Before Melbourne Central

Situated on a busy Swanston Street corner, opposite the State library, there are few structures in our city as well known as Melbourne Central. With a distinctive glass cone on the roof, a train station underneath, a cinema, food court, and a full complement of retail, Melbourne Central is a busy, and heavily patronised, part of inner city life.

It's hard to imagine that corner without it.

But this is misleading.

For Melbourne Central was only opened in 1991, and so is a relative newcomer to our city. And, like many of the locations we examine on these pages, the area it was built on has already had a number of different incarnations.

Inner city Melbourne, 1860

The city blocks bordered by Swanston, Elizabeth, La Trobe and Lonsdale Streets were once the industrial heartland of the city.

This rectangular area was a rabbit warren of winding lanes, alleyways and cul-de-sacs, populated by small scale heavy industry; ironmongers, carpenters, metal workers, brick makers and coach builders, among many others. As the city boomed in the decades after the gold rush, the economic activity in this area skyrocketed.

Into this lively domain stepped James Coop.

Coop Shot Tower, 1891.

Born in England, from a hard scrabble family, James Coop arrived in Melbourne in 1855 looking to make his fortune. A plumber by trade, Coop found work in the thriving local construction industry, and was shortly after able to open his own business.  By 1868, he was based on Knox Place, in the midst of the bustling industrial neighbourhood described above.

By the 1880s, Coop's son Walter was running the business, and he decided to expand into shot making. Shot - effectively small balls of lead - was an important industry in the Victorian era; it was used not just as ammunition for firearms, but also as weight for scales, in pinball machines and mechanical games, and as ballast.

Over the years 1889-90, Walter Coop oversaw the construction of the 'Coop Shot Tower' above the family plumbing business. Made out of red brick, and standing 50 metres high, when constructed the shot tower was the tallest structure in the city.

The tower was the key component in the shot making process.

Lead bars would be transported by pulley to the top of the tower, and then melted down over a gas hotplate. When the metal was viscous, the shot maker would tip it through an iron sieve (picture to the left, above), from where it would fall, as droplets, into the tower itself. 

In free fall, the molten lead would accelerate and rotate, spinning itself into a perfect sphere. It would then land in a pool of water, which would cool and harden the metal instantly. The lead balls would then be retrieved (picture to the right, above), sorted by size, and sent for refinement and packaging.

This process could produce 25 million pellets of shot an hour, and by 1894 the Coops were selling 6 tonnes of the stuff a week.

The Shot Tower and La Trobe St, 1920s.

The Coop's kept the business in the family. 

Walter bequeathed control to his son Walter II, who in turn left the business to his sister Ellen, who assumed control in 1919 (a rare example of a woman managing a substantial business in early Melbourne). Ellen ran the company for two decades and, when she died in a tram accident in 1939, left the business to her son James.

But World War II would mark the beginning of the end of the shot industry.

By the 1940s, the hazardous side effects of lead had been well established, and industry had begun to transition to less toxic metals. And synthetic plastics, put into heavy use during the war for the first time, had begun to supplant some metals altogether.

In 1961, the Coop Shot Tower closed.

Circa 1960, shortly before the tower closed.,

Meanwhile, the industrial zone the shot tower stood over had been undergoing change as well.

As Melbourne had continued to grow and modernise, many of its old buildings, and small winding streets, were no longer adequate for modern use. Cramped, dark, and lacking in facilities and safety features, many of the buildings around the shot tower had fallen empty in the decades since the war.

Across the 1960s, the State Government began to acquire some of these properties, with a view to selling the entire block for a major redevelopment, at a future date.

But, in the short term, the Government needed the land for another reason.

Museum Station under construction, 1975.

In 1971, the State Liberal Government began work on the City Loop rail project. 

Prior to this, all of the trains in the city rail network had run from either Flinders Street Station, or Princes Bridge Station (now long gone, read more about this here). But directing all of the city's trains through two stations created a logistical nightmare; the number of trains that could be run each day was severely restricted, and there were frequent delays and bottlenecks.

The proposed solution was the City Loop; three new underground stations around the city, connected by a looped rail line, that would allow greater flexibility in the running of the train network.

One of the new stations was to be built on the corner of Swanston and La Trobe streets, across the road from the State Library. As the Victorian Museum was still based in the library building, the new station was to be called 'Museum'. The construction effort was so significant that La Trobe Street had to be redirected around part of it (see picture above).

Museum Station, when complete.

Museum Station was the first of the new City Loop stations to open, operations commencing January 24, 1981.

