I could just place in here major major events
interwar period
The interwar period brought with it a jump in tall building
construction in the central city, made possible by the use of
structural steel and reinforced concrete framing. In
response, a height limit was imposed by the City Council in
1916, dictated by the limitations on fire-fighting at that
time. A maximum height of 40 metres was dictated for steel
and concrete buildings, a limit that was not broken until the
1950s. Commercial buildings in the 1920s were mainly of the
Commercial Palazzo style, as exemplified by Harry Norris’s
Nicholas Building in Swanston Street (1925). The style was an
early attempt at creating a style suitable for the tall
building.42 It was divided into a base, shaft and cornice,
much like a Renaissance palazzo. The scale, however, was
greatly enlarged, with the shaft stretching up to 10 storeys.
By the 1930s, the soaring height of the new office towers was
embraced and the vertical thrust emphasised in the Commercial
Gothic style and the Jazz Moderne. Landmark examples include,
respectively, Marcus Barlow’s Manchester Unity Building
(1929-32) and the Tompkins Bros’ Myer Emporium in Bourke
Street (1933).
From the 1920s onward, cantilevered verandahs came into
fashion, for their clean lines and modern appearance. At this
time the City Council began to encourage the removal of the
cast iron ‘corporation verandahs’, and their replacement with
hung verandahs (which visually emulated the cantilevered
ones). The corporation verandahs, with their iron posts and
the city’s coat of arms on the frieze, had characterised
almost all commercial buildings in Melbourne and its suburbs
up to this time. Their removal was accelerated in the lead-up
to the Melbourne Olympic Games, and in 1954 a bylaw was
passed, requiring their removal in the central city. Since
the 1990s, a number have been reconstructed.
By the end of the interwar period, sweeping horizontal lines
came into favour, foreshadowing the postwar period, but in a
far more ornamented form. Some of the finest examples are the
McPherson Building in Collins Street (Reid & Pearson, 1934-
37) and Mitchell House in Lonsdale Street (Harry Norris,
1936).
Domestically, there was limited construction in the inner
suburbs, as they had been almost completely developed in the
Edwardian era. Most new houses were in the California
Bungalow style (another that ideally was designed as a
freestanding house on a wide block) and the Spanish Mission
style, characterised by textured render on the walls and
arched loggias.
SOURCE Context Pty Ltd 2012, Thematic History: A History of the City of Melbourne’s Urban Environment, prepared for the City of Melbourne.
POSTWAR
Postwar architecture in the central city began daringly to
break many of the rules that had moulded the city in the
early twentieth century. The 40-metre height limit was first
broken in 1955 by ICI House (Bates Smart & McCutcheon), which
had a glass curtain wall — popular in the 1950s. Taller
towers such as these were often surrounded by plazas,
creating gaps in the once continuous street-front. Concrete
cladding began to overtake glass curtain walling by the early
1960s, led by Bates Smart McCutcheon’s South British Building
of 1960-62. It had a precast concrete façade, as did the
Housing Commission high rises constructed during this period in suburbs like Carlton, North Melbourne, and Kensington,
often at the expense of 19th-century neighbourhoods. The
central city also suffered demolition of fine examples of
19th-century architecture. The unwarranted destruction of
some of Melbourne’s landmarks, such as the Eastern Market
(replaced by the Southern Cross Hotel, since demolished), and
of swaths of the inner suburbs, led to widespread backlash by
the community and the introduction of heritage protection in
the 1970s. -SOURCE Context Pty Ltd 2012, Thematic History: A History of the City of Melbourne’s Urban Environment, prepared for the City of Melbourne.
burrows & co 