Carlton

Carlton is an inner-northern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, immediately adjoining Melbourne's Central Business District.

Carlton is an inner-northern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, immediately adjoining Melbourne's Central Business District. Its local government area is the City of Melbourne.

Carlton is known nationwide for its Little Italy precinct centred on Lygon Street, for its preponderance of 19th-century Victorian architecture and its garden squares including the Carlton Gardens, the latter being the location of the Royal Exhibition Building, one of Australia's few man-made sites with World Heritage status.

Due to its proximity to the University of Melbourne, the CBD campus of RMIT University and the Fitzroy campus of Australian Catholic University, Carlton is also home to one of the highest concentrations of university students in Australia.

Carlton was founded in 1851 at the beginning of the Victorian Gold Rush, with the Carlton Post Office opening on 19 October 1865. In the 1930s, many of the homes on the streets in Carlton were known to be slum pockets and owned by poor residents. In the 1960s, residents were forced to sell their homes to the Housing Commission of Victoria, since then some areas of Carlton have been under residential and commercial redevelopment, while other areas survived and have remained remarkably intact.Squizzy Taylor an Australian gangster was wounded in a gunfight with a rival gangster, John "Snowy" Cutmore, in 1927 at a house in Barkly Street, Carlton and later died at St Vincent's Hospital.In the 1970s, Carlton was the site of three green bans, one on abandoned land where local residents wanted a park and a developer wanted a warehouse, now the Hardy-Gallagher Reserve (named after Labor councillor Fred Hardy and Norm Gallagher). Another which converted a vacant lot on Cardigan street to a park and another that saved local terrace housing.The Carlton Magistrates' Court closed on 1 February 1985.