While construction of the train line had been ongoing, the State Government had continued to search for a large scale tenant for the remainder of the site. By 1983, this was up for open tender, and 28 consortiums submitted proposals, which a special committee was convened to assess.

The committee deliberated for two years, before finally announcing the successful scheme; a joint project between local firm Essington Limited, and Japanese development giant Kumagi Gumi. Budgeted at $1.2 billion over 5 years, the new property would be a multi-purpose building, known as Melbourne Central.

The initial plans would include a major shopping complex, an office tower and a luxury hotel (the hotel would eventually be abandoned, as costs rose).

Melbourne Central, under construction.

The construction of the complex was difficult, exacerbated by the shot tower, which had been granted heritage protection in the 1970s. The Government had made preservation of the tower one of the key conditions in the tender process, and now the winning consortium had to find a way to incorporate it into their design.

Their solution was innovative.

Chief architect Kisho Kurokawa designed a 20 storey high glass cone, to fit over the tower and so enclose it within the new building. The cone was, and remains, the largest structure of its type in the world.

The opening of the centre was heavily hyped:

By this time, the consortium had also found their inaugural major tenant: Daimaru.

The Daimaru store, Kobe, Japan.

Darimaru is a Japanese department store chain, one of the largest in South East Asia.

It was founded in 1717 as a dry goods store, in Kyoto, and continued in that line until the 20th century. In the 1920s Daimaru expanded into general, and then household goods, and rapidly increased its number of storefronts.

By 1960 it was the largest retailer in Japan, and had established shops in Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Daimaru Melbourne, exterior.

By the mid 1980s it was ready to expand again, and decided to open two shops in Australia. One would be on the main tourist strip on the Gold Coast, one of the major destinations for Japanese holiday makers, while the other would be in the newly minted Melbourne Central shopping complex.

Daimaru Melbourne, interior (note: Timezone!)

The shopping complex would open in 1991, and Daimaru was ambitious in their efforts.

Their Melbourne store would span 6 floors and include an extensive (and ultimately legendary) food court, alongside clothes, electronics and household goods. The store was open plan, and the vast central space around the shot tower would feature whimsical decorations; a colourful hot air balloon, a wooden bi-plane and a giant pocket watch, with a 12 foot gold chain.

Large crowds, 1992.

And Daimaru was hugely successful at first.

There were few overseas retail stores in Australia at the time, and so Daimaru offered something different, and mildly exotic. And the store's commitment to customer service, all floor staff were given extensive training in the company's methodology, was a hit with local consumers. 

The new store attracted 2 million visitors in its first three weeks.

A travel article form the Canberra Times gives a sense of what a visit was like:

The excitement around Daimaru reached a frenzy during the Boxing Day sales of 1992, when a local woman lost the tops of two fingers when they became trapped in a security door. The woman had been queued up to enter the shop, and had been pressing against the doors in her eagerness to get in.

Several other shoppers were also injured in the scramble to get bargains.

But the excitement did not last.

The retail market in Australia is very competitive and, in Melbourne, featured two entrenched players in Myer and David Jones, who aggressively responded to the newcomers bid to take their business.

Despite Daimaru's initial popularity, the company always struggled to make money from its Melbourne store. And, when that initial popularity began to wain, the losses began to add up.

Finally, in 2002, the company decided to call it quits.

Daimaru Melbourne closed 31 July, 2002.

Melbourne Central has continued on, with the ever changing roster of tenants that make up much of modern retail. 'Borders' came and went, and the exterior was recently revamped, to give it a more up to date look.

There is even a small reminder of the Daimaru era, above the entrance to Hoyts. You can still see two elevator platforms on the wall, now connected to nothing, at one time leading to Daimaru's top floor...

Then and Now: Manchester Unity Building Rooftop

The Manchester Unity Building is one of the architectural jewels of the Melbourne. While researching the broader history of this iconic landmark, I came across this amazing photo:

It seems that from the 1932 through to about 1940, the rooftop of the building (Level 12) was home to a Japanese garden and cafe.

The same spot today:

The structure on the right houses a suite of offices, which had been converted from apartments (built in the 1990s).

Sadly, the rooftop is no longer open to the public, although Melbourne Open House often runs tours that include it. The rooftop is currently used for private functions, by the building's tenants.

The Carnegie Library

American industrialist Andrew Carnegie seems almost like the epitome of the old fashioned American dream.

Born into a poor family in Scotland in 1835, Carnegie came to America with his family in 1848, where they settled in Pennsylvania. Leaving school at 13, Carnegie took a series of menial jobs, working in a cotton factory, then as a telegraph runner, before landing a job for the railways in 1853. A hard worker, conscientious and dedicated, Carnegie then began a rapid rise through the ranks, and was secretary of the Pennsylvania division of the railroad company by the time he was 20.

