20 April 2025

Some long gone Collins Street elegance next door to the Melbourne Club. This building went through many changes: the first pic is 1950s, showing it as Pasteur House, a 1927 refurb of a row of terraces, turning it into a medical chambers with a central entrance. Designed by Neville Hollinshed (who later did Her Majesty’s), it modernised the services to create suites for the kinds of professionals who already occupied it. Before that, they had had a top floor do over in 1890, and the balconies added only 10 years before that. They were originally built as a row of relatively low ceilinged bluestone fronted terraces, perhaps in the 1850s/60s.

It was all demolished in c1974 for an office building designed by J Dale Fisher (I think), with a fun zig zag front, and creating a walk through, but on the other hand it’s a bit too tall, and how did they get to stick so much of it out over the footpath ? All photos via Facebook or the internet.

This post was prompted by @spotpuff003 who told a story of knowing some people living there in the 60s, and it was a warren of small rooms, plus a huge bathroom with willow-type patterned cistern, very Victorian.

Spotpuff :

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