Former terrace houses now apartments: 19 Park Street St Kilda West. Melbourne, Victoria

Sometimes adaptive reuse can be a bad thing and this complex in tree lined Park Street is a prime example.

While it was not uncommon for terraces to have their balconies built in to create more room, this early 1980s curtain wall job to create 24 apartments from 4 large terrace houses is more than a little brutal.

The only way you can tell what it actually was (besides living in them) is in winter when the London Planes lose their leaves you can see the old high pitched slate roof, the blade style party wall penetrating the roof, the eaves brackets and chimneys. Between the party walls what once would have been filigree style Victorian cast iron lacework verandahs are now a wall of opaque glass.  It now has all the hallmarks of 1960s dog box flats and makes it incredibly difficult to date or identify the style of the terraces beneath.

A terrible shame and one would hope that someday these houses could be returned to a semblance of their original state.