Elegant 1800s East Melbourne art gallery terrace with rich history and Ned Kelly connection listed

One of East Melbourne’s most elegant terraces houses dating back to the early 1860s has been listed for May 17 auction through Rob Vickers-Willis at Abercromby's Real Estate.

The terrace’s first owner was Thomas Greenwood, a partner in Oddy and Greenwood, fellmongers of Yarra Bank Road.

But the Gipps Street terrace, currently home to Delwyn Freestone’s  Chrysalis Gallery, comes with a striking all-white Classical Italianate Revival façade, the work of renovations in the 1880s by architects Terry and Oakden.

During its 150 years, it’s been the home to the Ormiston Girls School, Australia's first woman medical practitioner Constance Stokes, and to historian Winston Burchett.

In the 1870s it was home to Robert Ramsay, the chief secretary who authorised the trainload of police who went to Glenrowan in 1880 after Ned Kelly.

Ramsay died in 1882, but his widow, Isabelle, secured from the Lord Bishop of Melbourne the adjacent space on its western boundary from the Deanery Reservation, which gave a side entrance and space for a courtyard garden.

It was a rooming house in the 1930s Depression years under the name of Sujama Flats, with its restoration beginning in the 1950s, according to the East Melbourne Historical Society records.

It sold at $920,000 in 1999. Currently $4.5 million plus is expected. 

Chrysalis Gallery will continue to open during the sale of 179 Gipps Street. The gallery will relocate at a date to be confirmed.

The Beechworth home of John Buckley Castieau, the government representative at Ned Kelly's hanging, is also on the market.