Bennetts Lane

Bennetts Lane was classified as a public lane. Sometimes Bennet Lane. 

Status: named pre-1856. What appears to be the unlabeled southern entry to a laneway can be seen on the 1853 map "Contours">https://prov.vic.gov.au/archive/83D9B1FF-F843-11E9-AE98-A16788BE2840">Contours from Contoured Plan of Part of the City of Melbourne" and on the map "The">http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/119520">The most complete popular and mercantile map of Melbourne (1853?)".

Located at or near: 132-134 Little Lonsdale St.

Probable or possible origin of name: Robert Bennett, Melbourne mayor, 1861-1862.

Location is approximate.

For more information, see: Bate, W., Broome, R., Davis, N., May, A. J., & Stitt, H. (2024). The story of Melbourne’s lanes: Essential but unplanned (pp. 90, 156, 166, 53, 91, 152). ISBN 978-1-875173-12-9.

"By the end of the 1990s, laneways and sm Mistreet had become a key locus for Melbournes burgeoning bar culture, with Misty-S Hosier Lane, behind the 78G building), Meyers Place (20 Meyers Place, the prototype new-school Melbourne bar, opened in 1994 by Six Degrees Architects in a defunct hair salon), Hell's Kitchen (20 Centre Place), the Gin Palace (Russell Place), Becco (11 Crossley Street, opened 1996), Rue Bebelons (267 Little Lonsdale Street, closed 2013), Hairy Canary (212 Little Collins Street, 1997-2017), Double-O (Sniders Lane), and Troika (106 Little Lonsdale Street) being touted as some of the most popular.Tiny', hidden, secret, and intimate' were becoming the catchphrase descriptors of a new culture of reclusive or rooftop venues that signalled Melbourne's late 1990s renaissance. Bennetts Lane, the eponymous jazz club, a catalyst for local performers as well as hosting international acts, opened in a lane off Little Lonsdale Street in 1992 (closed 2017). St Jerome's, opened in 2004 on the site of The Old Swiss Café in Caledonian Lane, and closed 2009, spawned the eponymous St Jerome's Laneway Festival, a concept later expanded to other Australian cities.Similarly, fashion labels such as Alice Euphemia (Cathedral Arcade, Flinders Lane 1997-2014), often run as collectives championing young independent designers, opened retail stores in Melbourne's more discreet arcades and lanes." p. 166.