DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH OF VICTORIA   

Atlas Page 40
By James Smith

MELBOURNE - THE CITY 2....

Returning to Collins Street East, the stranger finds that part of it which is locally known as "the Block" —that is to say, the north side between Swanston and Elizabeth Streets —thronged from three to five or six on a fine afternoon with promenaders. There was a time when it was almost the only paved footpath in Melbourne, and it then became, what it has continued to be ever since, the favourite rendezvous of young people of both sexes, with idle time upon their hands. It is to them what " the sweet, shady side of Pall Mall" was to the belles and beaux of Westminster in the time of the Regency, when Charles Morris wrote the song in which those words occur; before the elm trees were cut down, and fashionable people had migrated to the Row, and the Long Walk in Kensington Gardens. The chief music shops, with their handsome facades, are all "on the Block," with nests of teaching-rooms on the third floor; and outside or inside the establishment of Messrs. Allen and Sons, or Glen’s, or Nicholson’s, most of the musical celebrities of the city are to be met with towards the close of the afternoon. Another favourite place of resort is the spacious book shop and circulating library of the Melbourne "Mudie," Mr. S. Mullen, frequented alike by the insatiable devourers of light literature, by bibliophilists belonging to all classes and professions. Here, too, and further on in the direction of Queen Street, are most of the leading Jewellers’ shops, some of the principal silk mercers’ establishments, four or five photographic studios of high repute, and a popular cafe or two. And while the latest fashions in feminine apparel and adornment are illustrated and proclaimed behind huge panes of plate-glass in many of the shop windows, they are also exemplified in the walking costumes of the ladies, of whom it may be said, as Friar Lawrence said of Juliet, "so light a foot will ne’er wear out the everlasting" granite on which it treads. Four o’clock in the afternoon brings with it a considerable accession to the crowd in the shape of young men released from the banks and public offices; two hours afterwards the street is well-nigh deserted, and nothing is heard but the metallic rattle of iron shutters closing in upon the darkened windows. Thenceforward the thoroughfare is as silent as a village highway after dark.

From an architectural point of view, this portion of Collins Street is one of the handsomest avenues in the city. The south side, which is almost monopolised by banking institutions, and the offices of building societies and financial companies, presents some striking elevations. That of the Premier Building Society is the first to claim attention. It is a five-storey edifice, the architect of which has adopted the style of the French Renaissance, as exemplified by the colony of Italians who settled at Amboise in the middle of the sixteenth century, and left their impress on many of the chateaux in the valley of the Loire. A somewhat narrow front —consisting of three divisions, the centre one recessed, so as to admit of the introduction of an effective bay, enriched with polished columns and pilasters of red granite —is ornate with carvings in freestone, embracing caryatides, foliated ornaments on panels, and a certain elegance of detail such as the architects of the period substituted for the grander forms and more massive features of the Gothic and Classic styles which the Renaissance had superseded. The leading characteristic of the building before us is what would be described, if feminine beauty were being spoken of, as "a distracting prettiness," which is heightened by contrast with the severely simple design of the neighbouring structure, the printing and publishing office of the Age, the Leader and the Illustrated Australian News. A little farther on is the handsome front of the Bank of Victoria, which is almost a fac-simile of the Palazzo Pesaro, erected by Longhena in 1679, on the Grand Canal in Venice. But the rusticated basement and mezzanine storey contain only one arched entrance instead of two, and there is no third storey as in the original, while a frieze pierced for attic lights has been interposed between the entablature above the columns and the parapet. As the frontage of the bank is from one-fourth to one-fifth less than that of the palace from which it has been copied, it does not suffer materially by the omission of the upper storey, and to the Melbourne building may be applied the words which Fergusson has used when speaking of the Venetian structure: "From the waterline to the cornice, it is a rich, varied, and appropriate design, so beautiful as a whole that we can well afford to overlook any, slight irregularities in detail." Two emblematical figures have been judiciously substituted for the sea-gods filling the spandrils above the entrance of the palace, which are certainly more at home in looking down upon the waters of the silent highway in Venice than they would be in surveying the hot pavement on the south side of Collins Street. Near the Bank of Victoria is the Athenaeum Club, most of the members of which belong to the professional and mercantile’ classes of the community. It is chiefly resorted to at mid-day and in the afternoon, but participates after sunset in the quietude which falls upon the whole of Collins Street, both East and West, during the hours of evening. Indeed, the contrast is remarkable between the liveliness of this busy thoroughfare throughout the business portion of the day, and its desertion and solitude so soon afterwards.

