18 Lennon St. Parkville, Victoria, Australia

Melbourne Age 6 July 1988, p. 34. 

The first newspaper mention I have found of this development is the Melbourne Age for 3 Feb 1971 (p. 31) in a listing for a one bedroom flat with a 'garden setting'. It's 'freshly painted', which suggests that it's not a new building (and in any case, it's only one advertised of a much larger development). 'Freshly painted' always makes me think that something terrible has happened there but that's just me. The way in which 18 Lennon St has existed for most of the last 50 years has in any case been I think completely dominated by the Tullamarine Freeway. 

You can see Lennon St innocently sitting there enjoying the babbling brook of Moonee Ponds Creek and without an inkling of what is about to hit it when the freeway finally comes through. This is from the Melways 1966. Try to reconcile the above with this. Google Earth has trouble even finding Lennon St in that mess, and as for 18 Lennon, it really has no frontage anymore (I suppose it's possible that the wall you see in the above image, taken a couple of days ago, once fronted a street; now it fronts a human-scale fence which fronts a massive wall which shields the people of Lennon st from a Tullamarine Freeway off-ramp). This is it in 1971:

To me the issue is probably ultimately: since the 18 Lennon development probably dates from the late 1960s, did the people who created it know that it was going to be facing onto a freeway (I'm guessing it wasn't walled off until much later)? Is the open space to kind of mitigate the noise/fumes from the freeway? 

Another question I have, which has nothing to do with internal reserves, is: was this development hedging its bets about the value of being so close to the freeway (and thereby, the airport - probably ten minutes away in the early 70s)? 

The 18 Lennon St space is, incidentally, quite well maintained and seems like a peaceful enough enclave, notwithstanding the extreme awkwardness of its positioning/access. I would have liked to show you some images of how the units face into the space but they have big windows, it seems invasive to residents to photograph. It has presumably always been rental (don't quote me on that).