Carnegie in 1878.

Around this time, he also came under the influence of Colonel James Anderson, a local philanthropist, who allowed young people access to his voluminous private library. Anderson took a liking to Carnegie, and offered him personal, and financial, advice, serving as a mentor to the ambitious young man. Thrifty with money, Carnegie soon had some capital behind him, that Anderson helped him turn into a series of profitable investments in local businesses.

The success of these investments allowed larger, and more lucrative outlays, culminating in a
$40 000 investment in a local oil company. Within 2 years, this speculation would yield more than $1 million in returns. Carnegie parleyed his now considerable wealth into a major investment in heavy industry, founding the Union Steel company, whose rapid growth would make his major fortune. When Carnegie eventually sold Union Steel to JP Morgan in 1901 for $480 million, he was the wealthiest person on earth.

In shorthand, this is the story of Andrew Carnegie, business magnate.

Carnegie in retirement.

But in his later years, Carnegie would take on a new guise; that of wealthy benefactor

Carnegie never forgot his modest background, nor the generosity of Colonel Thompson that had helped him on his way. As his involvement in his business was delegated away, Carnegie dedicated himself to philanthropy and, by the time of his death in 1919, had given away some 90% of his enormous fortune to charitable causes.

One of his favourite philanthropic endeavours were the Carnegie Libraries.

The first Carnegie Library; Dunfermline, Scotland

Conscious of the role that Colonel Anderson's private library had played in his own development, Carnegie founded an ambitious program of library construction. The object was to provide a free source of knowledge, available to anyone, regardless of their means or social status. The first Carnegie Library opened in his old home town of Dunfermline, in Scotland, in 1886, and the first in his adopted country in Braddock, Pennsylvania (a town dominated by a Union Steel mill).

The libraries were not provided without conditions, and a number of eligibility criteria had to be met; the town had to be without a public library already, and be willing to provide a site for the building free of charge. And the local authorities also had to commit to providing an annual budget for the continued running of the institution. Nevertheless, many towns and cities were willing to meet these criteria, and eventually more than 2 500 Carnegie Libraries would be built, right across the world.

The Northcote Library Comittee.

In Northcote, in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne, the need for a new library was keenly felt. From 1883 a room in the Northcote Town Hall had been set aside as a public library, but this had proved inadequate for the growing community. In 1907, the Northcote Library Committee approached the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, and submitted a formal request for funds for a new library building. A site adjacent to the Town Hall, at 185 High Street, was offered, and an annual budget of 200 pounds for running costs agreed to.

With some back and forth over the particulars, the application was approved, and 3 000 pounds allocated to the committee from the Foundation. Construction was completed in 1911, and the library was opened August 21, 1911 by the Governor of Victoria, Sir John Fuller.

The Carnegie Library in Northcote, shortly after completion.

The new building featured a classical facade, while the interior had designated rooms for newspapers, magazines, books and study. It would continue to operate through most of the 20th century, before the library again outgrew its location. In 1985, the Northcote Library was moved to a (considerably less stylish) location on Separation Street, while the Carnegie Library was converted into Darebin City Council offices.

The site today.

After his death, Carnegie's left much of his fortune in trusts, which are still used today for a wide variety of charitable causes.

Melbourne's First Exhibition Building

Situated in the Carlton Gardens at the north end of the city, The Royal Exhibition Building is one of Melbourne's most iconic landmarks. A rare example of a Victorian era great hall, the world heritage listed building is a popular destination for tourists, and still serves as a function centre for city events.

But it was not Melbourne's first exhibition building.

The Exhibition Building, shortly after construction.

Standing on the corner of William and Little Lonsdale Streets, this rather extraordinary building was modeled on London's famous Crystal Palace. Both were constructed largely of glass, with a wooden superstructure, although the local version was a little more rough and ready then the famous exhibition hall in England.

London's Crystal Palace.

But the exhibition hall was the grandest building constructed in Melbourne to that time, 250 feet long and 50 feet high, with an interior lit by 200 ornamental windows and 306 gas lights. The state Government, flush with cash for the first time in its short history on the back of the gold rush, footed the 20 000  pound cost. It's primary purpose was to serve as a suitably impressive venue for the Victorian Exhibition that the Government had organised for late 1854 (the first such event held in Australia).

A promotional picture for the Exhibition provides a summary of the image the government was trying to create:

However grand the exterior, the stalls in the Exhibition were modest:

Despite the rather straightforward material, the Exhibition was considered a great success, with more than 40 000 people attending. But once it was concluded, the State Government faced a new problem, (one that has become familiar to subsequent State Government;s over the years); what to do with the expensive building they had constructed for a very specific purpose.

