Learn how to research the history of your house or a prominent Melbourne building using the Library’s collection of architectural drawings, maps and online tools.
There are a number of resources you can use to trace the history of your house.
The boxes below outline a number of these resources looking at different aspects of house research, including who lived there and the architecture of the house. Use the tabs across the top of each box to help you navigate through the resources.
The boxes to the right of the screen outline how you might research the history of your local area, and some relevant resources held at other institutions.
Generally, information is more readily available for houses built pre World War Two.
A good place to start your research is by searching the catalogue and the Australiana index, to check for any references to your house. Try searching for the full address, or if that returns no results, the street name and suburb. Some resources you might find include auction plans, maps, pictures and books.
The available resources may vary depending on the age, location and size of your house. Various resources will yield different information.
Post office and telephone directoriesPost office and telephone directories are useful for confirming when and where a person resided at a particular address. Please note that listings were neither compulsory nor free - so if a name does not appear in the directory, it does not necessarily mean that the person did not live at that address.
A range of directories, including early Port Phillip directories (1839-1867) and the Sands and McDougall directories (1857-1974) are held at the State Library Victoria. One out of every five years can be accessed online through our Popular digitised collections page.
The Directories page of our Researching your Victorian ancestors research guide features a list of directories and access information. On the research guide you will find a PDF document that lists the State Library’s holdings of regional Victorian directories.
A section of directories can be found in the Ancestry database, within the collection Australia, City Directories, 1845-1948.
You can also access digitised copies for 1868-1899 through the University of Melbourne Digitised collections.
Rate books usually contain the names of the owner and the occupant, their occupation, address, date, description of property and rate assessed.
A number of Victorian rate books are held at the State Library Victoria. A selection of rate books for Melbourne and regional Victoria can be found on the Ancestry database.
Go to the Rate Books page of our Researching your Victorian ancestors research guide for further information, including a PDF document of rate book collections held in other locations.
Rate book collections are also held at:
A range of land certificates can be purchased from the Victorian Government’s Landata website, including:
Copies of Property Sales History reports (1972 onwards) and valuation reports can also be purchased from Landata.
Copies of titles can also be viewed in the Reading Room of the Public Record Office Victoria (PROV). To view the relevant title at PROV you need to know the relevant volume and folio number. Early land titles, deeds and application numbers can also be obtained from PROV. Information on how to access these records can be found on their Certificates of title (1862-1996) website.
Township, parish or county plans record information about the transfer of land from the Crown (the Government) to private ownership or lease-hold. These plans show the boundaries of each property and mark the first owner/lease-holder to take possession of the land, but do not indicate the names of subsequent owners or leaseholders.
The State Library of Victoria has an extensive collection of over 10,000 plans, many of which have been digitised. Go to this page of our Maps for local and family history research guide for instructions on how to find plans in the catalogue.
The Public Record Office also holds an extensive collection of plans. The following guides will help you access their records.
Newspapers contain information on land sales, real estate developments, specific buildings and designs. They may also contain articles on the people who lived in a particular property.
Trove provides access to digitised copies of more than 350 Victorian and 1000 Australian newspapers from 1803 to 1954. Try searching the Trove digitised newspaper database for the address of the house i.e. "23 Malvern Road" Armadale. In many cases street numbers were not included in articles. In these cases try searching for just the street and suburb. If you’ve already verified the names of previous owners try including their name i.e. Jones “Dorset Road" Boronia.
Or try a broader search for the name of the street and/or suburb together with such keywords as property, house, homes, estate. Then limit the results to the year that you are researching.
The State Library collects all Victorian newspapers, including suburban, regional and country newspapers. If you cannot find anything on Trove and you have an estimated date and event, you can arrange to view microfilm or hard copy historic newspapers in the library. More information can be found on our How to find newspapers research guide.
The following publication provides an excellent introduction to Australian house styles:
Australian house styles / Maisy Stapleton & Ian Stapleton - Mullumbimby, N.S.W. : Flannel Flower Press [2010]
Recognising house styles, 1880s-1990s / Laurie Burchell - Chronologically organised from 1883 to 1992, this book uses photographs and diagrams to highlight the distinctive features of Victorian housing styles.
