YOU CAN TRACE THE HISTORY of Melbourne’s oldest suburb through the story of Gertrude Street, which stretches through Fitzroy for one kilometre. Today it is a microcosm of all that is exciting about this inner-north enclave, with its kaleidoscope of businesses united by a fiercely independent creative spirit.
Gertrude Street was first developed on the land of the Wurundjiri people in the 1850s as a respectable residential and commercial precinct wrought in timber, bluestone, iron and brick thanks to the gold rush building boom. By the 1860s its range of shops and businesses included bakers, butchers, bootmakers, drapers, tailors, grocers and wine merchants, as well as a number of printers, saddlers and stores known as
