli.