Garden City, Victoria

Garden City is a residential area of Melbourne located in the municipality of Port Phillip 5 km south-west of the Melbourne CBD and immediately west of Port Melbourne. It was created as a planned residential development initially by the State Bank of Victoria and subsequently developed by the Housing Commission of Victoria between 1926 and 1940.The area had previously been undeveloped crown land known as Sandridge Flat, and was considered part of Fishermans Bend, a wasteland of swamps and sand ridges located along the lower reaches of the Yarra River.The former City of Port Melbourne, which undertook its own social housing scheme at Montague, lobbied the State Government in 1912 to allow social housing to be constructed on reclaimed land, but the Melbourne Harbour Trust had a claim over the land for port use. The State Savings Bank took up the Council proposal and in 1926 the Metropolitan Town Planning Commission purchased 18 hectares of land south and east of Williamstown Road and Graham Street. In 1936 the HCV took over construction of houses from the State Bank acquiring a further 22 hectares to the west, ultimately creating three separate estate areas including Dunstan, Garden City and Fishermans Bend estates. The street layout was laid out on "garden city" principals, and the later HCV houses accommodated large families from deprived circumstances. The HCV built the last public tenanted houses along Beacon and Barak Roads in 1981. In recent decades the former working class social housing, built to alleviate the worst impacts of the depression, have become sought-after inner city accommodation for the middle classes, and houses typically sell for nearly $2,000,000.