Melbourne's Building Styles - This PDF, produced by property researchers Secret Agent, provides a brief overview of Melbourne's housing styles, including construction methods and styles spanning early Victorian to the 1990s.
What House is That? from Heritage Victoria, also provides an overview of Victoria's housing styles. It provides details such as interior and exterior design features of certain house styles, what garden designs would have been like in the period, and what original colours may have been used.
Pamphlet of useful information for persons wishing to either build, borrow, or invest. Universal Building Societies. Melbourne: Banks & McDougall, 1883.
Our Inter-war Houses: how to recognise, restore and extend houses of the 1920 and 1930s. Bryce Raworth. National Trust of Australia.
If you know the name of the architect, try searching for records in the State Library’s catalogue, in Trove or the University of Melbourne’s Architecture, Building and Planning Library catalogue. The University of Melbourne Archives also holds collections of architectural drawings.
More information about architectural drawings held by State Library Victoria can be found in the Architectural Drawings tab of this guide.
From 1895 until the mid-1950s, the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) surveyed the whole of metropolitan Melbourne. These plans outline the building, roads and other features of suburban Melbourne. More information can be found here.
These plans can be helpful for identifying when a house was built, identifying original features and subsequent changes to a house, and for getting a sense of the surrounding area.
The State Library holds an extensive collection of MMBW plans, many of which have been digitised.
Search tips:
The State Library’s picture collection documents the pictorial history of Victoria and its people from the early years of the colony to the present day.
These images can show you how towns or streets looked in an earlier time and may include nearby landmarks, hotels and shops, churches and parks.
Search the State Library’s catalogue or Trove digitised images of the street or town where your property is situated.
Search tips:
Public libraries and historical societies often have wonderful collections of images for their area, including many images that have not been digitised. Be sure to explore their collections.
The State Library holds many auction posters created by real estate agents to promote land sales around Melbourne and, to a lesser extent, across the state. These plans include maps, promotions for new housing estates and sometimes suggested house designs.
Search our catalogue using the name of your street, suburb and the keyword auction i.e. McBain Altona Auction.
Find out more about Auction plans here.
The numbering and names of streets may change over time. Street directories are useful for identifying these changes. The State Library holds many directories including:
Many editions of the Moulton's, Morgan's and Collins' directories can be viewed online through the State Library website. Find out more about our Street directories collection here.
The University of Melbourne has digitised copies of the Melway street directory from 1966 onwards.
The Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) is the archive of the State Government of Victoria; it also holds many local government records. At PROV, you can find a range of land and property records. Go to:
Or browse their online publications:
Local councils are responsible for identifying and protecting places of local heritage significance. These places are usually identified through a heritage study. Many of these heritage studies can be found online via council websites, at State Library Victoria, or in local libraries.
Try searching the library catalogue for the words heritage study along with the name of the suburb or area e.g. heritage study richmond
Planning schemes online provides access to all approved planning schemes in Victoria. These are very useful for locating planning zones, and also heritage places within local areas. Heritage places of local significance are usually identified in the local planning scheme as part of a ‘heritage overlay’. The planning schemes identify them through maps.
Use Trove to explore the collections of Australian libraries, archives and museums. Through Trove you can locate books, manuscripts, photographs, maps and thousands of digitised items.
Once you have researched your home, we recommend you consider researching the history of the town or region where the property is situated. This will give you a better understanding of what life was like for the people who lived in that area at a particular time.
Many public libraries have separate research collections of local history material. Visit the relevant public library and talk to staff about the resources that are available.
Public Libraries Victoria has a Find a Library webpage that can help you locate the library service that is most relevant to the area that you are researching.
Historical and family history societies have unique collections of material local to the area, including published and unpublished works, local indexes, guides, histories, photographs and maps. Most of these societies are staffed by volunteers who have in-depth knowledge of the area, and can offer expert advice.
The following lists can help you to locate a society:
To research the Indigenous history of your area, explore the following State Library resources:
Some useful guides to researching the history of houses:
This page, on pricing chronology from another SLV research guide, lists resources by date, the median house price range from the 1970's onwards, research papers and includes a great photo of a house crossing a channel!
