The lot was auctioned in February 1881 and bought by merchant James Alfred Roberts. He immediately commissioned Marion Terrace as an investment, named for his wife. Roberts also commissioned Queen’s Mansions on Beaconsfield Parade in St Kilda (partly extant, very altered) and Roberts House, once situated at 20 Collins Street, Melbourne.
With inherited wealth, Roberts built a successful business empire and real estate portfolio. He was well respected in the horse racing community having launched the sport of trotting in Victoria. He had first encountered trotting in France when he was the Australian Commissioner to the 1878 Paris Exhibition.
The first tender for the terrace went out in July 1881, as well as ads for renters, and by November 1882 The Argus advertised "Handsome new HOUSES, called Marion-terrace, each containing nine rooms, replete with conveniences. Rent, £150."
Rate books for the years 1883-1900 indicate the range of occupations of the residents : gentleman, tailor, jeweller, tea merchant, commercial traveller, artist, tobacconist, actuary, importer and numerous women whose occupation is listed as domestic duties (though in an 1883 advertisement in The Argus, Miss Samuell ‘Pianiste’ offers lessons from Marion Terrace). They also show that all houses had nine rooms (though four houses must have had an extra room in the towers).
By 1887 the terrace was owned by David Henry, and they were sold again in 1891.
A notable resident in 1894 at no 22 was Louis Abraham, of the successful tobacco firm of Sniders & Abraham. He was still living there with his wife Golda and family in December 1903 when he made the news by committing suicide while at work one day, with no apparent reason.
By the 1890s some occupants had given their houses individual names, no.22 was Katoomba, no.28 was Earlscourt, and no.16 was La Mascotte. A real estate photo from the 1920s shows the whole row.
The two northern terraces, nos. 26-28, were replaced with a block of flats; according to a former long term resident they burned down in c1971, and the site remained vacant for some years before the flats were built.
By then probably all the houses were operating as guest or rooming houses, and all of the balconies had been glassed in, in a variety of ways. The original cast-iron was lost, except at no. 16. Beginning in the late 1970s into the early 1980s, as they were sold to become family homes again, the balconies were restored, though only no. 18 used a pattern similar to the original. The other four use a very similar very dense pattern popular c1980, some possibly in aluminium.
