The Reverend Charles Yelland was minister at St Saviour’s Church in Oxford Street from its opening until his death in 1891; he was an untiring worker for the poor and noted as a persuasive speaker, although unostentatious in personality.

From the mid-1890s until the early twentieth century, Italian-born artist Sigismondo Zacutti and his musical wife Lilian lived in a wooden house in Victoria Street Abbotsford just near Walmer Street. The house had a long garden sloping down towards the Yarra River, with Studley Park on the opposite bank providing a picturesque backdrop for painting and sketching. The Zacutti house had a veranda facing the river and a summer house in the garden. Here Sigismondo worked in his studio, Lilian gave lessons in singing and piano, and their three youngest children were born.