If you don’t recognise this I don’t blame you – the #QueensCoffeePalace on the corner of Victoria Street and #RathdowneStreet was there for 70 years but there aren’t many photographs.
Designed by #OakdenAddisonAndKemp in ‘German Renaissance’ style, it was built to houses guests going to the #CentennialExhibition in 1888, but never opened. It became ‘residential apartments’ instead, until it was finally sold in 1929 to the Catholic Church as St Anne’s girls hostel. It was demolished probably in the mid 60s, and then a nice little modernist office block built, occupied by the Cancer Council from 1972, itself about to be demolished.
First image from @nationaltrustvic (possibly while being demolished), 2nd c1888 (I think someone has coloured a print from an illustrated newspaper), 3rd detail from c1910 @library_vic, 4th Museums Victoria, last 1961 @cityofmelbourne, Thanks @auntyfrank for the last 3.
Update March 2023: The Cancer Council sold up and left in 2013, the developers being very slow to do anything, and their 13 storey proposal was rejected by the @cityofmelbourne late last year as too tall (though the st Vincent’s research building exactly that high and no setbacks got a permit across the park, but then controls in Carlton are stricter). Images: real estate sites.
Storey of Melbourne 