12 August 2024

The long gone Menzies Hotel once stood on the se corner of Bourke & William Streets, and was the hotel of choice of the elite from its opening in 1867 into the 1950s.

It went through many additions over the years : the original hotel was 3 floors, designed by Reed & Barnes with curious but distinctive square bell cast corner roofs, and it was the first proper grand hotel in Melbourne, immediately popular with the better off country and international visitors. In 1887, a bit was added on the William Street side, including a new dining room, and then in 1897 a matching section was added on the Bourke Street side, and two more floors overall with a different but still distinctive tower, designed by Twentyman & Askew. Then in 1922 the William Street bit was extended again, with a larger dining room, and rooms with attached baths, which was considered very up to date.

Couldn’t find too many pics of inside, but two from 1895 show the dining room, and the ‘Moorish Court’. Then a delicious ‘winter garden’, part of the larger lounge seen in the next pic, created in 1911, designed by Harold Desbrowe Annear, society architect designing for a society hangout in his take of classical. Then a lounge somewhere in 1930s Art Deco, then old lounge when it was a cocktail bar in 1965. The last is the huge 1922 dining room/function room, also designed by Desbrowe Annear, as it was in 1965.

As Robyn Annear points out, like the other big Victorian city hotels, by the 60s the Menzies had lost custom from the bottom and middle to suburban motels, country people just didn’t stay as long, and the new jet set headed to the Southern Cross, so they sold up and it was demolished in 1969 to make way for the BHP tower, a fine building in its own right. Most photos @library_vic, research mostly mine.

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