Sydney Road runs a tram lined strip of stucco Victorian shopfronts past brick mills converted into apartments.
What Brunswick looks like
runs a single chain wide for several kilometres, tram tracks still laid down its centre. Shopfronts line it in unbroken rows, mostly one and two storeys with a few taller buildings on the wider corners, some parapets painted with a name or a date above the shopfront below.
The upper storeys are stuccoed in an Italian Renaissance manner, with cornices and pediments repeating from one shopfront to the next, some fronts done in bichrome brick under later paint. A corner building on Edward Street has 1890 worked into its own pediment, and further south a shopfront numbered 580 still has an older painted sign under a newer awning.
Off Sydney Road the side streets narrow into brick terraces and single fronted weatherboard cottages, built close to the footpath behind low fences. A run of grander two storey houses breaks up the pattern on the wider blocks.
Two brick chimneys mark the former on Dawson Street, the Hoffman kilns behind them reworked into housing. A few streets over, a warehouse apartment building on Dods Street keeps the exposed roof beams and industrial windows of the hosiery mill built there in 1930. The stand at the far end of Dawson Street, a two storey stuccoed bathhouse with its name lettered above the entrance.
Shot in Brunswick
Death in Brunswick was shot on location around the suburb in 1990, with a scene at the Brunswick Baths. The television series Offspring used a warehouse apartment on Dods Street, built inside the former Holeproof hosiery mill, as Nina Proudman's home.
Death in Brunswick, 1991
The Brunswick Baths
Mustafa's son sees him at the pool with Sophie, a scene shot at the Brunswick Baths on Dawson Street. The production filmed on location around the suburb between January and March 1990. Street View
What Brunswick can double for
Roncesvalles Avenue in Toronto, Ontario
Roncesvalles Avenue runs a similar length of two storey Edwardian brick shopfronts under a live streetcar line, the 504 King route running on tracks down its centre. Both strips carry the same scale of shop below flat above that a 1900s to 1920s commercial street needs. Toronto's streetcars are low floor modern cars rather than Melbourne's mixed heritage fleet, and Canadian road markings and stop signs would need covering in a wide shot. Try searching brick shopfronts with streetcar line now.
Langstrasse in Zurich, Switzerland
Langstrasse runs through Zurich's former industrial Kreis 5, where old factory and warehouse buildings have been converted into bars and clubs along a tram served street. The mix of working brick industrial fabric and nightlife matches the way Brunswick's own converted mills sit along Sydney Road. Zurich's tram cars and German language signage are the giveaways, along with taller postwar infill blocks mixed among the older industrial buildings. Try searching converted factory bars tram street now.
