Flinder street station renovation

Nathan AlexanderA shorthistory of Flinders Street StationExtractedand adapted from a report prepared for the Victorian Department of Transport.June 2011

A short history of Flinders Street Stationwww.alexanderurbanism.comwww.alexanderurbanism.com

A short history of Flinders Street Stationwww.alexanderurbanism.comThe location for Flinders Street Station, the hub of Melbourne’s passenger rail network, was fore-ordained by Robert Hoddle’s decision in 1837 to lay out the township of Melbourne parallel to a stretch of the Yarra River. A year before, John Batman had sailed up the river and chosen as the site for his ‘village’ the first high ground upstream from the river mouth, conveniently where low falls separated fresh water from salt. Hoddle laid out the street grid on this site. It was between three hills, Batman’s, Flagstaff and Eastern, over ground gently sloping towards a gully near the centre. The central street in Hoddle’s grid, Elizabeth Street, overlaid this gully. The track across the river and to the south, which later became St Kilda Road, ran on highground just to the east of the South Melbourne swamp and another swamp that became Albert Park Lake. This connected to the central city grid of streets most naturally at Swanston Street. With the Gold Rushes of the early 1850’s, the ocean-going ships bringing immigrants and freight docked at Sandridge, now Port Melbourne. When the first rail service in the colony began in 1854, it ran between the pier at Sandridge and crown land just south of Elizabeth Street, by then the premier street in the settlement. The station soon extended east to St Kilda Road. In 1857, a new line was opened between Princes Bridge and Richmond, running over open ground at the edge of the river flats. This line was later extended to Hawthorn and Brighton. In 1859 a line was established between Spencer Street and Williamstown, skirting around the West Melbourne Swamp. By 1892 all these lines were connected.By the 1880’s Melbourne had become a large and grand metropolis. For almost two decades from 1883 plans for a grand station at Flinders Street befitting the grand metropolis were prepared but not executed. Finally a design by two Railways Department employees, Fawcett and Ashworth, was carried through, the result of a competition in 1899. The original design for a new station and station yard had ten platforms, two subways, a three storey building on Flinders Street, and a roof over the platforms.