Brunswick Street is a street in inner northern Melbourne, known for cafés, live music venues and alternative fashion shops. Route Brunswick Street runs north–south through the inner northern Melbourne suburbs of Fitzroy and Fitzroy North, from Victoria Parade at its southernmost end, crossing Gertrude Street and Alexandra Parade through Fitzroy, and north continuing until it reaches St Georges Road in Fitzroy North, near the Edinburgh Gardens; there, its former northward course is continued by a much smaller residential street named Brunswick Street North. Tram route 11 (West Preston to Victoria Harbour) runs along the entire length of Brunswick Street. History Brunswick Street, believed to be named after Captain Brunswick Smythe, owes its origins to Benjamin Baxter, who owned land along Victoria Parade in the recently proclaimed township of Newtown (now Fitzroy South). Baxter owned Crown Allotment 49, which was adjacent to Allotment 48 at the northwest corner of the government roads Victoria Parade and Nicholson Street. In 1839 Baxter subdivided his land into quarters, creating roads between the subdivisions. These became Brunswick Street and Gertrude Street. Initially Brunswick Street only ran as far as what is now Hanover Street, Fitzroy. In 1840, Mr R. S. Webb subdivided Crown Allotment 70, to the north of Baxter's land. This extended Brunswick Street further north to Bell Street (originally known as Hamburg Street). The street was officially proclaimed in 1851, by which time it extended as far as Reilly Street (now Alexandra Parade), at that stage an incomplete open drain. In 1867 allotments in the cleared scrubland to the north of Reilly Street were put up for sale. The Government survey plan included a road in the same alignment as Brunswick Street leading to a cricket ground reserve to the north, but it was unnamed. During residential development in the 1870s, this road became known as Harker Street and was extended as far north as today's Holden Street. In 1876 Harker Street changed its name to Brunswick Street North, but by 1900 the wide Government section south of St Georges Road had dropped the 'North' in its title while the remainder, narrower and offset from the main road due to its formation by private land subdivisions, retained the name Brunswick Street North. Shops had appeared in the southern end of Brunswick Street as early as the 1840s and by 1854 the strip rivaled Bourke Street as a shopping district. After World War II,