Melbourne’s First Suburb.
Fitzroy and Collingwood share a special place in the heart of Melburnians; they are the city’s testing ground, a grid of streets from which cultural icons are born. It’s here – east of Nicholson and west of Hoddle – that SMA Projects feel most at home.
Then, Now & Tomorrow.
Originally one municipality called Newtown, Fitzroy and Collingwood were Melbourne’s first suburb. At that time, feeling far from the bustle of a burgeoning city centre, the green neighbourhood was an incredibly attractive place to live.
Fitzroy’s eastern hills quickly filled with large, stately homes and many of these original bluestone terraces remain today. By the turn of the 20th century, the residential streetscapes of Fitzroy and Collingwood were punctuated with places for light industry.
Old meets elegant new in Yorkshire Brewery’s piazza
Yorkshire Brewery.
A Collingwood Icon.
It’s 4pm on a Tuesday in 1892. The crowds have begun to gather outside the pubs lining Johnston Street. Local workers have stomped out of their factories en masse and are waiting for the doors to swing open. Their drink of choice? Collingwood-brewed beer; well-known as the lubricant of the creative working class, helping spur ideas that outlive their makers.
By the early 20th century, mergers and buyouts led to the liquidation of most local beer makers and for a long time the taps all read the same. The Yorkshire Brewery was one of a handful of places where malt production survived through to modern day, only closing in the 1980s. It was here that the malt for beers like Carlton Draught and Melbourne Bitter was produced – cherished local icons that they are.
Buzzing Johnston Street cleaves through both Fitzroy and Collingwood
The Lyric.
A Cinematic Moment.
The future looked hulking and metallic. Towers speared the sky, Herculean engines flooded the streets with steam and automatons filled the screen. It’s 1929, and at The Lyric in Fitzroy, Metropolis stuns the matinee crowd. No one present had wondered much how the deep future would look or feel – but shuffling from their seats in awe, the image burned bright in their minds.
The Lyric was hallowed ground for generations of Fitzroy locals seeking stories, escape or simply somewhere warm and quiet to while away the afternoon. Melbourne was once a city studded with grand movie theatres, where colossal Wurlitzer organs would be played for guests before features and throughout intermissions. While few of these original theatre spaces remain, their cultural legacies live on in new ways.
City vistas and lush neighbourhood views from Fitzroy Ltd
Fitzroy Ltd.
A Future Classic.
When B and H moved in, twenty years ago this March – in a blissful gap between Covid lockdowns – it was a quantum relationship leap. Back then, their Fitzroy home was a well-planned stepping stone to a spacious future in the country. Now the year is 2042, and they’re still on Gore Street. They’ve moved up a few floors of the same building, snagging a bigger unit for a family that’s swelled to include two dogs and an eight year old, named P. Sometimes stepping stones just feel perfect underfoot.
SMA Projects doesn’t solely focus on heritage – its gaze is set on the future, too. Fitzroy Ltd was designed to be a place where people want to spend a lifetime. It’s a neighbourhood in which such lofty goals feel achievable, where neighbours are united in the same aspiration for The Melbourne Dream.