Melbourne's Lost Victorian Landmarks

Menzies Hotel

Menzies Hotel, south east corner of Bourke and WIlliam Streets, in 1908.

Designed by Reed & Barnes and constructed on the crest of the hill of Bourke Street on the south east corner of William Street at a cost of £32,000, the three-storey hotel with a columned arcade and corner pavilion towers opened in November 1867.  Built by Scottish immigrants Archibald and Catherine Menzies, it was Melbourne's first grand hotel and was immediately popular with international visitors and wealthy pastoralists.[4] Two floors and a corner tower were added and electric lights, telephones and a lift were installed in 1896, and a six-storey Bourke Street wing was added in 1922 providing en-suite bathrooms and an enlarged dining room.[6] It was host to prominent figures such as Mark Twain, Alexander Graham Bell, Herbert Hoover and Dame Nellie Melba. In 1942 it became South-West Pacific headquarters for General Douglas MacArthur for several months. It was demolished in 1969, to make way for the BHP tower, completed 1973, then Melbourne’s tallest.[6]

Eastern Market

Eastern Market, south west corner of Bourke and Exhibition Streets.

A half a city block bounded by Bourke, Exhibition and Little Collins Street was allocated for a market in 1847, housed in a series of open sheds from 1859.[7] In 1877 the City of Melbourne decided to rebuild on a grand scale to a design won in competition by Reed & Barnes, featuring shops around the edges in grandly scaled two and three storey buildings, and a two level central market hall topped by domed glass roofs, which opened in 1879.[4] However the fresh produce merchants who had moved to the expanded Queen Victoria Market during construction had little interest in returning, so in 1881 the Council leased it to Edward Cole, who ran the highly successful Coles Book Arcade, which had started out at the market. He filled it with a huge variety of tenants, from amusements such as hoop-las, shooting galleries and fortune tellers, to second hand stalls and haberdashery, as well as fresh food vendors. One year later the City Council resumed control, but it never fulfilled its purpose, remaining low rent retail and part of the amusement night life of Bourke Street for many decades.[7] By the 1950s that had faded away, and the central hall was used for carparking and as a taxi depot. Council began negotiations to see the site become a hotel, and it was demolished in 1960, and the Southern Cross opened in 1962.[4]

Robbs Building

Robbs Building, south east corner of Collins and King Streets, in 1968.

In 1884, businessman John Robb financed a large building project with a frontage of 132ft to Collins Street, and 5 floors plus basement, housing large chambers that could be used as offices or stores, with three separate entrances, each with lifts and stairs.[8] Though successful as an investment, the building suffered from mishaps - in March 1888, a lift wire broke, and it crashed to the ground, fortunately without any fatalities,[9] and in August 1889, a fire broke out in the top floor, destroying documents of occupants such as the Railway Office, and the water of the fire brigade damaging the Traffic Audit Office, and the bank that occupied the ground floor corner.[10] When the boom crashed in the early 1890s, Robb, like many other land boom investors was found to be heavily indebted, and was declared a bankrupt in 1894, owing £653,000.[11] By the 1920s, the two eastern bays were separately known as Dudley Buildings, and were sold for £88,000 pounds in 1926.[12]

In the 1970s, the fate of the Robbs Building became tied up with that of the Rialto group of buildings nearby, with the Dudley bullrings portion lost in 1975. In January 1981 owners National Mutual sold the site to the Grollo Group, in a joint venture with St Martin's Properties,[13] who soon revealed plans for a trio of high rise office towers, avoiding the Rialto and Winfield Buildings, but including one on the corner replacing Robbs. This plan was stymied when the Builders Labourer's Federation (BLF) placed a ban on the demolition of Robbs, but which was lifted a few months later in November 1981, and the demolition of Robbs commenced immediately.[14] The Rialto office towers project forged ahead, and was completed in October 1986 as a two tower scheme, and the site of Robbs became an open plaza. In 2015-17 that plaza and the forecourt of the Rialto Towers was rebuilt with a podium of office space.

Federal Hotel, south west corner Collins and King Streets, in the 1950s.

