DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH OF VICTORIA   

Atlas Page 39
By James Smith

MELBOURNE - THE CITY 1....

From the deck of a steamer of the Tasmanian, Adelaide, or Sydney lines —as it nears its moorings alongside one of the wharves, below the Falls Bridge —the aspect of Flinders Street West is animated and busy, and on landing on the wharf all the activity of Melbourne bursts upon the visitor in a moment. The street is here broad enough for the requirements of a large traffic conducted by ordinary vehicles, and for a double tramway, in addition to a line of rails connecting the two railway termini, upon which converge the whole of the lines in Victoria; and, from morning till night, there is a continual passing to and fro of lorries, drags, carts, cabs and timber wains, with now and then a lengthy goods train cautiously moving through the crowded thoroughfare. Wood and coal yards and places covered with stacks of malt tanks line the extremity of this busy thoroughfare, and these are succeeded, as the wayfarer proceeds eastward, by the shops or warehouses of packers and salters, sail-makers, outfitters, grain and produce merchants, manufacturers of oilskin hats and dreadnoughts, engineers and boilermakers, eating-house keepers and shipping agents. Outside the taverns are congregated groups of lumpers awaiting the arrival of the vessels they are to unload, and inside are seamen not yet converts to temperance principles. Nearly opposite the wharf, on the north side .of Flinders Street, is the Customhouse, which was enlarged and altered in 1873 to meet the exigencies of an expanding commerce, and a fiscal system involving the collection of a multiplicity of import duties. It is a building of no great architectural pretensions, but well planned internally for the despatch of public business. It occupies, with the Melbourne Savings Bank and the offices of the Harbour Trust, an isolated block of land surrounded by four streets, most of the more important navigation companies and shipowners having their offices in its immediate neighbourhood.

With the exception of a small area occupied by the Corporation Fish Market on the west side of the approach to Prince’s Bridge, the whole of the river frontage from the Falls Bridge to the eastern extremity of Flinders Street is covered, or will be so in a short time, by the two railway termini, their goods and engine sheds and shunting lines. The stations themselves are of a mean and makeshift character, and quite unworthy of the sites on which they stand, and of the magnitude of the traffic conducted in them. But they are to be replaced by edifices more in keeping with the architecture of the neighbourhood, and affording better accommodation alike for the public and for the officers administering the local business of the Department.

On the north side of Flinders Street, in an easterly direction from the Custom-house, are the extensive bonded stores of Messrs. Grice, Sumner and Co., one of the oldest mercantile firms in Melbourne, the offices of a local printing and publishing company, and the large warehouse of Rocke, Tompsitt and Co. Beyond Elizabeth Street, at one corner of which still survives a fragment of primitive Melbourne, the mingled simplicity and solidity of the facade of the Mutual Store arrest attention, and perhaps invite inquiry as to the business transacted in such spacious premises. Founded and conducted upon co operative principles, it has gradually grown from small beginnings to a position in which it is enabled to combine great public utility with financial prosperity, supplying its numerous share holders with every thing required for household use, and receiving and disbursing as much as eighty thousand pounds sterling per annum. Its success has led to the institution of the Federal Store in the same street, adjoining which is the Port Phillip Club Hotel, with its arcaded upper stories and broad frontage, covering the ground once occupied by a rural hostelry standing well back from the road, and known far and wide throughout the length and breadth of Victoria, in the pastoral epoch of its history, as the resort and rendezvous of squatters and country folk at holiday seasons, when commodious inns were few and far between in the rising township of Melbourne, and there was but little choice of recreation or variety of companionship.

A few paces farther, and Swanston Street opens out to the left and the approach to the new Prince’s Bridge on the right. In the early years of the colony there was no other method of crossing the Yarra than by a punt, and when, at the latter end of the year 1850, a bridge of a single arch had been thrown over the river and opened for traffic, a work was believe to have been achieved which would last for centuries. But its duration did not extend beyond the lifetime of a single generation, and it was pulled down to make room for a structure not unworthy to span the Thames, the Tiber, or the Tacrus. It consists of three arches of one hundred feet each and two land openings —one at each end; the northerly one thirty-six feet across and the southerly one sixty, the height of the roadway being forty feet above the summer level of the river; the total length of the bridge and its approaches is five hundred and fifty feet, and its width three hundred feet. Two massive piers and abutments of blue stone ashler support a column of Harcourt granite, capped with foliated capitals in the early French-Gothic style. The spans are composed of ten wrought iron ribs, with wrought iron spandrils and cross girders filled in with highly relieved foliated work, surrounding a circular panel containing the arms of Victoria and Melbourne, and scrolls; while the cornice and parapet above are also constructed of wrought iron, deeply intermoulded and bracketed at intervals of six feet with foliated corbels.

