Built in 1924 and restored a hundred years on, the walls that hold In The Brick have a story longer than ours.
Most buildings on this street were knocked down and rebuilt twice over. This one was not. It still stands in the same double-brick walls it was raised in, more than a century ago, on a street that has carried St Kilda’s traffic since the cable trams ran in 1891.
We did not build In The Brick so much as uncover it. When you stay or take a treatment here, you are inside a 1924 structure that was stripped back to its raw brick, repaired by hand, and given a second life. This is the story of what the building was, how it came to us, and the designer who brought it back.
The building went up in 1924 as a red-brick sanctuary. Affectionately and historically known as “Taj Mahal” flats, it was a place built for gathering – registered as an Arts & Crafts building, made to outlive the people who raised it. That intent shows in every wall. They are double-brick throughout, three to four times thicker and stronger than the single-skin walls of most buildings today.
St Kilda was a different place then. Wellington Street had been a main artery since the Windsor cable tram line opened along it in October 1891, lined by houses, hotels and shopfronts. Through the 1920s the street filled in with brick apartment blocks and civic buildings constructed in the solid, hand-laid style of the period. Number 22 was one of them, and unlike most of its neighbours, its facade has never been touched.
“All the walls are double brick. Three to four times thicker and stronger than the buildings of today.”
By the time the building came to us, the roof had fourteen leaking spots. Water had run through the structure for years. The interior linings were gone, the finishes ruined. What remained was what had always done the real work: the brick walls, and the structural timber and steel inside them.
The leadlight windows survived too, and they are the most beautiful original feature in the building. Hand-set glass, held in lead, throwing coloured light across the brick exactly as it did in 1924. We were determined to keep them. They stayed.
In 2018, the building was bought by the team behind In The Brick Spa & Hotel. The plan was never to gut it and start again. It was the opposite: to read what the building already was, and work with it.
The name came from the building itself. The interior was deconstructed back to the raw brick structural walls, until the whole place read as a single block of brick. That image, a building you could hold in one hand as a solid mass of clay, is where In The Brick began.
The work started by taking the building back to nothing but its bones: brick, timber, steel. Everything that had failed was removed. Everything sound was kept and repaired. The roof was sealed, all fourteen leaks closed, and the walls that the water had damaged were brought back.
The hardest part was timing. The restoration ran straight into Covid-19. Supply, trades and access all became obstacles overnight, and a project that depended on hands-on craft had to push through the slowest possible period to get them. It did.
“Cherish every object next to you. Reuse it, and give it new life.”
That philosophy runs through the whole building. The fit-out leans on reclaimed timber, steel and materials repurposed from old warehouses, set against the original brick. Nothing was bought new where something old could do the job better.
The result is a building that feels its age in the right way. Heavy walls. Warm, worked timber. Light coming through hundred-year-old glass. You are meant to feel the brick around you, because the brick is the point.
In The Brick is Byron Tang’s project, carried from raw brick to finished hotel. He led the design and the build, and stayed close to it through every stage. His instinct is to connect a building to living things: plants, landscape, the way light and growth change a space.
“Nature inspires me most,” he says. “The plants are so different across five continents. Landscapes and plants can change a country’s colour and shape. I like connecting with living plants.” That eye for what is alive, set against a hundred-year-old brick shell, is what gives In The Brick its feel.
He also credits the people who run the place. Asked what he is most proud of, his answer is the management, and the work Sophie has done to make the building function as a hotel rather than just stand as one.
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Spa:
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Open Daily
We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land where we work and live. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. We celebrate the stories, culture and traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders of all communities who also work and live on this land.
© 2026 In The Brick Spa & Hotel – operated by 4 Darling Pty Ltd. ABN 66 168 264 677