Federal Hotel

Located on Melbourne’s premier thoroughfare Collins Street, but at the western end on the corner of King Street, the hotel was commissioned by James Munro and James Mirams (both were politicians, businessmen and teetotallers), as an alcohol free ‘coffee palace’, to be called the Federal Coffee Palace. Designed in a broadly Second Empire style, to a design by Ellerker & Kilburn, and William Pitt, who had won first and second prizes respectively in a competition, it opened in time for the Centennial Exhibition in July 1888. With almost 400 bed rooms, multiple dining rooms and lounges, and built at a cost of £150,000, The Age declared it as one of "Australia's most splendid" buildings.[4] Despite this opulence, it never competed with Melbourne’s luxury hotels, the Menzies and the Windsor, perhaps due to its size and location far from the retail and social centre of town. In 1923, the hotel gave up on temperance, and was granted a liquor licence, and was renamed the Federal Hotel. A renovation in the late 1960s was not enough to revitalise the struggling business, and in 1972 it closed and was demolished the next year for an office tower, itself demolished in 2019.

Victoria Building, south east corner of Swanston and Collins Streets, in c1924

Victoria Building and Queens Walk Arcade

Located in the centre of the city on Swanston Street opposite the Melbourne Town Hall, the Victoria Building was built by the Freehold Investment & Banking Co., one of the many ‘land banks’ of the Boom years. Completed in 1888, the extensive building included a banking chamber on the corner for themselves, as well as numerous shops, 5 floors of offices and an L shaped arcade known as Queens Walk. Designed by architect David Wormal, the building’s ‘Modern Renaissance’ façade was topped by a lively roofline of mansards and pediments.[4] A gilt statue of Queen Victoria sat on the corner beneath the building’s landmark tall diagonal roof (the latter removed by 1910). The corner shop was occupied from 1908 to 1940 by the Victorian Government Tourist Bureau, an arm of the Victorian Railways.[4] Sold in 1963, it was demolished in 1966 pending a high rise development, but the City of Melbourne purchased the vacant lot having finally decided that that block of Swanston Street was to be the site for the new City Square. The site became at first a circle of grass, with the final ‘permanent’ square, occupying a much larger half city block, opening in 1980 (itself replaced in 2000, and the replacement demolished as well in 2018).

Finks Building, north east corner Elizabeth and Collins Streets, c1888

Fink's Building

Located in the north east corner of Elizabeth and Flinders Street, this was another of the large office projects, and at ten storeys was briefly Australia's tallest office building when completed in 1888.[4] It was built for notorious landboomer Benjamin Fink, and designed by architects Twentyman & Askew, in an elaborate Renaissance Revival style, with the top two levels as attics within a high mansard roof. When the Boom crashed, Fink fled for England, leaving behind debts of £1,520,000, and was declared bankrupt in 1892.[4] The building was gutted by the great fire of 1897 which swept across almost the entire block bounded by Flinders and Elizabeth, Flinders Lane and Swanston Street. The brick carcass remained intact, and in 1898 it was rebuilt, minus the attic floors. In 1969, now owned by the Commonwealth Bank it was demolished, along with the adjacent Crag Wiliamson's, to make way for a modern office tower.[4]

Australian Building

Australian Building, north west corner of Elizabeth Street and Flinders Lane, c1889

At 11 floors plus an attic, with a height to top of the attic floor of 47m, and to top of the spire 51m, this was tallest building in Australia, and thought to be amongst the tallest in the world when it was completed in 1889. Located on Elizabeth Street, on the corner of Flinders Lane, it was envisioned by F.T. Durham, Post Master General and director of the biscuit company Swallow and Ariell who formed the Australian Property Investment Co (or API) to borrow heavily to buy the site and to build a mooted 15 storey building.[4] Designed by  Oakden, Addison and Kemp with John Beswicke, it was in the Queen Anne architectural style, in red brick with stone bands, topped by a gabled mansard roof and corner turret. Soon after completion, with the economy faltering and a surfeit of office space, Durham's debt was greater than the market value of the building. It remained the tallest in Melbourne until the late 1920s, and a landmark in the city until the top gables and turret were removed in the 1950s. The building was demolished in 1980, with a permit from Heritage Victoria, because they agreed that the bill to upgrade it to modern fire regulations was too onerous.

Craig, Williamson and Thomas Emporium

Elizabeth Street, looking north c1900. Craig Williamson's is on the right, and the Australian Building on the left.

