When gold was discovered in Victoria in 1851, Melbourne's population swelled faster than housing could be built, and prefabricated iron cottages became one solution to the shortage. Ordered from British catalogues, dismantled, labelled and shipped in crates, these houses could be assembled by almost anyone without specialist skills. By 1855, South Melbourne alone counted nearly 100 such portable buildings, mostly clustered around Coventry Street. Patterson House, at 399 Coventry Street, is the last of these houses remaining on its original site, erected in 1853 for local speculator Robert Patterson. Two further cottages, Abercrombie House and Bellhouse, were relocated to the same site from North Melbourne and Fitzroy to save them from demolition, and together the three houses form the Portable Iron Houses museum, now cared for by the National Trust of Australia (Victoria). Visitors can explore all three houses on self-guided tours during monthly open days, with National Trust volunteers on hand to answer questions and a short video explaining the housing crisis that led to their construction. The interiors give a rare glimpse into the cramped, practical conditions faced by early Melbourne settlers, from timber-lined iron walls to the compact room layouts of the six-roomed cottages. The site is of international significance as one of the few remaining examples of the prefabricated iron building trade of the 1840s and 1850s, a technology reportedly of interest even to Prince Albert at London's Great Exhibition of 1851.