The south-east angle of Swanston Street was unfortunately chosen as the site of the Protestant Cathedral in preference to a block of land originally intended for it in Clarendon Street, East Melbourne, where it would have occupied a commanding position, equidistant from three great centres of population besides being placed amidst surroundings resembling those which heighten the architectural beauty of similar edifices in the mother country. Almost the lowest level of the city is reached at the southern extremity of Swanston Street, and, as the city must extend skyward, owing to the continually advancing value of land, a noble monument of architecture promises to be dwarfed in time by neighbouring warehouses.

As the site of the cathedral is longest on its meridional axis, it has been found necessary to sacrifice the customary orientation of places of worship of this kind, and to cause the main body of the structure to run from north to south; while the transepts, one of which has had to be shortened, cross it from east to west. The choir is consequently at the north, and the principal entrance is at the south end of the building, which has been designed by the architect in conformity with the style adopted during the early period of middle pointed Gothic architecture, and recalls to mind some of the cathedrals of France and northern Germany. It is a pure example of the style selected, though cramped for space, and is calculated to produce a favourable impression on the mind of a stranger entering the city by way of Prince’s Bridge. The two towers facing the south have gabled roofs, and attain the height of one hundred and twenty-seven feet. Between these is the central doorway, and above it a five-light traceried window, the upper part of the gable which terminates the roof of the central aisle being filled with blank arcading, and a cusped vesica, or oval with the ends pointed, enclosing a cross in high relief. Above the intersection of the nave and transepts arises the central tower, forty feet square, from which, at the height of one hundred and thirty-four feet, springs an octagonal spire one hundred and twenty-six feet high, making a total of two hundred and sixty feet. The whole of this superstructure is supported by four massive piers, and the exterior of the fleche is enriched by escaloped bands. In the east transept is a handsome rose window containing six foliated circles, surrounding a seventh filled in with quatre-foils, the whole enclosed in a spherical triangle. The west’ transept and choir windows agree in character with the south. The cathedral has a total length of two hundred and forty-six feet, and its extreme breadth is, ninety-three feet. Clustered columns constitute the piers of the nave, carrying somewhat depressed pointed arches, above which are lofty clerestories, and these are continued in the chancel. Considered as a specimen of architectural art, the cathedral is an ornament to the city; and it is situated at the converging point of the Sunday traffic of Melbourne, and within a hundred yards of three railway lines, over which passenger trains are passing every minute of the day.

The new edifice occupies the site upon which St. Paul’s Church had previously stood. It was the third place of worship in connection with the Church of England erected in Melbourne, and dating from the year 1852. A plain blue stone building, with lancet windows and a turreted tower, its demolition was witnessed without regret; and it is worthy of record that the last sermon preached inside its walls was delivered by the Dean of Melbourne, who had also occupied its pulpit on the day it was opened, thirty-three years previously.

Not very far from the adjacent Vicarage, proceeding eastwards, some relics of old Melbourne occupy a portion of the northern frontage to Flinders Street. These are composed of a weather-board cottage with a zinc roof, an adjoining tenement still covered with shingle, and a store, the upper storey and arched roof of which are built of corrugated iron. In the "golden days" of Melbourne this block of buildings yielded a rental of something like two thousand pounds per annum. Degraves’ bonded store belongs to the same epoch, but is more solidly constructed.

Diverging for a few moments from his easterly course, and turning into Swanston Street towards the Town Hall, the visitor may arrest his steps at the corner of Flinders Lane, where a somewhat remarkable architectural vista opens out before him as he looks toward the west. Were it not for the newness of the buildings and the traffic which chokes the busy thoroughfare, he might imagine it to be one of those narrow streets lined with the severely simple and solid palaces and mansions of old and noble families, to be met with in many of the cities of central Italy. The buildings here are mostly soft-goods warehouses filled with countless bales of textile fabrics from the looms of Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland; but in massiveness and magnitude, they bear a striking resemblance to the dwelling places of the turbulent patricians of the middle ages, who built themselves residences combining strength and security, with amplitude and commodiousness, in Florence, Pisa, Siena, Bergamo, Pistoia, and other old places.

