Red brick boot factories and warehouses stand beside narrow worker terraces below Smith Street's tram line shopfronts, and Victoria Park is where The Club shot entirely on location.
What Collingwood looks like
Smith Street runs along the suburb's western edge, a former tram street of two and three storey shopfronts under verandah posts. The , a bluestone corner pub built around 1854, stands partway along it. It is one of the street's oldest buildings still trading.
Behind Smith Street, Oxford Street and Cambridge Street carry the red brick factories and warehouses that once made up the . Steel framed windows, concrete trim and brick chimneys still stand above the footpath on both streets. Wellington Street, Gipps Street and Peel Street carry more of the same warehouse fabric, mostly two and three storeys with loading bays onto the street.
Narrow worker terraces line Easey Street and Cambridge Street, built close together with shared laneways behind. More of the same terraces continue along Langridge Street to the south, their fronts set directly onto the footpath.
The stands on Hoddle Street, a rendered masonry front with a clock tower and columns. Three twenty storey stand nearby on Hoddle Street and Wellington Street, built between 1968 and 1971, with red brick shopfronts and terraces running up to their base.
Shot in Collingwood
In 1980, The Club was shot entirely on location at , the Collingwood Football Club's home ground at the time. It still hosts matches today, with Collingwood's AFLW and VFL sides playing there.
The Club, 1980
Victoria Park
The Club follows the Collingwood Football Club through one turbulent season, shot across the ground's grandstands and playing surface. The ground plays itself throughout, with no other city or period standing in for it.
Ancoats' red brick cotton mills and narrow worker terraces sit at the same scale as Collingwood's factory streets, most of them built across the same three decades. Old Mill Street and Blossom Street carry similar loading doors and steel framed windows. British street furniture and right hand traffic need dressing out, and some of Ancoats' mills run taller than Collingwood's. Try searching red brick cotton mill now.
Narrow single fronted terraces back onto lanes the same way Collingwood's worker cottages do, and King Street has verandah shopfronts at a similar two storey scale. Warehouses converted from produce stores stand within a block of the terraces. Newtown's iron lace verandahs and steeper roof pitches read differently in close up, so wider street frames hold the match better. Try searching single fronted terraces now.
Warehouses along Kent Avenue share the red brick and loading dock scale of Collingwood's factory streets, built across the same two decades. Rowhouses a block back sit at the same scale as Collingwood's terraces. Fire escapes and a wider street grid are the tells in a longer lens shot. Try searching brick warehouses loading dock now.
