16 Miller Street

What is significant?

The Melbourne Benevolent Asylum was opened near here on 27 November 1851 to ‘relieve the aged, infirm, disabled or destitute of all creeds and nations’. Built for the Victoria Benevolent Society, a group of philanthropic Melbourne citizens, the asylum aimed to house the Colony’s ‘deserving poor’ in a more dignified fashion than the work houses of the new English Poor Law. After the increased demands put upon the Benevolent Asylum during the Great Depression of the 1890s, the asylum was relocated to a larger 60 ha site at Cheltenham in 1911 and the old buildings fronting Curzon Street in North Melbourne were eventually demolished. Based on a government subdivision, the house lot area sold from the grounds was over eight acres, comprising 53 allotments. Eight of these were quarter-acre blocks, and the remainder measured 40 feet by 120 feet. This house was built on one of those lots.

Thought to have been built in 1916.

Contributory elements include:

• single storey first grade red brick semi detached Federation Bungalow style house;

• asymmetrical floor plan;

• hipped main roof, with side bull nose verandah;

• casement windows with leadlight treatment;

• corrigated iron roofing, with barge boards, timber eaves brackets and center timber finial;

• first grade red brick chimney plastered, in part, with rough-cast, and capped with a terracotta pot;

• timber framed verandah with a cast iron frieze;

• door with top and side lights;

• contribution as a key element in an important, largely Federation-era streetscape that symbolises the former Benevolent Asylum site.

How is it significant?

The house is significant historically and aesthetically to West Melbourne and the City of Melbourne.

Why is it significant?

The house is significant.

• Historically, as symbolic, with nearby houses also built at this time, of the historically significant former Melbourne Benevolent Asylum; and

• Aesthetically, as a well-preserved and mid articulated Federation Bungalow set on a confined but elevated site and as a key element in an important, largely Federation-era streetscape.