Original post 15 April 2019:

The Beehive Building, Elizabeth Street, 1935. Love how architect #JosephPlottel took the vertical proportions and said, nah, let’s go horizontal ! Plottel was pretty prolific in the interwar years, best known for his many flats in a range of styles from Tudor to modernist, and the excellent #FootscrayTownHall. This is one of the many #tallthinbuildings found in the #melbCBD, about two terrace house lots wide, quite deep, and 12 storeys built up to the #132ftheightlimit. An article from 1934 said: ‘The style will be modernistic.’, and that it would be ‘white atlas cement with coloured terra cotta dressings.’ -that last bit would be the green columns, so the rest was meant to be whiteish, but I like the shades of green/grey.

13 February 2024

The Beehive Building, 94 Elizabeth Street. Maybe Plottel went horizontal so he could sneak a bit more floor area with those bay windows. With the light courts and lifts, it’s really just a big room front and back, but then businesses in those days sometimes just needed one or two rooms, and to be central. (I always think of The Lucy Show and her employment agency that just had two rooms). Looks like altered a fair bit inside judging from real estate photos. Stair might be original, not sure.

Instagrm comments :

preciouspolly : My father was the Caretaker there in the 60’s and 70’s. We lived in a flat on the roof. In those days every floor had a long passage running from the front of the building to the back and all the offices-businesses on each floor ran off the passage so there were lots of tenants in the building. Also back then there was no sprinkler system if there was a fire. One lift was operated manually by a driver and the other was automatic. There were a lot of manufacturing businesses in the building at that time. Rag trade, jewellery, rubber stamps.

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