Pasco Street Heritage Precinct

The Pasco Street Heritage Precinct, which comprises all land in HO24 and generally includes properties with a frontage or side boundary to Pasco Street, Williamstown.

How is it Significant?

The Pasco Street Heritage Precinct is of local historic and aesthetic significance to the City of Hobsons Bay.

Historically, Pasco Street includes examples of some of the earliest residential and commercial development in Williamstown and is important for its ability to illustrate important phases in the development of the city from during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which includes the historical associations of the educational institutional and ecclesiastical buildings with the establishment and fostering of the Williamstown community and the associations of the owners and occupiers of some early residential buildings (late 1850s onwards) with Williamstown's early and important role as Melbourne's port. (AHC criteria A4 and D2)

Aesthetically, Pasco Street is an integral part of the Government Survey precinct and exhibits characteristics that are typical of those streets within this broader precinct as well as elements that are unique. The typical characteristics include:

- Early or rare building styles and types such as the basalt houses and the unifying effect throughout the precinct of groups of predominantly Victorian and Edwardian era houses with common or similar characteristics of design, siting and scale that create cohesive and homogeneous streetscapes. Many are externally intact and others, although altered, still retain their distinctive form and siting and hence contribute to the precinct.

- The sections of the roadway in its basic early layout and the exotic street planting that combines with exotic planting in private gardens to reinforce and enhance the period expression of the precinct.

The distinctive elements of Pasco Street are:

- The presence of a number of substantial nineteenth century houses and public buildings such as 'Tudor House' that were designed by noted Melbourne architects.

- The group of Queen Anne villas near the intersection with Melbourne Road.

(AHC criterion E1)

On this basis, the following properties and other elements contribute to the significance of the precinct:

-Pasco Street (odd) 15-19, 21, 25-31, 47, 57-61, 69 and 83-93.

-Pasco Street (even) 4-16, 22-32, 50-56, 62-64 and 70-76.

- Early street layout

Please note that some heritage places within this precinct may also have an individual citation in this Study.

27&29 Pasco Street are not the original dwellings - reconstruction has occurred in accordance with the ICOMOS Burra Charter.

Group

Residential buildings (private)

Category

Residential Precinct