Repost from 2019 :
Alcaston House, top of Collins Street, #AandKHenderson, 1930. It does look splendid, though I’ve heard with the trams it’s pretty noisy. Funny but true that this is the only block of flats built in the city in the interwar period, but I guess the wealthy preferred to live in Toorak or South Yarra (though some people chose to live in city hotels for extended periods). There’s a few hints of Art Deco but it’s mostly classical, including those #classicalmask faces in the #keystones, channeling the architectural history of the fine Victorian houses round the corner in #CollinsStreet. There was a nice but not very well resolved Victorian house here too, the first Alcaston House, built 1869. It was in fact a pair of houses, built for a pair of Drs, Edwin James and W Garrad, James’ was the corner one, which the new Alcaston replaced, leaving the other half behind, visible in the c1930 photo, until it was replaced too in 1939 by ANZAC house. Im sure many of you have been in to the cafe or maybe the dentists, it’s v nice inside too.
The plans from the RVIA Journal Jan 1932:
Update October 2023: Just been informed it was repainted recently and where there were classical masks missing, they’ve been recreated. And they’re of Hygeia and Aesculapius, the Greek gods of healing and good health.
Storey of Melbourne 
Casts of the faces of Hygeia and Aeschylus have been made and the long removed examples that similarly graced the keystones to the three arched windows to Collins Street have been replaced with new casts. While the repainting is an approximation of the original scheme, the retention of the non-original paint scheme to the window frames (maroon instead of the original apple green) and balconettes (black instead of the original royal blue) it looks markedly better!
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Checking the Greek gods, I think it’s Aesculapius not the other hard to spell one.
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Apologies…should read the retention of original scheme to window frames and balconettes is disappointing, it looks markedly better than it did
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I’ll have to see it myself one day ! Great to hear more of those unusual heads there now. Yes Apple green and Royal blue would be nicer. I follow a German instagram account that is mainly 1920s expressionist or modernist places, almost always ‘restored with original colours according to the preservation order’ pity that’s not accepted here.
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It’s worth checking out, Rohan! And I know it wasn’t for want of trying to get the original scheme recreated in full. Bit something clearly went wrong somewhere along the line. The owner’s corporation did stump up for the additional sculpted heads and agreed to remove the rotting canvas awnings which concealed the arched window heads as well…so a partial win!
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