Craig Williamson's began as a drapery in 1874, expanding to occupy a four storey building in Elizabeth Street in 1883.[15] In 1890 they expanded again to occupy a 7 storey building adjacent to their old site, housing expanded fabrics, clothing, millinery and homewears departments.[16] The Great Fire of 22 November 1897 started in the store, and destroyed a large part of the city block, leaving the store a gutted shell, and a stock loss of £100,000.[4] The facade was preserved, and the store rebuilt and extended to the south, and eventually to the north as well, and adding two floors, creating a much larger department store.[15] The business was wound up in 1937,[17] and eventually the building was sold in 1946 to the Federal Government for the Commonwealth Bank, which opened a branch at the site and moved in its expanding staff.[4] Having also purchased the rebuilt Finks Building on the corner, this was demolished in 1969 to make way for an office tower,[18] which was expanded with a podium to the north soon after, replacing the former department store building.

Prell's Buildings

Two of Prell's Buildings can be seen in the centre of this image of the south east corner of Queen and Collins Streets. To the right is the 1891 National Mutual Building, which still stands. Photo taken 1903.

Friedrich Wilhelm Prell was born in Hamburg, Germany and migrated to Australia at the age of 21, and founded the import/export business of F.W. Prell and Company Limited.[19] In 1886, the vice-president of the American Otis Elevator Company, W.F. Hall, visited Melbourne, and was later reported to have had a conversation with Prell, noting that Sydney had six Otis hydraulic lifts in operation, while Melbourne had none. He remarked that men who had to climb stairs in Melbourne's offices would do so with great difficulty, reaching the top floor with "aching legs, a fluttering heart, and a firm resolution to do business elsewhere".[4] Prell was then about to develop a five storey office block on the north west corner of Queen Street, to which he added Otis 'safety elevators’,[20] (using mains water pressure) and immediately planned to build two more, one of 7 and one of 9 floors. This plan then became three 9 floor office blocks all in the one block of Queen Street, between Collins and Flinders Streets, built between 1888 and 1889, and all designed in matching style by FM White and Sons. By July 1889, there was a better high pressure hyrdaulic system available in Melbourne, to which all his taller buildings were connected.[21] Collectively known as Prell's buildings, they dominated the southern aspect of the city with their Modern Renaissance style, and were known as "Towers of Babel of the elevator type”.[4] All four were demolished between 1967 and 1980.

Fish Market, Flinders Street, view looking west, c1892

Fish Market 

These extravagant buildings were built by the Melbourne City Council in 1890-92, to replace the market located right on the corner of Swanston and Flinders Street in the heart of the city. They were built at the western end of Flinders Street, between King Street and Spencer Street, with the part facing Flinders Street housing general markets and storage, and another section on the other side of the new railway viaduct facing the river housing the Fish Market itself.

The design was win in a competition by R G Gordon, and featured elaborate Victorian Gothic details, tall conical turrets and a huge clock tower (though the clock was never installed). Described at the time of their completion as one of the finest set of market buildings in the world, they were nevertheless controversial, running 22% over budget at £220,000.[4]

By the 1950s, the market could no longer deal with increasing volumes, hemmed in by busy roads, and so the decision was made to build new markets in West Melbourne, and as soon as these were ready in 1959, the old buildings were demolished, and the site largely used as car parking.[22] The elaborate wrought-iron gates were saved and are now at the entrance to Fawkner Cemetery, and the river side part of the site eventually became Batman Park.

In the early 2000s, apartments were built on the Flinders Street part of the site.[23]

Equitable Building

Equitable Building, north west corner of Collins and Elizabeth Streets, c1900

The headquarters of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States on the north west corner of Collins and Elizabeth Streets was designed to be "the grandest building in the Southern Hemisphere and to last forever".[4] Designed by German-born American architect Edward Raht, the design was very much in the mould of the towers then sprouting in New York, of massively proportioned stacked classical floors, and was built of solid granite blocks with an internal steel frame; the building cost was estimated at £233,000.[24] It was one of the taller buildings in Melbourne at the time at 138 feet, consisting of seven very tall floors. In 1923 the building became the headquarters of Colonial Mutual Life in Victoria. By the mid 1950s they were considering demolition, as Victorian era buildings were widely considered outdated, ostentatious and gloomy, and it was demolished in 1959. The statuary group over the entrance was saved and placed outside the Baillieu Library at Melbourne University, and some of the carved elements were saved and remained in private ownership for many years, and in 2000 a sample was purchased by Museums Victoria, and put on display outside the Carlton campus on Nicholson Street.[25]