Returning to Flinders Street and following an easterly course towards the, Fitzroy Gardens, the steep ascent of Russell Street is reached —so named after the statesman who was a conspicuous figure in English politics at the time Melbourne was founded —the visitor climbs to the crown of the hill, from which the Burke and Wills statue has been recently removed in order to avoid obstructing the tramway traffic, and pauses to survey the four vistas which open out at the intersection of this thoroughfare with one of the main arteries of the city. Looking eastward, the eye is led through an avenue of young elm trees and sycamores —above which, on the right-hand side of Collins Street, tower the two cupolas of the Freemasons’ Club —to the arcaded facade of the Treasury. Nearly opposite the rendezvous of the craft, is the Melbourne Club the earliest institution of the kind in the city, the most hospitable and the most exclusive. To the westward, the far-stretching perspective is terminated by the long, low roof of the railway station in Spencer Street, seen above the rising ground of Collins Street West; and the architectural lines on either side, irregular in themselves, are on one side of the street broken up still more by the spire of, St. Enoch’s Church —now used as an Assembly Hall by the Presbyterian body —by the high mansard roof of the Premier Building Society, by the tall cupola of the City of Melbourne Bank, and by the twin pavilions of the Union Bank; and on the other by the lofty facades of the Equitable Co-operative Store, the Melbourne Athenaeum immediately opposite the Argus Office, and the Coffee Palace —originally the Victorian Club. Beyond these rises the clock tower of the Town Hall, and in’ the far distance the turret of the English, Scottish, and Australian Chartered Bank at the corner of Queen Street. Southward, the, wooded domain of Government House, crowned by its campanile, rises from the bank of the river; and to the northward, the receding lines start from the Congregational Church on the one hand, and the Scotch Church on the other; the more notable buildings beyond being the Temperance Hall, and the spacious and convenient premises belonging to the Young Men’s Christian Association.

The two churches just mentioned occupy one of the finest sites in the city, and are quite worthy of it. Upon the ground covered by that of the Congregationalists, formerly stood a mean and meagre structure, so destitute of architectural pretensions and so devoid of ecclesiastical significance that it might have been mistaken for a small penitentiary or a prison. It was, however, the first place of worship erected by the Independent denomination in Victoria, its foundation stone having been laid on the 6th of September, 1839, when the settlement was only four years old; and those who had assembled, year after year, for pray and praise beneath its roof did not witness its demolition without a pang; for, howsoever ugly and incommodious it may have been, it was associated in their minds with the struggles, the hardships and trials of their daily lives in the early times, and with the often recurring question of the new comer and voluntary exile, "How shall we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land?" But the congregation had outgrown the capacity of the primitive building which has now been replaced by a church in which the architect has introduced a modification of the Romanesque style so successfully applied to a similar purpose in Lombardy and elsewhere, by builders of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries, and has shown what picturesque uses may be made of vari-coloured bricks, even without the terra-cotta decorations which enrich the surface of the structures referred to. The core of the edifice, which is amphitheatrical in its internal arrangement, is enclosed on three sides by a two-storied cloister or corridor, which equalises the temperature within, and has been rendered externally effective by the employment of open and of glazed arcades. At the south-west angle of the church a campanile rises to a height of one hundred and fifty feet, with a triple-arched loggia at the summit of the shaft, and two handsome porches below. These are approached by flights of steps, and the building gains greatly in elevation accordingly. At the rear of the edifice, and facing Russell Street, is a lecture-hall, library and class-rooms belonging to the same denomination, erected in the same style, and harmonising with the church itself.

The Scots Church, at the opposite corner of Collins Street on the north ‘Side, also superseded one of the earliest places of worship in Melbourne, and was erected in the year 1875. It is built of New Zealand and Barrabool stone, and the style adopted is the Early English; its southern facade, with its handsome four-light window filled with tracery; its open arcade following the rake of the roof; its octagonal turret at the western angle; and its graceful tower and spire, rising to a height of two hundred and eleven feet, together challenge the admiration of the passer-by. The church is cruciform in plan, with a nave and two side aisles, and the interior of the building sustains the favourable impression produced by the elevation which has just been described.

That portion of Collins Street East which lies between Russell and Spring Streets is, popularly known as "Doctors’ Commons," for with about half a dozen exceptions every house in it is occupied by a physician, surgeon, dentist, apothecary, or surgical instrument maker; and some of the medical practitioners have overflowed into Spring Street. Its chief architectural features are the severely simple but solid and impressive facade of the Melbourne Club; the Masonic Club —with its two pavilion towers,’ its five bays of arched balconies, and its Ionic, Doric and Corinthian columns of pilasters, superimposed in chronological order —and the handsome town residence of an operative surgeon at the south-east corner of Russell Street.

