evan price house, essendon

Check this out:  

You're going to hate me but I don't actually remember/ didn't actually write down where this image was from specifically, but it is the Journal of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architecture and I am pretty sure it's September 1937. Here the house is again in the Melbourne Herald 3 July 1935 p. 20: 

Hilarious that it's called a 'simple design' but I guess they mean, it's streamlined, not messy. So, Perry and I went to have a look at it, once we found out it was in Riverview Rd, Essendon (that information wasn't easy to come by - well - it's in this article but until we found this article, wasn't easy). 

It's number 2, Riverview Road. There is no view of any river, incidentally, from this road, at least as far as I could see. Maybe if you were upstairs and had the right window...

I think this is a view of a weird later addition. 

I was aiming for a comparable view to the original JRVIA photo but it wasn't really possible.

So, elsewhere in Essendon... this classy item is in Daisy St. 

These flats are in Leslie Road, just near 2 Riverview. 

These flats are near there too

And this is next door to them. 

So in sum yes Essendon is an interesting place to walk around and it has a lot of very fine early C20 homes. I barely photographed anything really. I thought maybe Nosilla Court might have had an interesting story behind it but this is about as interesting as it gets:

Sunshine Advocate 8 January 1943 p. 4

I will say this - the Cranwells of Braybrook presumably somehow named Cranwell St, which is where we went last week on our Maribyrnong River day. But so what, right? Even they'd probably say 'so what'. 

radio street

So I was curious about Radio Street but all my meagre imagination could come up with was that it might be some real estate agent's idea of a groovy name connecting to a thing everyone likes. That is, twenty years later and it would have been Television Street and twenty years after that, Pong Street. But imagine my surprise twice when this:

Melbourne Age 14 October 1924 p. 9 

And also, that shed that I said I wondered what it was? Well apparently it was the transmitter building. However, the one thing I will say is that that shed as visible from Ashley st is in no way in the 'spanish mission style'. I mean the other side of it might be. But no.

braybrook and maribyrnong

Perry and I went for a long walk around the Maribyrnong at Braybrook. The bit between Ballarat Road and the Maribyrnong River is largely industrial, still, and obviously has been since at least the Second World War. I don't feel very empowered to figure out the story of this building/site right now but it is presently Peerless Holdings, which changed its name from Rothfield & Company in 1958 (according to an announcement in the Age 21 Feb 1959 p. 8). Rothfield & Company made sewing cotton and thread; Peerless also made buttons and slide fasteners. According to its website 'Peerless Foods began its life in the 1950s as a small business, recycling and rendering meat by-products in Melbourne, Victoria. Over the years, the refinery was upgraded and expanded with state-of-the-art technology and systems.' I mean, apparently, kind of. Peerless was purchased by Smorgon - which manufactured and exported canned and frozen meats and canned fruit - in late 1959 (according to an article in the Age for 23 December 1959, 'Smorgon's bid for Peerless').  

This is what's around the corner also I think a part of the same block though it's not entirely clear. This nice building...

...and this even nicer one which has the words 'String Factory' on it (this bit just says 'Factory', the word 'String' is on the other side but I couldn't even begin to find a good place to photograph it). 

This business has been Klipspringer Pty Ltd for at least my lifetime; it used to be a tennis 'gut' manufacturer. Maybe that's the 'string'? I am not sure.  
This building, which is at the corner of Evans and Ballarat Rd, really intrigues me. It appears that this was an aluminium factory of some sort, under a few different names (starting I think with the name Ocal, which the Sands & McDougall 1965p. 185 suggests is an acronym) but that doesn't explain why it has the word 'Novelty' written very plainly at the top.  

It's now a Go-Kart place as you can see, though I gather it used to be known as Fun City,* a name I would tend to take with a grain of salt - how about you. 

I don't know what this ever was or currently is - I'd like to though. 

These nice birds were hanging around a garbage truck, The one on the left is called Shitz, the one in the middle is Gigglez, the one on the right goes by Li'l Shitz. 

This is when we finally ('finally!' said Perry) got to the river and crossed the bridge. I mean, this is an amazing house. 

Can you imagine. It's like living in 15th century Italy somewhere. 

I noticed that the bridge here had a sign on it proclaiming it as from 1970, so I had a quick check on what used to be there. Interesting (?):

Now, it's:

Have to go back and retrace that old bridge line sometime.

I have to admit that by this point we were starting to wonder if we had bitten off more than we could chew as it was getting kind of stupidly hot. But we didn't actually have much choice at this point. Here one might almost feel one had reached the end of the road...

And indeed someone had clearly used this point for some kind of ritual. 

Investigation revealed we cbf finding out what was going on...  

OK now we're on the home stretch back to the car. This is Omar street, just some nice, nice houses that are ... nice

this one's nice

this one is also nice

Turn right at Radio Street

 Another nice one

And this one with... 

A nautical logo. Within minutes we were back in the (bit hot) car and heading home. Ultimately, Perry's assessment? 

* I may have got mixed up with the Fun City in Ballarat Road Sunshine North which burnt down in early 2017. I'll get back to you