How a three-decade remaking of the city revived the buzz of 'Marvellous Melbourne'

摘要

In the gallery of Australian art at Federation Square hangs John Brack's iconic portrait of Melbourne in the 1950s; Collins Street, 5pm. This painting of the ritual march home from work to the suburbs depicts a city full of people and buildings, yet monochromatic and flat. It has become iconic not only because it captured a mid-20th-century conformity, but also because it stood for the loss of an intensive urbanity that had flourished in the 'Marvellous Melbourne' of the late 19th Century. While this era came to a crashing end with the 1890s depression. Melbourne did not fall into decline so much as into conformity and staidness. Through the early decades of the 20th Century and two World Wars Melbourne remained a major city, but the focus of its development shifted to the suburbs.