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Produced and published by the School of Historical & Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne
Published July 2008
Published July 2008
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(3146, 10 km SE, Boroondara City, Stonnington City)
Bisected by the Monash Freeway and Gardiners Creek, Glen Iris lies within the former cities of Malvern and Camberwell. Although pastoralists settled here in the 1830s the first land sales occurred in the 1850s when a handful of large properties were established, among them Glen Iris, the residence of solicitor J.C. Turner. Orchards, dairies and brickworks, along with some large 1880s villas, characterised the area until the 1920s. Although the district was regarded as very 'picturesque', the unreliable and infrequent service on the Glen Iris railway, built in 1890, deterred residents until it was extended to Glen Waverley in 1930. Virtually all of Glen Iris' residential development occurred in the interwar decades, when many large estates were subdivided. In My brother Jack (1964) author George Johnston, who lived in Glen Iris with his first wife in the 1930s, described the 'plain of dull red rooftops [and] ... the green squares and rectangles of lawns intersected by ribbons of asphalt and cement' as a 'red and arid desert' of suburbia.