House of the Week: a classic worker's cottage in Fitzroy

291 George Street, Fitzroy
$1.6 million
2 bedrooms 1 bathroom
​Private sale
​Inspect on Saturday from 11am-11.30am
Nelson Alexander, Marek Olech, 413 830 954

This year we sign off with something quintessentially Melbourne. Our town where the houses are almost as much the story as their inhabitants, where our love of place is not always about the almighty dollar, but about how a house can explain the life of a city.

Where better to do that than a worker’s cottage in Fitzroy? The cheek-by-jowl row houses here are in one of the best positions in all inner Melbourne – between Smith and Brunswick and a stroll from Gertrude and Johnson too.

Of course, this house was never going to be just what its inscrutable facade blankly suggests – you can’t see a second level from the street, but there is one.

You can’t see past the single attached front and the mean streets of the late 19th century, but there’s new millennium style at every turn. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there and isn’t that the nub of our town? Take your time, stay awhile, all will be revealed.

A long hallway with light filtering through from the western end is the fine introduction. Off here on the left is bedroom No. 1 with good storage and a street view.

The second bedroom is a gorgeous thing with a lightwell/fernery giving this central part of the house a set of green lungs and a sense of light and air.

Beyond the hallway arch and down a step or two the timber floors give way to handsome black tiling and run into an exquisite bathroom. The shower here also offers lightwell views; you can open up the glass and take your ablutions with the ferns and foliage.

The limestone bench that forms the vanity in the bathroom repeats in the kitchen another few steps down to the westerly rear.

In here it hangs beyond the cabinetry to look sharp and modish as well as provide breakfast bar seating.

In front there’s just enough space for a dining table and your living area – hey, it’s still a Fitzroy terrace after all.

Full width and height stacker doors fold back to the pretty, angled courtyard. There’s a generous right of way out back beyond here.

Upstairs it’s glorious – a beautiful sitting room sculpted onto the rear with a fabulous shard of glass and a balcony over the Fitzroy rooftops.

A trap door in the hallway downstairs accesses one of those pull-down ladders that leads to a vast attic.

Melbourne, we love that you don’t give up your secrets so easily and just like this Fitzroy place, you’re all class.

Merry Christmas all. Happy house hunting.

Room for improvementIt feels so easily as though there could be another bedroom and en suite upstairs – punch between the living room and attic and “voila”.

Need to know: Built circa 1890. Last traded for $58,000 in 1985. Highest recorded house price in Fitzroy (past 12 months) was $4,011,000 for 17 Bell Street in November 2016. Recent sales: $947,500 for 199 Moor Street, November 2016; $1.78 million for 127 George Street, November 2016, and $3.4 million for 101 St David Street, October 2016.