Becoming industrial: Building, rebuilding and reinventing Cremorne and South Richmond, c1885–1930

Abstract This article examines the economic, social, and morphological changes associated with the arrival, consolidation, and expansion of two major manufacturing complexes in inner Melbourne from the 1880s to the 1930s. Archival and primary sources that generate spatial data are used to consider workplace issues and the urban environmental impacts of industrialisation. We argue that while in keeping with new historiographies that emphasise global processes, historians must remain attuned to the localised impacts of economic change for people living in neighbourhoods that undergo such transformations.