Lost Melbourne: 10 Landmark Buildings
How Melbourne lost it’s most significant buildings
By 1865, Melbourne had overtaken Sydney as Australia’s most populous city. The economic boom of the Victorian ‘gold rush’ peaked during the 1880s and Melbourne had become the richest city in the world.
With it’s fabulous wealth, Melbourne produced some of the world’s most majestic buildings, architectural gems praised the world over, for their style and sophistication, earning Melbourne the reputation of the ‘marvelous’ city status by the Yarra.
Rich in heritage, Melbourne’s classical boom continued largely unabated until the 1950s. However, in the post-war era Melbourne undertook to reinvent itself as a modern city by hosting the 1956 Olympic Games. Melbourne’s Games organisers lead by Charles Rosewell and its civic and state leaders, led by Victorian Premier Henry Bolte championed the cause to renew Melbourne in a fresh modern light.
The tragedy of Melbourne’s modernity culminated in the destruction of 10 landmark buildings, whose architectural heritage rivalled many mid-town Manhattan gems. Between 1965–1978 the heart of Melbourne was literally destroyed by the demolition ball of the Melbourne City Council.
The buildings that were lost during this period, particularly Melbourne’s grand arcades, tore apart the social fabric of Melbourne’s CBD laneways and sole trading commerce, so valued in London. Unlike London’s revival in the city, Melbourne demolished its finest heritage listed buildings in favour of commercial office space, rather than build an Ille de Cite.
Constructed in 1889, Queens Walk Arcade extended east from Swanston Street to north onto Collins Street. This grand arcade, frequented by Jean Shrimpton, Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardiner, featured ornate stain glass cupolas entrances paved with tiled mosaics and was home to 22 exquisite store fronts, including the famous mens tailor Henry Bucks, Drummonds, the Savage Club, Hilliers Chocolates and the Cavalier Tea Rooms.
In 1968, the Melbourne City Council began to consider the construction of a large public park in the city centre. It gradually acquired parts of the Queens Walk precinct and to much public out-cry, the site was entirely demolished by the council in 1977 for the construction of the City Square. Without heritage protection, the only cavaet that stopped the council from demolishing the Regent Theatre was a local trade union ban.
However, of all of Melbourne’s vanished buildings, Melbourne fish market is probably the most spectacular architectural desecration of all. Built in 1890, serving for more than 50 years as Melbourne’s premiere commercial fish and fresh produce market.
Sadly, this beautiful award-winning Gerhardt Brown designed building was demolished in 1959 under Bolte for a carpark. Tennants were evicted and forced to occupy stalls on the opposite side of the city at Queen Victoria market. This caused considerable decline in trade to Melbourne Ports for decades. An irony, considering the Bolte Bridge spans this waterway. The Wilson carpark on the corner of King and Spencer Street remains.
Built in 1860, and substantially remodeled between 1910 and 1914, Scott’s Hotel held a reputation for supplying some of Melbourne’s finest gourmet food and wine. With its private apartments, Dame Nellie Melba and English cricket legend W.G.Grace were among many notable people who stayed at the Scott. It was sold to the Royal Insurance Co in 1961 and demolished in 1975 to make way for another series of drab office buildings.
Built in 1888 to coincide with Melbourne’s Centennial Exhibition, the Federal Hotel and Coffee Palace was one of the largest and most opulent hotels in the world. Guests included Alexander Graham Bell, Mark Twain, Herbert Hoover and General Douglas Macarthur. The first floors housed impressive dining, reading, smoking and billiard rooms, with the remaining 5 stories given over to luxurious guest apartments. The interior was so impressive that the building became a tourist attraction in its own right.
The world’s third tallest building, at 12 storeys, when it was constructed in 1889, this building dominated Melbourne’s skyline for decades. At one time visible from anywhere in the city, the Australia Building was also the first tall building to employ mechanical lifts (powered hydraulically by high pressure water pumped from the Yarra). In 1980 its distinctive red facade and ornate roof was demolished for commercial office space.
The ‘Equitable Company’ set themselves the ambition of constructing ‘the grandest building in the southern hemisphere’ for their Melbourne headquarters. Which, with a five year construction and £500 000 price tag, this wonderful building may well have been. Taken over by Colonial Mutual in 1923, it would serve as their grand offices for thirty years, until it was re-built in 1974 for office space.
The Oriental Bank, built in 1856 stood on the south-west corner of Queen Street and Flinders Lane when the twenty year old city was still finding its feet (note the muddy track that is Queen St), this Greek temple themed design was the product of a competition held by the bank among Melbourne’s leading architects. Unfortunately, the bank itself would go out of business in 1884, and this building was demolished shortly afterwards.
One of Australia’s most famous architects, Walter Burley Griffin, designed the sumptuous Cafe Australia, a remodeling of an existing cafe on Collins Street. Opening in 1916, the cafe bore all of Griffin’s trademarks; an elaborate facade and entryway, delicate concrete ornamentation and highly stylised interiors Photo: Main dining hall with balcony and mural. Architects: Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin
Built in 1886, Parer’s Crystal Café Hotel was a splendid multi-storey building constructed in Bourke Street at a cost of £60 000. Providing accommodation for over 650 people with a staff of 80, it featured lavishly furnished dining rooms, a saloon, a café, clubrooms and billiard rooms. The hotel, built by three brothers — Juan, Felipe and Estevan Parer — who had left their native Catalonia in the 1850s, was one of thirteen hotels owned by the family, many of which were in Bourke Street.
Leavitt’s Guide description:
‘Its wealth of mirrors so fantastically arranged, its tessellated floor, glittering tables, refreshing fountains and artistic draperies, remind one of the magnificent structures of a similar kind which grace the capitals of Europe and America’.
When Whelan’s came to perform the last rights on the Parer’s Crystal Cafe & Hotel building in October 1960 it was to make way for Walton’s department store, which then became Midcity Village Cinemas and today Hello Kitty.
Times have definitely changed from a bygone era of Melbourne, a period which saw the destruction of many of the world’s finest buildings that would otherwise be treasured if they had remained today.