Turning to the westward and descending the hill, the visitor passes the classic portico of the Baptist Church and the Palladian front of the Melbourne Athenaeum; immediately adjoining which is the facade of the Coffee Palace, a four-storey building, originally erected in the style of the French Renaissance for a club-house. On the other side of the street are the offices of the Argus —the oldest morning newspaper in Melbourne, from which are also issued the weekly Australasian and the monthly illustrated Sketcher —and those of the Daily Telegraph and Weekly Times. The south-east angle of Collins Street, at its intersection with Swanston Street, is occupied by the extensive block of buildings which compose the Town Hall. The municipal organisation of Melbourne dates from the year 1842, when it was placed under the government of a Corporation elected by the ratepayers, and a Mayor who is chosen by the aldermen and councillors. At present there are seven of the former and twenty-one of the latter, and the city is divided into seven wards, each of which returns one alderman and three councillors. Originally, the area over which the rule of the Corporation extended was a very comprehensive one; but as the various suburbs grew in population and importance, a necessity arose for local self-government, and on the passing of a really admirable measure entitled "The Municipal Institutions Act," in the year 1855, Emerald Hill, or South Melbourne as it is now called, was erected into a separate municipality, and Mr. James Service, who afterwards acquired distinction as a statesman, and became the Premier of the colony, was its first chairman. In process of time other districts were detached from Melbourne, and at this moment the city is surrounded by a belt of municipalities, seventeen in number, containing an aggregate population of two hundred and seventy thousand, and administering a yearly revenue of two hundred and thirty thousand pounds sterling.

Forty-five years ago the streets of Melbourne were bush tracks, and after a heavy rain a roaring torrent ran down a gully, following the course of what is now Elizabeth Street. At this moment there is nothing to differentiate the city from one of the capitals of Europe. Its streets are as well paved, as well channelled, as well lighted and as well watched as those of London, Paris, or Vienna and much of the credit of the remarkable transformation the city has undergone in four decades and a half, is due to the efficiency and integrity with which the municipal rulers of Melbourne have performed their civic duties. The boast of Augustus Caesar that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble, described a state of things which has almost been paralleled in the metropolis of Victoria within the memory of men who were acquainted with it before the discovery of the goldfields. The builder flourished in those early days, but the architect was almost unknown. Paved footpaths were few and far between; the water supply of the inhabitants had to be carted in casks from the already polluted Yarra; and footpads lurked in the waste places which have since become public pleasure-grounds surrounded by mansions and terraces.

The first Town Hall belonged to the period just spoken of, and was an ugly pile of blue stone. In the rear was a square tower containing the fire-bell, and facing Swanston Street was a gloomy-looking police court and lock-up. From the barred but open windows of the latter there would frequently float out upon the air the incoherent ravings of an inmate or two suffering from delirium tremens, or the songs and shouts of culprits arrested on a charge of being drunk and disorderly. The whole of these buildings were levelled to the ground in 1867-8, and the first stone of the present Town Hall was laid by H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh on the 29th of April, 1867; the capital of the first of the pilasters upon the tower was placed by him on the 3rd of March, 1869. The style of architecture adopted is a free treatment of the Classic, the modifications introduced having been suggested by the Renaissance. There are four storeys comprising a rustic basement, an attic, in lieu of a parapet, which is relieved by circular-headed windows, with rounded gables over each, and two intermediate piani, with Corinthian columns and pilasters flanking the recessed windows of both. The main front to Swanston Street is composed of five architectural divisions, embracing a centre terminating in a mansard roof, and two pavilions. On one of these is superimposed the clock tower, one hundred and forty feet in height. A portico is about to be added to the principal entrance, which is approached by a double flight of steps. The Collins Street front, which is not so long as the other, has the same architectural divisions as the latter; but the slope on the hill on this side interferes somewhat with the architectural lines, and it is now apparent that a loftier elevation might have been advantageously given to the whole structure, which will presently be overtopped by the opposite buildings; and, indeed, is so already in one case. By the internal division of the building, the basement has been assigned to the out-of-door officers of the Corporation, and fire-proof rooms have also been provided in it for the city muniments. On the first floor are the offices of the Town Clerk and the City Treasurer, together with numerous committee and retiring rooms, as also the entrance to the great hall. This is one hundred and seventy-four feet long, seventy-four feet wide an sixty-three feet high, with an orchestra at the north end and a large organ constructed at a cost of seven thousand pounds. Galleries encompass the other three sides of the building, which is used for civic banquets, balls, concerts, and important public meetings; also occasionally as a place of worship. On the second floor is a handsomely fitted council chamber, hung round with full length portraits of former mayors of the city; the library, committee rooms, and apartments reserved for the use of the mayor, aldermen and councillors. The supper-room, kitchen and housekeepers’ apartments occupy the attic storey. The three upper stages of the tower are devoted to a clock-room, belfry, etc. About one hundred thousand pounds have been expended on the building, furniture, and fittings, including the purchase of some land, the possession of which was essential to the execution of the architect’s plans. The organ has four manuals, with a compass of sixty-one notes in each, seventy-nine stops, and four thousand three hundred and seventy-three pipes, the largest of which is thirty-two feet while the dimensions of the instrument are these —height, forty-six feet; breadth, fifty-two feet six inches; depth, twenty-four feet. It occupies an arched recess at the north end of the hall.

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