2021, updated 2026

This is the amazing but long gone Equitable Building, nw cnr of Collins and Elizabeth. It was designed about 1890, and took 6 years to build, out of load bearing granite and thick brick walls and an internal steel frame (I think).

It was designed by Edward E Raht, German born, Paris trained, and who had worked in New York from the 1870s. In 1888, instead of getting the job of enlarging Equitable’s NY HQ, he got the job to do outposts in Melb and Sydney. The Melb one is very grand, more or less classical, whereas the Sydney one built at the same time is quite Romanesque (and still there, pic 2).

Leafing through my ‘New York 1880’ book, with everything important built 1870-1890, I can see now that ours was very much at the cutting edge of what was going on in NY at the time, and really quite fine by comparison. The Romanesque Revival was just dying out to be replaced by Classical (and much taller).

The NY Equitable HQ (pic 3) was Second Empire, rather fussy by comparison (enlarged twice from something more elegant). Others in NY ranged from gridded to stacked, and there were plenty of Romanesque too. Meanwhile in Chicago they were perfecting the expressed grid, the last pic is the very famous 1885 Home Insurance, the first all steel frame, though it doesn’t really show.

And yes it was criminal it was demolished (at huge effort) in 1959, but that was 15 before heritage listing was legislated, and when huge elaborate office buildings were seen as inefficient and even ugly. Every one of the NY buildings has gone too, except 7, with extra floors, and 8.

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