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block 22 Melbourne Dental Hospital, 239 Lonsdale Street 1892-1897
After the passing of Victoria’s first Dentists’ Act in 1887, there was an urgent need for premises where dental students could gain practical experience, on patients who received free treatment in return. Donations from many dentists and well-wishers permitted the renting of a first-floor room at 225 Lonsdale Street, opposite the Melbourne Hospital. It opened as the Melbourne Dental Hospital in September 1890. Furnishings were spartan, treatment was limited to examinations and extractions, and staff was a volunteer dentist. It operated for two hours each morning, six days a week. Funds were few, paying students were fewer, and an economic depression hit Victoria soon after the opening.
In straitened circumstances, the hospital decamped in September 1892 to cheaper rooms at 239 Lonsdale Street (pictured here). The first location had been above a horse-and-carriage bazaar; the new venue was below an undertaker firm. Today, neither seems appropriate—for hygiene or status—but the undertaker was probably kept busy by the Melbourne Hospital across the road….A final Lonsdale Street move to relatively salubrious rooms at 189–191 happened in 1897, this time to a former clothing factory above a second-hand clothes store. The move was in preparation for a government-approved education curriculum, which would attract more students. A new body, the Australian College of Dentistry, with an American dean, Alfred Merrill, was formed to co-exist with and jointly run the hospital. Staff, comprising a superintendent, cleaner and office boy, were employed initially and three surgeries were designated but barely furnished. An inquiry into the college’s running in 1900 revealed unsanitary conditions and poor practices. These prompted operational improvements, but little capacity for restorative dentistry until a move to custom-built facilities in Spring Street in 1907.
BLOCK 23 CORRS LANE – prisoner mark in bluestone source: geelong prison / fb
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BLOCK 27
ST PATRICKS HALL current site 468-470 Bourke St
468-470 Bourke Street is historically significant as the original location of St Patrick’s Hall of 1849,
which was built on land purchased by the St Patrick’s Society in 1846. In 1851 the hall was the first
meeting place of the Victorian Parliament.
The former London Assurance House, now the Law Institute of Victoria, is historically significant for its
association with the rapid growth of the insurance and assurance industry in the 1950s-1960s. These
companies used new city office buildings as a form of promotion and fund investment, contributing to
Melbourne’s pre-eminent role as the preferred Australian location for large financial institutions.
The former London Assurance House is historically significant for its association with Bernard Evans;
architect, Melbourne City Councillor (1949-73) and former Lord Mayor (1959-60). It is one of many
city buildings designed by Evans in his long career as a city developer, architect and principal of the
architectural practice Bernard Evans, Murphy, Berg & Hocking Pty Ltd. (Criterion A)
The former London Assurance House is significant as a highly intact, curtain-walled office building
from the postwar period demonstrating the style embraced by local architects by the late 1950s. In
particular it employs a curtain-wall façade that creates bold contrasts between the clear glazing and
solid spandrels. (Criterion D)
The former London Assurance House is aesthetically significant for its ground floor entry glazing
designed as a replica of the ‘picture frame’ in stone facing that surrounds the whole building. The
curtain wall is unusual in its design with the horizontal rectangular windows placed across the façade.
Whilst some glazing panels have been replaced, the overall pattern of the façade has been retained.
It is aesthetically significant for its lightness of structure, elegant transparency and curtain wall glazing
of unusual pattern. The building has been identified by at least two key architectural publications
including Architecture and Arts and in Melbourne’s best architecture guide of 1965. (Criterion E)
Primary source
Hoddle Grid Heritage Review (Context & GJM Heritage, 2020) (updated March 2022)
SOURCE
MELBOURNE PLANNING SCHEME: STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: Former London Assurance House (Part 468-470 Bourke Street, Melbourne), April 2022
also
St Patrick’s Hall
One of Melbourne’s first halls, St Patrick’s Hall was designed by Samuel Jackson and built on land purchased by the St Patrick’s Society in 1846 at 85 (470) Bourke Street West. Dedicated ‘to the memory of Ireland’, it opened in 1849 for meetings and as a school for Irish children. A grand fancy-dress ball was held at the hall on 28 November 1850 as part of Separation festivities. Victoria’s Legislative Council met there from 13 November 1851 until the construction of the new Parliament House in 1856. For many years a mustering point for the annual St Patrick’s Day procession and the Druids’ Easter procession, the hall was demolished in 1957. Its original Speaker’s chair is now displayed in Queen’s Hall.
