This is what the GPO looked like for it’s first 20 years – for ages I had assumed they just stopped without the top floor and with a stumpy tower – but actually it was meant to be like that, almost. It was #CrouchAndWilson that won an 1858 competition (2nd image), and #AEJohnson got second (3rd image), but #AEJohnson was then employed by the #publicworkdepartment in 1859, and by 1861 had come up with a ‘completely new design’, which looks to me mostly like the winner. But when it was opened in 1867, they were expecting that ‘tenders will soon be let’ to finish, as in 4th image, for the central top bay and mansard roof, the top bits of the tower (why was that left off??), and the whole north end, but it never happened. Instead, 20 years later, in 1887 Johnson designed extensions, when they went up, rather than back, and the top floor and tower were built, more #2ndEmpire, and quite satisfying, leaving the north end still just a brick wall.
(Until in 2004 a modern extension was built, making the whole thing shops.)
Storey of Melbourne 