The Melbourne Club was founded in 1838, three years after the first colonial settlement of the Port Phillip District. The Club is one of Victoria's oldest surviving institutions.
The current club house, the Club’s third home, is located at 36 Collins Street. The site was purchased twenty years after the Club’s establishment: initial construction took place in 1858 - 1859 to a design by recently arrived English architect Leonard Terry in the Italian Palazzo style, undoubtedly inspired by two London Clubs, the Travellers (completed 1832) and the Reform Club (1841). Terry came to be regarded as the architect of some of Victoria’s finest colonial era public buildings, banks and churches.
Subsequent additions to the club house, some also by Terry, included a rackets court (1876) built on the Little Collins Street boundary and a new dining room (1885), built on land to the West of the existing club house, also facing Collins Street, which was acquired in 1873.
The Collins Street building is of architectural importance as a rare intact example of a 19th-Century, purpose-built club house. The club house is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register and is described by the Victorian Heritage Council as a site of significance due to its ‘aesthetic, architectural, social, historical and scientific (botanical) importance to the State of Victoria’. Notably, the club house was to become one of the first buildings in Melbourne to feature electric lighting.
With the assistance of heritage architects, the Club has developed a Conservation Management Plan to ensure that repairs and renovations preserve the historical integrity of the building and meet the requirements of Heritage Victoria.
The Club’s rear garden was established shortly after the 36 Collins Street site was purchased in 1858. With the purchase of neighbouring blocks facing Little Collins Street and Ridgway Street (now Ridgway Place) in 1885 and 1886, the garden more than doubled in size. The Club garden has both aesthetic and botanical significance as it includes one of the largest Platanus x acerifolia (London Plane Tree) known to exist in Victoria, and an uncommon Phoenix reclinata (wild date palm).
Throughout its history, the Club garden has undergone several design transformations. A significant change occurred in 1975 when an ivy-covered median wall, which had extended from the back of the club house to the North boundary, marking the original Eastern boundary of the garden, was removed following its partial collapse. The wall's removal resulted in the creation of a more expansive garden area and lawn.
Public tours of the garden have taken place periodically through Open Gardens Victoria and the Friends of the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne.
Further reading:
Australian Dictionary of Biography
Heritage Victoria
National Trust
Melbourne Universities School of Agriculture