The interior was redesigned and it was put to use as a hall for a hire, hosting balls, concerts and wedding receptions. It provided a home to the Melbourne Philharmonic Orchestra, and even served as a temporary lecture hall for Melbourne University, A further Victorian Exhibition was also held, less successfully, in 1861.

Finally, the Government let their white elephant fall into disrepair. Many of the glass windows began to leak, and the interior became too shabby to use for any public purpose. The building was demolished in the late 1860's, and a new Royal Mint was built on the site.

The Exhibition Building around the time of the 1854 event.

The new Royal Mint, shortly after construction.

The Royal Mint, present day.

Melbourne's Most Eccentric Buildings

Melbourne has some wonderful buildings. There are fine examples of different schools of classical architecture and some first rate contemporary designs dotted across the city. The best of these are among our city's most well known and beloved features.

The bulk of the city's buildings though, are functional more than decorative. While time and effort has been spent on their appearance, this is clearly secondary to their utility.

And then there are... the other buildings. Ones where the design and appearance clearly were important, but that still somehow didn't come out right. Ones that look just a little bit off, a little bit wrong, a little bit batshit crazy. And yet, still find their champions among the people looking at them, re-emphasizing how these things are always a matter of subjective opinion.

Some of these buildings have won design awards. Some of them have found their way onto world's worst building lists. All of them are an entertaining addition to our city skyline and a great conversation starter...

THE GREEN BRAIN

RMIT, Building 22

Corner Swanston and La Trobe Streets

The Green Brain is what it said in the prospectus, and what it probably still says on a plaque somewhere in the lobby, if mischievous students haven't looted it already. But a lot of locals know this by another, considerably less prosaic name: The Snot Building. And it only take a glance to understand why.

For the canopy of RMIT's Building 22 is encased in a lurid green, amorphous mass of fibreglass, stretching around the building's two street facing sides, that looks positively... protoplasmic. Designed by architecture firm Ashton Raggatt McDougall, and built at a cost of $5.5 million, The Green Brain covers a group of conference rooms and was chosen to highlight the university's intellectual and environmental credentials. As vice chancellor Margaret Gardner put it in 2011, 'What could be more apt at this time than that we embrace the symbolism of having a green brain?' The brain won a design award commendation in 2012, but the local response has been mixed (examples below taken from various websites):

Although, when it comes to exotic RMIT buildings in Melbourne, this is just the beginning...

RMIT DESIGN HUB

150 Victoria Street

Looking a little an enormous Lego brick, or the beginnings of the Borg colonisation, RMIT's high tech 'Design Hub' stands in stark contrast to the decaying buildings around it at the top of Swanston Street. Housing the university's creative design space, the Hub is covered in thousands of sand blasted, computer controlled geodesic glass disks, that offer environmental advantages as well as a striking exterior. The disks are designed to track the sun throughout the day, and can pivot to control the flow of heat and light into the building's interior, drastically reducing heating, cooling and lighting costs. They also generate solar energy, a feature that RMIT plans to expand in the coming years, with the hope of making the building completely energy self sufficient. The Hub was designed by local architect Sean Godsell and cost $60 million dollars to build, with construction stretching over five years.

PORT 1010

1010 La Trobe Street, Docklands

Providing a conversation starter for anyone leaving Southern Cross Station by train, the Port 1010 Building on La Trobe Street sports a few surprises beyond it's optical illusion exterior. For starters its tenants - principally the Australian Customs Service and the Bureau of Meteorology - seem almost too staid to inhabit such a sideshow funhouse building. And then there is the building's environmental pedigree; packed full of resource saving ideas and efficiencies, including a recycled sewage plant that delivers recycled waste water back into the building, Port 1010 was the first building in Docklands to receive a 5 Star environmental rating when it was completed in 2006. But you can't really get away from that exterior (supplied by local firm Norman, Disney and Young); I mean, can you really believe all those parallel lines are dead straight?

SEVEN17 BOURKE

717 Bourke Street

Serving as a companion piece to 1010 La Trobe is Seven17 Bourke, with both buildings sharing a similar geographical location, environmental rating and eye catching appearance. Designed and built across 2007-10 by local firm Probuild, at a cost of $190 million, Seven17 was also designed with environmental economy in mind and achieved a five star efficiency rating. Functioning primarily as office space - and with Channel 9 as principal tenant - Seven17 also has a small amount of retail space. A medium sized Travelodge hotel, with a more conventional appearance, sits behind the twisty main building pictured above.

