Fitzroy Street’s most famous ‘design detail’ is probably in its ornate tram poles that run its length from the Junction to the Esplanade.
They do a serious job – supporting the wires that power the trams – but their looping metal circles and arches lend an air of civic procession and gaiety to the special character of the street. They’ve been doing it for almost exactly a century.
These poles were installed in 1925 when the old cable tram made way for the new, electrified W-Class trams.
They have seen every up and down in the street’s fortunes. They famously appear in Albert Tucker’s scarifying series Images of Modern Evil, painted in response to the moral dissolution the street descended into when the US South Pacific military command base descended upon it in the middle of WWII.
The poles now enjoy the respectability of state-level heritage protection — permanent icons of the street, along with its more recently arrived iconic palms.
