Tag: cbd
1 June 2021 Excellent shot of the 1887 #NewZealandChambers one of the Rialto-Olderfleet group of buildings, from 1984, now with a #damntree in front. It was taken by Graeme Butler for the CBD heritage data sheets, when it had just been restored (and has just been done again by @lovellchen, at the same time the … Continue reading New Zealand Chambers
Original post 6 October 2019: One of the more peculiar #midcenturymodern #officebuildings in the city is this one at 406 Lonsdale Street. It was built speculatively by the AMP society in 1958, up to the then still in force 132ft height limit. It was designed by Bates Smart McCutcheon, who were busily also designing a … Continue reading AMP, Lonsdale Street, 1958
Original post 18 July 2020 Photos 20 June Great little #ArtDeco #shopfront in #littlecollinsstreet in the Royal Arcade building; don’t know date or designer. One of melbourne's most striking #artdeco #shopfront. So #modernist looks like might be new repro, but no its 30s. It's a shopfront inthe edwardian rebuild of the #littlecollinsstreet back end of … Continue reading Art Deco shopfront, Little Collins Street.
Original post 11-13 July 2020 Photos 20 June The exterior of the #ManchesterUnityBuilding is Gothic/Deco, but the interiors are fully #ArtDecostyle; zigzags and chevrons and little delicate patterns. But there’s some oddities too, showing maybe architect #MarcusBarlow hadn’t quite fully grasped how the style was usually executed - there’s a sort of flat pink marble … Continue reading Manchester Unity Building lobby
Original post 8 July 2020 This grand building for the ‘Australian Church’ once stood on #FlindersStreet near Spring though - the 1887 sketch is all I knew of it, and I wondered if it had ever been built. Then @heraldsunphoto_retro popped up with a great photo from c1900, showing it next to Griffiths Teas, and … Continue reading The Australian Church, Flinders Street, 1887-1920s
Original post 1 July 2020 The Fourth Victoria Building (society) in #collinsstreet is a rebuild of an 1880s building by architect #RobertHaddon in #1912 adding two floors, and a new plain facade, which #RobinBoyd described as a ‘fairly wheezy’ first breath of functionalism in Melbourne, but really it’s a fairly direct influence of the #ViennaSecession, … Continue reading Fourth Victoria Building, Collins Street
Original post 2 November 2019 Photos 1 October 2019 #LaurensHouse in #LonsdaleStreet is a building that just wasn’t highlighted until the @nationaltrustvic started doing a review of CBD post war stuff a few years ago, and I said (or maybe it was someone else) said what about this one with the 50s #pinktiles? Turns out … Continue reading Cute tiled postwar office block by – Harry Bloom (!)
Original post 2 February 2020 Photos 1 October 2019 Eagle House in #BourkeStreet was completed in 1972, and replaced #OxfordChambers of the previous post. Designed by supreme Modernists #YunckenFreeman it’s actually #LateModern, when it was all about slick surfaces, and this is the stand out example, and so it’s on the #VictorianHeritageRegister. I nominated it … Continue reading Late Modernism in Bourke Street – Eagle House, 1972
December 2019 There's this excellent Milky Way Cafe photo in the State Library Collection - but what ? where ? Well it was designed by Mewton & Grounds, and this is from the Wikipedia entry for Geoffrey Mewton (which I just wrote): “This was followed in 1934 by the Milky Way at 300 #LittleCollinsStreet, a … Continue reading Thoroughly Modern Milk Bar
November 2019, updated 2025 The fantastic long demolished Fish Markets once at the far end of Flinders Street; one of the great loses, but then in the 1950s there was no such thing as heritage listing, and Victoriana was actively disliked. Ive collected a whole bunch of images, mainly via Facebook, mainly originally the State … Continue reading Fish Market, Flinders Street
If the Nazi's never took power, would Berlin have Europe's tallest skyscraper and East Prussia be a honeymoon destination ?
Storey of Melbourne 