Carlton North

Carlton North is an inner suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 4 km north from Melbourne's Central Business District.

Carlton North is an inner suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 4 km north from Melbourne's Central Business District. Its local government areas are theMelbourne and Yarra. At the 2016 Census, Carlton North had a population of 6,300.The suburb is bordered by Princes Street and Cemetery Road to the south, Royal Parade to the west, Nicholson Street to the east and Park Street to the north. Carlton North is home to the Melbourne General Cemetery and the Princes Park, which contains the Princes Park Football Ground.

Its main commercial area is along Rathdowne Street, which has numerous cafés, restaurants, small fashion boutiques, bookshops and other businesses.

Today, Carlton North, like other inner-northern suburbs of Melbourne, contains a mixture of white-collar professionals, bureaucrats and academics. The area has become more gentrified than Fitzroy North, Brunswick or Collingwood, resulting in significantly higher median property prices.

Carlton North has its origins with the allotment of the Melbourne General Cemetery in 1853. Previous cemetery sites at Flagstaff Gardens and (what is now) Queen Victoria Market had become full, thus the new Carlton North site was established. In the same year a prison stockade, Collingwood Stockade, was built on Lee Street. This subsequently became an asylum until 1873 when it became the area's first primary school. A bluestone quarry was established at what is now Curtain Square. Subdivision into residential blocks began in 1869, with the emerging brick terrace houses standing in contrast to Carlton's timber cottages. Princes Park was established in 1844 and became home to the Carlton Football Club in 1864.

Cable tram lines were installed along Lygon Street, Rathdowne Street, and Nicholson Street in the 1880s. The Lygon and Nicholson street routes were subsequently converted to electric traction, but the Rathdowne Street route was closed in 1936 and replaced with buses. The area was also serviced by the Inner Circle railway line (passenger services were ceased in 1948 although it remained a goods line until 1980). However Carlton North station was located in Princes Hill and no railway station was ever built in Carlton North.