End of Lease Cleaning Services in Fitzroy

The area that is now known as Fitzroy and Collingwood is part of the territory of the country of the Woiwurrung people of the Kulin nation. The area that is now known as Fitzroy is the land of the Wurundjeri people. The Kulin name recorded for the Fitzroy area is Ngár-go, meaning “high ground”, which was recorded by anthropologist Alfred William Howitt in the 19th century. In light of its significance to Aboriginal people, the name has been revived in a 2021 project called Yalinguth (meaning “yesterday”).

Fitzroy was Melbourne’s first suburb, created in 1839 when the area between Melbourne and Alexandra Parade (originally named Newtown) was subdivided into vacant lots and offered for sale.

Newtown was later renamed Collingwood, and the area now called Fitzroy (west of Smith Street) was made a ward of the Melbourne City Council. On 9 September 1858, Fitzroy became a municipality in its own right, separate from the City of Melbourne. In accordance with the Municipal Act, on 28 September 1858, a meeting of ratepayers was held in ‘Mr Templeton’s schoolroom, George street’ to prepare for a local council election, with Dr Thomas Embling, MLA for Collingwood, presiding. The council election took place two days later and the first councilors were; Thomas Rae, George Symons, Edward Langton, Henry Groom, Benjamin Bell, Edwin Bennett and Thomas Hargreave. The first council meeting, held after the declaration of election, was at the Exchange Hotel, George Street, and Symons was unanimously elected chair.

Surrounded as it was by a large number of factories and industrial sites in the adjoining suburbs, Fitzroy was ideally suited to working men’s housing, and from the 1860s to the 1880s, Fitzroy’s working class population rose dramatically. The area’s former mansions became boarding houses and slums, and the heightened poverty of the area prompted the establishment of several charitable, religious and philanthropic organisations in the area over the next few decades. A notable local entrepreneur was Macpherson Robertson, whose confectionery factories engulfed several blocks and stand as heritage landmarks today.

The Fitzroy Gasworks was erected on Reilly Street (now Alexander Parade) in 1861, dominating the suburb, with the Gasometer Hotel located opposite.

The population of Fitzroy in 1901 was 31,610.