Five giant, oddly-shaped, concrete columns line the curb on Fitzroy St.
Together they support the Prince’s band-room balcony, designed by architect Allan Powell as part of his monumental 1990s renovation of the Prince of Wales Hotel. Allan’s office was just around the corner in Victoria St.
He uncovered and restored the black-tiled fins on the hotel’s art deco balconies, which he had remembered from childhood. Allan was a kind of architectural ‘poet laureate’ of St Kilda.
He loved the weathered concrete embankments, pipes and piers of Australia’s suburban beaches, and these characteristic forms were central to his beautiful but tragically abandoned 1990s St Kilda Sea Baths design. The strange, slightly eroded and deformed pillars he used here at the Prince were in fact experimental prototypes for his Sea Baths design.
They’re maybe a little lost on Fitzroy St now, but they are living elements in the street’s incredible depth of material memories and associations.
