20 August 2021

A short survey of what was lost for the #melbournecitysquare – and before sounding off at @cityofmelbourne, note that the wonderful Victoria Buildings and #QueensWalkArcade on the corner were bought, and demolished by a developer in 1966, and it was only then Council decided to buy it and put the much talked about city square here- if they hadn’t, we’d probably have a 60s skyscraper there.

Council then over the next 5 or so years bought and demolished the rest, about a dozen buildings altogether. From the Victorian Cathedral Hotel, to the Edwardian Greens Building (with AMPOL sign on top), and the Art Deco Wentworth Building next to the Regent, which had the Regent Place laneway next to it, where Tim The Toyman was (so I’m told).

So a rather dense and much used part of the city became the rather open and less used city square by 1980, deemed a failure, rebuilt 1997-2000, and that one demolished in 2017 for the Melb Metro, does anyone miss it ? I mean the trees and grass along Swanston Street were nice, but the rest of it ? Do we need it, now we’ve got Fed Square ? Maybe we should rebuild all that was lost. 🤓

The two little buildings between the Cathedral Hotel and the strangely tall Greens Building. Looks like they were both originally Edwardian, but by the time of the last two photos in 1966, they’d both been simplified, the left one maybe recently, the right one looks maybe 1930s. Greens itself looks c1905, typically tall arched red brick, but with a rather tall spiky parapet.

Comments after 2024, 2025 repost

12 December 2020

Wentworth House was one of the earliest examples of Art Deco in Melbourne, being completed in Feb 1930 (though it’s also a bit #StrippedClassical). Hoyts owned this site as well as the Regent, and it was going to be 10 storeys and classical, but was started some time after the Regent was, and came out shorter and a different style, a rather better result I think.

They left a gap between the two, creating Regent Walk, which connected with a lane behind (where Tim the Toyman was), and Hilliers Soda Fountain was in this building on the corner next to the Regent.

I don’t know where I found the first image, looks like a magazine from when it was finished, the others are later. I love the last one, #Aeolian is some kind of classical reference to music.

August 2026

Great photo of the Cathedral Hotel that once stood on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane from c1950. This turned up on Facebook from the Public Records Office, the best of many pics of it from other sources.

It was opened in 1883, and designed by George Johnson, who did numerous town halls hotels and theatres, this one grand but not wildly elaborate, but it surprisingly came in for some criticism as ‘florid in the extreme’.

It was demolished in c1968 for the City Square, along with about 10 other buildings. You can see three up flinders lane alone. The plain one on the right was a radical simplification of an older warehouse in 1935 by Sam Atyeo, as featured by Robin Boyd in Victorian Modern in 1947.

Found an article by Keith Dunstan Nov 1968 saying one of the bars was purchased by the Swan Hill Pioneer Museum, but can’t work out whether it’s actually there.

All pics via Facebook. Original research using Trove.

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