The Australian Demographer Bernard Salt included the precinct as first among his "favourite places that have been designed by planners" : ""St Vincent Place, Albert Park: Where would such a list start but in my home city of Melbourne? Surely this residential precinct known only to Melburnians must be one of this nation's town planning treasures. Here are two extended but connecting crescents laid out around gardens which are overlooked by double-storey Victorian terrace houses. Designed in the early 1850s, St Vincent Place was virtually a gated community: the well-to-do would promenade around "their public gardens; smaller wooden houses for servants and the working classes were relegated to the lesser enveloping crescents"."