COOP'S SHOT TOWER

MELBOURNE CENTRAL SHOPPING CENTRE

Corner Swanston and Lonsdale Streets

The Shot Tower enclosed within Melbourne Central is such an everyday part of life in Melbourne, that I would guess that most people that live here would barely notice it. And yet... there is no mistaking the undoubted oddness of a long defunct industrial tower being kept beneath a conical glass dome in the middle of a busy modern shopping centre.

The tower was built in 1888 and operated by the Coop family, who also owned the still standing shot tower tower in Clifton Hill. It produced lead shot for firearms for nearly eighty years, before closing in 1961.

A sketch of the shot tower from 1891.

The building's height - 50 metres in this instance - was a key part of the shot making process; hot lead would be dropped from the top of the tower and, during the fall, its high velocity would cause it to form naturally into a perfect sphere. The round ball of lead would then land in a drum of cold water at the base of the tower, which set the shape.

When Melbourne Central was built - over five years between 1986 and 1991 - the heritage listed shot tower had to be incorporated into the design and the glass cone was the result. A small museum was eventually opened inside the tower, which is now operated by the clothing chain R.M.Williams, co-tenants on the ground floor.

TOTAL HOUSE

170 - 190 Russell Street

This building presents an entirely unique concept for Melbourne, if not Australia; a modern office block, on top of a multi-story carpark, on top of a row of retail shops on top of an underground nightclub. As well as all this, it's also Melbourne's most notable example of the 'Brutalist' school of architecture (popular in Japan after World War II) and even has a hip sounding name. Total House truly has it all. It also has at least one high profile critic:

Suffice to say that Mr Guy has not yet decided whether his office will protect Total House from demolition and/or redevelopment. Built in 1965, the building was identified as a site worthy of heritage consideration by the City of Melbourne as early as the 1980's. An excerpt from the Melbourne Heritage Action website summarises the argument for the building's protection:

As of writing, the Victorian State Government is considering a proposal for a new 60 story development on the site.

MELBOURNE AQUARIUM

Flinders Street

Buildings designed to house popular attractions can be a special breed. Simple, classic designs and straight, clean lines are often at odds with the building's purpose, so architects sometimes opt for a more exotic approach for these projects. One example of this is Melbourne's Sea Life Aquarium, a particularly flamboyant construction on the north bank of the Yarra River, built in 1999 at a cost of $26 million.

Designed by local firm Peddle Thorp, the aquarium's sculpted concrete form, canopies and tapered proportions are meant to resemble a sailing ship at anchor. What it does actually resemble, is more a matter of opinion. In a 2011 poll of local architects and design experts conducted by The Age to determine Melbourne's best and worst buildings, the aquarium came out easily on top in the worst category, polling nearly twice as many votes as the runner up. A selection of comments from the poll:

Peter Brook, design director at Peddle Thorp, took issue with some of the criticism, describing the aquarium as 'an innovative piece of design on many levels.'

MISSION TO SEAMEN

717 Flinders Street

Walking down the unfashionable west end of town, the casual visitor is suddenly struck by something totally incongruous; nestled on the north bank of the Yarra, wedged between abandoned warehouses and active shipping terminals, is what appears to be a Spanish Mission, circa 1900's So-Cal. A closer inspection reveals this as the local branch of the Mission to Seamen, a worldwide Anglican charity that has been providing gentle recreation and spiritual guidance for sailors since 1853. Built of stone and rough hewn concrete, the mission contains a small chapel and bell-tower, a meeting hall, lecture hall, tiny garden, dining room and quarters for the chaplain and his family.

The spherical gymnasium, unfortunately no longer used.

Unique features of the building include a spherical gymnasium, which looks like an observatory, and the pulpit in the chapel, which has been designed to resemble a ship's prow, replete with rudder. The mission also used to feature a cinema and dance hall, both sadly now defunct.

FEDERATION SQUARE

Flinders Street

Melbourne has never been able to make up it's mind about what belongs on this prime spot - on the corner of Flinders Street and Swanston Street - and over the years has tried locating a morgue, a train station, a shopping plaza and a modern office block there. Something I've written about in detail here. But there's no doubting that the design of the current incarnation - a public square mixed with an art gallery, a cinema/visual art museum and some offices - provokes a mixed reaction.

In 2011, Fed Square made a list of the world's ugliest buildings compiled by British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. Conversely, the same site made a list of world's best public squares in US magazine The Atlantic lat year (although this came with a caveat, as the square's design was still listed as 'unconventional'). And local opinion has always been divided between two camps:

Did I miss anything good? Leave a comment or drop me a line.