The Story of Melbourne's Lanes: Essential But Unplanned (revised edition)

Weston Bate, Richard Broome, Nicole Davis, Andrew J. May, Helen Stitt

The Story of Melbourne's Lanes: Essential But Unplanned (revised edition)
Format
Hardback
Publisher
Royal Historical Society of Victoria
Published
19 September 2024
ISBN
9781875173129

The Story of Melbourne’s Lanes: Essential But Unplanned (revised edition)

Weston Bate, Richard Broome, Nicole Davis, Andrew J. May, Helen Stitt

This is a history of Melbourne's lanes over 180 years from their creation in the 1840s until 2024. Every Melburnian should have a copy of this book. It is a gorgeous lavishly-illustrated hardback.

"Melbourne … started as an ideal colonial grid of city blocks —at once dextrous but invasive—overlaid onto the undulating landscape of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung peoples. It was then voraciously cut, sliced, sometimes reformed, then sliced and sliced again. As historian Weston Bate described in the first iteration of this book in 1994, an “essential but unplanned” network of tiny streets, by necessity, was inserted to service in the most practical sense the workings of these narrow slivers of land that required light, air, servicing and delivery from behind or from the side. That functional ‘back’ story is what lends special nuance to Melbourne’s lanes and their subsequent and alternately seamy or gleaming histories: of crime, prostitution and opium dens, as implicit racial ghettoes, of hidden pearls containing elegant arcades, and, more recently, the institutionalised resurgence of Melbourne’s lanes as prized urban spaces, now touted as models of what the word ‘urban’ might mean in an Australian setting."

“Melbourne’s laneways have always been dynamic and always great survivors. Robin Boyd wrote in Victorian Modern in 1947 that, ‘The little lanes were the honest streets of Melbourne’. This book proves that still to be the case.”

From the Foreword by Philip Goad
Chair of Architecture, University of Melbourne

This book is an RHSV publication (in partnership with the State Library of Victoria) which expands on a popular but now well out-of-print book by historian Weston Bate, Essential but Unplanned. The Story of Melbourne’s Lanes (1994).  The new book (280 pages) more than doubles the size of the old with extra chapters to bring the story of Melbourne’s lanes up-to-date. There is a multitude of new photos – both contemporary and historical, both colour and black-and-white and more comprehensive indices.

This item is in-stock at 8 shops and will ship in 3-4 days

Our stock data is updated periodically, and availability may change throughout the day for in-demand items. Please call the relevant shop for the most current stock information. Prices are subject to change without notice.

Sign in or become a Readings Member to add this title to a wishlist.