Sunday, October 27, 2013

Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne

Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne

I'm not sure when I first noticed this view of the Manchester Unity building on the corner of Collins & Swanston Sts in Melbourne. The photo is taken from the City Square, over the shoulders of Burke & Wills, memorialised by Charles Summer in 1865 following their 1860-61 ill-fated exploring expedition to cross Australia south to north from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

While the Manchester Unity building, designed by Marcus Barlow, has been here since 1932, the poor old explorers have been in a few locations around Melbourne in their 140-odd years before finding this home on the edge of the City Square in 1994.

References:
Burke & Wills Wed: the online digital research archive
at

6 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 27, 2013 at 10:07 PM

    Surely Melbourne's most attractive highrise building. Just today I noticed someone looking up at its magnificence.

    ReplyDelete
  2. David ThompsonOctober 28, 2013 at 6:58 AM

    I think the colour of the terracotta makes it stand out from the other city buildings and, of course, it has very prominent location opposite the Town Hall.

    ReplyDelete
  3. LukaOctober 28, 2013 at 8:56 AM

    I have seen a very similar building in Sydney, is it by the same architect? Or even the same architecture?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. David ThompsonOctober 28, 2013 at 9:24 AM

      I'm not aware of the building but that doesn't mean there isn't a similar one in Sydney. Perhaps someone can fill us both in.

      Delete
  4. teeritzOctober 28, 2013 at 9:08 AM

    And, of course, it's just as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside. I'm glad it hasn't been turned into a bunch of apartments or tone down to make way for some bland, anonymous office block.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. David ThompsonOctober 28, 2013 at 9:27 AM

      Fabulous inside and pretty much still used how it was when originally built.

      Delete