The City of Port Phillip honours Carlo Catani

In the past few months, the City of Port Phillip have erected three interpretive signs connected to Carlo Catani - one in the Catani Gardens in St Kilda, one at the Catani Archway and the other at the site of Carlo's now demolished house in Blessington Street in St Kilda.  Well done to the City of Port Phillip for recognising and celebrating their history!

This is the sign in the Catani Gardens

This is the wording - the photo was supplied by the Koo Wee Rup Swamp Historical Society, of which I am President. Ironically, there is no memorial for Carlo on the Koo Wee Rup Swamp unless you count the Swamp town of Catani, which is of course, named for him. However, some sort of memorial is on my list of projects for this year!

This is the Catani Archway in the Catani Gardens - the plaque, mounted on a bluestone plinth, is on the left.

This is the Catani Archway plaque

The Catani Archway plaque includes, the text, above and the image, below.

In 1912, the Catani family home, Glenluce, in Elm Street in Armadale was demolished to make way for the duplication of the railway line between South Yarra and Caulfield, read about this here, and the family moved to Wyndham, 39 Blessington Street,  St Kilda. The house was sold by the family after Catherine Catani died in August 1925. The house has been demolished, the street has been re-numbered (that's why the plaque is at No. 61) and  a block of flats was built on the site, maybe in the 1930s.

This is a close-up of the plaque at Blessington Street.

The Argus, August 21, 1926

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3803792

Wyndham was put up for Auction on Saturday, September 18, 1926. If only I could go back in time, I'd buy the house and make it a permanent shrine to Carlo. Sadly, we don't have  a photograph of Wyndham but this auction notice has a description of the house -  very nice brick villa containing nine rooms, including large dining room. All the rooms are in perfect order. The house is particularly well built and on good foundations...there is also a brick garage with cement floor for 2 cars. Seems too good to have been pulled down and have flats erected on the site however I guess the location situated  in one of the best positions on St Kilda, being near the tram and a splendid shopping centre, sealed it's fate like so many other beautiful houses.

Images: The two photos of the Catani Gardens interpretive sign were taken by me. The four images of the Catani Archway and the two images of  the Blessington Street sign were taken by Isaac Hermann, thanks Isaac!