All glass on Collins Street

7 November 2024

I’ve always like 100 Collins Street, or is that I’ve always known it was the first proper curtain wall in Melbourne, and so very 50s ? It must have come as a bit of a shock to Melburnians popping up in the Paris end in 1955, all shiny blue glass amongst the low mainly prewar buildings. Designed by JA LaGerche, it’s a proper glass box, being on a corner, with the columns set back so it looks very sheer. It’s 12 floors, built up to the 132ft height limit then still in force. There’s an odd detail up top on the side with a few floors stepping back, no idea why.

It was also known as Gilbert Court, in honour of Gilbert Walsh, who was going to develop it but died in 1951, and wife Peggy Walsh sold the site on the condition it would be named after him. She also owned the ground floor shops and kept one for her eponymous millinery business. Pics 3 is 1959, 4 is c1955, both @library_vic.

The shopfronts at 100 Collins Street (JA LaGerche, 1955) are pretty intact, which is great given the building wasn’t properly listed separately until 2023. In fact renovations for Jimmy Choo this time last year got them a bit closer to original; the base which was 90s grey granite tiles (pic 2, 2011) is now a pale stone, more like the original, though that looks like it was marble, in smaller blocks. They seem to have kept the aluminium or perhaps steel window frames, and all the door recesses, but on the other hand kept none of the frameless doors, in fact pretending 2 were never there. And it’s all bare luxe elegance rather than three different shops, but it all looks nice.

The entrance was also altered in the 90s, the panels either side once a deep blue enamel. Seems the tendency is always for less detail less colour. Maybe one day it’ll all swing back. Pic 3 and B&W, Graeme Butler, 1982, via Melb Libraries, which shows the shops then were Janil Coffee Lounge (also there in 1959!), Frederick Muller hairdresser, and Ronald Bernarde’s, ladies hats purses etc. Hmm all three had European names, classy.

25 May 2025

Coates Building at 20 Collins Street, the most transparent of Melbourne’s early curtain office blocks, and a fave (the glass is actually slightly green). No aircon so no dropped ceilings that needed solid spandrels to hide them (hence the attached aircons). It was however a design choice to have the glass go right to the floor, rather than a solid panel, and to have the roof balustrade as part of the curtain wall too! Whereas the side wall visible down the lane behind is solid with rectangular steel framed windows.

Completed in 1959, it made a stir as only the second ‘glass house’ after 100 Collins Street just down the road, completed 1955, both designed by JA La Gerche, and pretty much his only notable work. Built and owned by a cooperative of which La Gerche himself was a member, it was intended as medical suites, so had some ‘mechanical ventilation’ and opening windows and slab heating coils. The 1956 design had a different first floor, but not built that way, you just look straight up at desks etc.

Heritage listed properly as part of the 2023 Hoddle grid review, where I got the sketch and info. It was reported in the same year that some developers had bought up units and now have control, so it might end up as a modernist facade with a new tower behind, and meanwhile two of the three shops have been empty since covid. I remember in the 90s you could take the lift and press ‘roof’ and the door would open straight out onto the roof, and you could peer down Collins street ! My pics 2013,14.