Repost 2019:
Recently repainted, #CurtinHouse, #SwanstonStreet, still a sort of #beigebrown scheme, as it has been as long as Ive known it ! Since the 80s, when it was cheap office space, long time home of the ‘genies’, the #GeneologicalSociety, wonder of they’re still around what with ancestry.com etc ? Now of course it’s a ‘#verticallane’ with bars and restaurants and shops and the famous rooftop, which I see now has things on it. The first big city project by #HarryNorris, 1922, for the #TattersallsClub, men who liked horse racing, Cookie is their old club room, they were gone by the late 30s though. It’s a sort of tall but shallow building, or rather L shaped, in rear bit being the #rooftopcinema. The style is sort of early #StippedClassical, with various classical elements but stylised, the thing he did a few years later on the Nicholas Building, but far bolder. As far as i could tell, it’s not named after the ex Prime Minister, it seems to have got the current name a few years after he died in 1945, but I couldn’t find any connection- perhaps the then owners were named Curtin?
Cookie on #SwanstonStreet is a great space, feels very #oldeworlde, and that’s because it is, more or less, since it was originally a #clubroom. The whole building was built by the #TattersallsClub, which was some kind of men’s club associated with #horseracing, in 1922 – though they went bust in the late 30s, when the room was advertised for lease ‘as a clubroom complete with bar and kitchen’, and the building became known as #CurtinHouse in the late 40s. It was designed by a then 34 yo #HarryNorris, his first big commission, not sure what he was thinking here though, the details sort of double-up, the #compositecapitals, hold up a set of brackets, and in two different ways; I guess it makes for a more interesting elaborate ceiling, which fortunately has survived the years – I remember when it was briefly a gallery in the late 90s, a huge empty space with a rough floor with the imprint of the parquetry that had been removed.
Storey of Melbourne 