https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM01314b.htm
IMAGE: track down:
St. Patrick’s Hall, the first legislative house in Victoria, circa 1852. David Tulloch, engraver, circa 1852. Print: wood engraving. Accession number: H17209 From the State Library of Victoria’s Pictures Collection
BLOCK 28
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POST OFFICE BLOCK 29
POST OFFICE ELIZ ST
Dramatic flood stories were synonymous with Elizabeth Street throughout the Victorian period and
the early twentieth century. Events which no longer seem credible were common place –
“[Hume Nisbet in 1891] One dry morning, while I was waiting my turn for letters at the Post Office on
a mail day, I was startled by seeing a great tidal wave rolling down Elizabeth Street … I got up the
ornamental base of one of the pillars and clung there, with the water dashing over my waist, while
some of the less fortunate ones were swept away.” (Brown-May, 1998)
-SOURCE p6 Elizabeth Street
Historical Character Study, Green Heritage Compliance and Research pdf
also
The site of the city’s first permanent post office and present General Post Office is located on the
corner of Elizabeth and Bourke Streets, in the middle of the Hoddle Grid. First built in 1841 and
substantially expanded in 1867, the GPO became the centre point of the city, the place from which all
distances to Melbourne were officially measured.
Figure 6: The Post Office, 1841
“On August 12 1841, David Keish, post-master, transferred his office from Collins street west in a small
brick building built for the purpose on the site of the present post-office in Elizabeth street. The
postage for a letter to Sydney was one shilling threepence and it took three weeks to deliver the letter.
Melbourne’s first letter-carrier appeared in a scarlet coat and gold-laced hat. A clock was placed on
top of the post-office by the settlers to mark the opening of the new post-office and its care was
entrusted to Joseph Greening, a watchmaker. According to [Edmund Finn] the clock was a great trial
for its keeper. It kept bad hours, sometimes jumping forward half an hour and then lagging a quarter.
“To make confusion worse … the post-office authorities used to humour the eccentricities of the clock
by regulating the mail hours according to its crotchets. The window was opened and closed and the
mails delivered or dispatched according to the clock” (Anon, Elizabeth Street has a Colourful Part in
the Eventful Story of Melbourne, 1937)
-SOURCE p9 Elizabeth Street
Historical Character Study, Green Heritage Compliance and Research pdf
the post office
“There is plenty of ‘character’ in the streets of Melbourne, if one only has the patience to seek it out.
‘Characteristic bits’ are very like the nuggets of the country; plenty of them about, and rich, but they
require to be unearthed. A casual picking of the ground or a single walk through our thoroughfares
will reveal little or nothing. The searcher must be on his claim at all times of the day and with his eyes
well -open. He is sure to get his nugget at last, perhaps more than one. The ‘ Cockatoo Hawker’ belongs
to the soil. He is to be found at odd times near the corner of Elizabeth-street and Flinders-street. For
weeks you may pass this spot and there will be no sign of him, but a thoroughly fine day may bring
him out. He is at his post today, so let us note him. In one hand he holds two caged birds, while with
the other he thrusts out a stick on which a melancholy cockatoo sits and surveys the passers-by. Our
hawker wears spectacles and shaves under the chin, and wears his clothes with an air. Altogether he
gives one the impression of a man who has seen better days, and who has taken to cockatoo selling
because it is easy, and perhaps because it affords him opportunity of critically surveying the busy
world he no longer mixes in.” (Anon, Street Studies, 1887) –SOURCE p15 Elizabeth Street
Historical Character Study, Green Heritage Compliance and Research pdf
burrows & co 