A century ago.......the second city of the Empire shines
Now I shouldn't be even saying this, as a Sydney-sider it's not the done thing to acknowledge Melbourne let alone praise it. But I came across these pictures recently at the same time i learnt that in 1900 Melbourne was the second city of British Empire. I've enjoyed myself thoroughly with the old photos of American cities i've seen on this site and marveled at just how grand they were for so long ago, they become even more poignant given the decline of some.
Australia's a long way from anywhere and it is not a country that looks back at it's history that much, so I was simply unaware of the wealth and grandeur of Melbourne. At the time it was larger and much more important than Sydney and on January 1st 1901 became the capital of the new country of Australia, a title it lost to Canberra in the thirties. The buildings may not be as tall as American cities around the same time, the industry not quite as dynamic, but I think that everyone who appreciates cities and especially those historical snapshots will find something to enjoy here.
There may be a few outliers but the vast bulk come from between 1890 and 1920, leaning towards the first decade of the century.
The whole time I'm looking at these pics I can't help but think this makes Canada's counterpart - Montreal - look like a steaming turd. Montreal wasn't founded on a giant pile of gold, however, so all things considered, she's not too shabby. Toronto? I won't even bother...
The whole time I'm looking at these pics I can't help but think this makes Canada's counterpart - Montreal - look like a steaming turd. Montreal wasn't founded on a giant pile of gold, however, so all things considered, she's not too shabby. Toronto? I won't even bother...
Montreal also had teeming masses from the Quebec countryside (made of the "wrong type of people" (in imperial thinking of the day anyway) descend upon the city by the tens of thousands, and who had to be housed somewhere. This also had a profound effect on how the city developed and appears today. Whereas places like Melbourne developed more "by design".
The whole time I'm looking at these pics I can't help but think this makes Canada's counterpart - Montreal - look like a steaming turd. Montreal wasn't founded on a giant pile of gold, however, so all things considered, she's not too shabby. Toronto? I won't even bother...
Melbourne apparently had like 500 000+ people at the time, Montreal was a bit below 400 000, that's a fair difference.
what the wave of "undesirables" did give montreal, however, is a pattern of residential density that continues to inform its urban structure. had they been richer, they would have wanted semi-deatched houses or something of the sort, and we'd be like a smaller toronto.
what the wave of "undesirables" did give montreal, however, is a pattern of residential density that continues to inform its urban structure. had they been richer, they would have wanted semi-deatched houses or something of the sort, and we'd be like a smaller toronto.
Early Melbourne tended to have a much larger share of the "right people" in its population. Which led to, yes, less urban density, but also a more generalized grandeur all over the city.
Toronto, for its part, was not necessarily destined to be Canada's keystone city, and so it lost out on grandeur on places like Melbourne (and even Montreal in the Canadian context) on much of the investment in this area that might have been made had it been clearly designated as Canada's metropolis much earlier - say, sometime in the mid to late 1800s.
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