8 July 2017, updated 2025:

McPhersons Showroom, Collins Street (near Spencer), 1936 (top floor 1938), Stuart P Calder with Reid&Pearson; built for the implement and tool makers, these huge long display windows were filled with #nutsandbolts and things like a #ballbearingbandsaw. Very stylish home for such products, and externally amazingly intact. This building is often said to be very European modern, like #ErichMendelsohn maybe, and I reckon it is, it’s not your ordinary #artdeco. Love the little flick out at one end, and the little tower at the other.

At the time it was noted how the columns were set back, so the windows were uninterrupted and the walls above appeared unsupported. Inside it was a double height space, with stairs opposite the entrances to a mezzanine, with the display windows behind timber panelling, so it was all lit from above. There’s an oval light well above the office lobby, don’t know if that’s original.

Calder also did the fabbo Hawthorn Football Club grandstand, but not much else very notable, maybe he never got the chance.

After McPhersons was sold a few years ago, even though it’s on the Heritage Register, I was surprised it wasn’t facaded for an apartment tower, it was instead restored, with a Deco style food court in the ground level, called #Mcphersons, which is nice.

Update : by 2021, the food court seems to have closed, reopening late last year as an Italian ‘food hub’, with 25 stalls selling pretty much all the Italian things.

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