Citation No:
City of Port Phillip Heritage Review Identifier
"Dorset Terrace"
Formerly
"Romsey Terrace" Pl rars Fer
St rars Fer
th Nor lace P t n ince St. V
1035
t eS tagu Mon
th Sou lace P ent Vinc St. St an Bev
St port d i r B
Heritage Precinct Overlay None Heritage Overlay(s) HO258
Address
17-21 St Vincent Place SOUTH MELBOURNE
Constructed probably 1871
Category Residential:row Designer unknown
Amendment C 29 Comment Significance (Mapped as a Significant heritage property.) The former ‘Romsey Terrace’ is of significance for having been built within the first decade of the development of St Vincent Place and for the coherency of its design with the other buildings of the period built in the Place. It is an integral building to St Vincent Place and retains particularly fine cast iron and render decoration. The status of the original occupants, particularly H.B. Moore, enhances the significance of the row.
Primary Source Allom Lovell Sanderson Pty. Ltd., South Melb Conservation study vol. 2, 1987
Other Studies Description Original Use: Residences Date of Construction: probably 1871 (1) St Vincent Place was laid out by the surveyor, Clement Hodgkinson in 1858 and the first land sales around the St Vincent Gardens were held on 13 December 1864 (2). Following this numerous large terrace rows were erected that attracted Melbourne’s wealthier citizens. This row of three nine-roomed brick terrace houses was built in 1871 as an investment by Charles Skeats (3), a local ironmonger and timber merchant (4). Skeats rented out each of the houses and his tenants during the 1870s included Kidston, a solicitor, Henry B. Moore, Assistant Surveyor-General and L.J. Spyer, a broker and commercial agent (5). Henry Byron Moore (1839-1925) had arrived in Victoria in 1852 and became a field clerk and draftsman in the Survey Department at Geelong, after which, in 1863, he worked as a surveyor in the Lands Department. In 1866 he was land commissioner in Gippsland and in 1870 assistant Surveyor-General, while in 1880, he founded the Melbourne Electric Light Co., and established the Melbourne Telephone Exchange Co (6).