The offices of the Australian Deposit and Mortgage Bank and of the Melbourne Permanent Building Society offer no special architectural features-to-invite description; but the National Bank, adjoining the latter, must be pointed out as an excellent example of the successful application of the Classic style to a secular edifice. It combines symmetry and harmony of proportion with simplicity and strength, and has a general air of solidity befitting one of the leading banks of a city in which business of this kind is conducted upon such safe and sound principles as fully entitle the great money-lending financial institutions of Melbourne to the confidence they enjoy. The stylobate is of massive wrought blue stone, upon which stand four pairs of coupled columns of the Doric order. A balustrade separates this from the upper order, which is Corinthian. This, with its carved capitals and full enrichments, produces a handsome effect. The doorway and windows are arched, in accordance with Roman methods of adapting Greek orders, and are sufficiently recessed to give, in addition to its cornice, the requisite amount of shadow. Ionic shafts have been employed in connection with the recessed windows of the upper storey, and the whole is surmounted by an effectively treated parapet. In its ensemble, the National Bank may be pronounced to be one of the happiest examples of Romano-Greek architecture in Melbourne. The banking chamber is lofty and spacious. It is surmounted by a dome, springing from eight Corinthian columns carrying the enriched entablature from which it rises. The dome itself is divided into enriched compartments, through which the light is received into the chamber.

The frontage intervening between the building just described and the City of Melbourne Bank is occupied by three facades of a handsome character. These assist, by their variety of styles, to diversify the architecture of the street in which the last named bank forms a very conspicuous object, owing to the cupola of the tower, erected at the north-west angle of the structure, which rises to the height of one hundred and thirteen feet above the pavement. The two faces of the edifice, in Elizabeth and Collins Streets, each exhibit a Corinthian colonnade, resting upon a blue stone base or podium seven feet high, the columns themselves, extending to the summit of the first storey, being thirty feet high. Each couple enclose two windows, framed by Doric pillars, the upper ones having arched openings. Above the cornice of the colonnade, two storeys have been superimposed, and these are surmounted by a balustraded parapet, with a small pavilion at each end. The entrance to the banking chamber is at the corner of the street, and has been recessed so as to form a portico; above which is a semi-circular entablature, with a balcony treated in the same manner as the parapet, and an octagonal turret, with three faces exposed terminating in the cupola.

The bank occupies the site of the old Clarence Hotel —a relic of early Melbourne. Outside of it, under its broad verandah, a sort of alfresco labour exchange used to establish itself on Saturday mornings, to which contractors, builders and operative masons, bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers and slaters resorted for the purpose of entering into engagements which were occasionally cemented in the neighbouring bars. It is said that, long after the work of demolition had commenced, and the sheltering verandah had been carted away piecemeal, habitual frequenters of the place would still wend their way thither on the last morning of the week, look with a puzzled air at the labourers who were tearing down the walls of the old familiar hostelry, and wander away with a forlorn expression on their countenances, as if they had lost an aged companion and were only partially conscious of the deprivation.

Crossing Elizabeth Street into Collins Street West, which commences at this point, and proceeding towards Spencer Street, the visitor finds himself approaching the centre of the mercantile life of Melbourne, of which the Exchange may be said to focalise some at least of its most active functions. Half a dozen banking, institutions conduct their business in its immediate vicinity. The principal insurance companies have established their head-quarters close by, and the leading auctioneers are nearly all to be found in the same neighbourhood )d. Stock and station agents, share and produce brokers have their offices within a radial line of a hundred yards or so drawn from the corner of Queen Street, and the whole district may be said to throb with the quick currents of commerce and finance, from en o’clock in the morning until four in the afternoon. Outside the Exchange, congregate the dealers and speculators in shares and scrip, who cling to the sunny side of the street for one half of the year, and drift over the way for the sake of the shade afforded by he Bank of New South Wales, during the summer months. From eleven to one, the auction rooms are populous with a crowd of bidders a d curious idlers, and the voices of the salesmen are audible above the hum and the buzzing of the motley company gathered around the counters whereon is displayed the merchandise which is being disposed of with such remarkable celerity. All the world has been laid under contribution for the articles of utility or ornament that pass beneath the hammer in these rooms from year’s end to year’s end. Carved furniture, carpets and silken fabrics from Indian bazaars; bronzes, porcelain and lacquer-ware from Japan; marble statuary from Florence and Pisa; ceramic ware from Worcester, Dresden, Limoges and Vienna; pianos from Paris and Berlin; wines and spirits from Bordeaux; cargoes of tea from China; ironware from the north of England; and the various products of the looms of Lancashire, Belfast, Mulhouse and Paisley flow through the auction rooms of Collins Street West in an apparently perennial stream, thence to be distributed through a hundred minor channels. Book sales almost invariably take place on a Saturday morning, and now and then an auction of choice pictures at Messrs. Gemmell and Tuckett’s —held always in the afternoon —draws together a little circle of art-lovers, and the prices realised denote pretty accurately whether the times are prosperous or otherwise.

Each auction room has its own clientele, and, its own little group of brokers who buy on commission. For there are specialists in this, as in the medical profession. There are the salesmen of tropical produce, quick to detect minute differences of colour and granulation in sugar, and to discriminate delicate nuances of fragrance and flavour in tea. There are others who are experts in textile fabrics, and others to whom the name, uses and value of every article of domestic plenishing are as familiar as household words; some who know all varieties of timber "with a most learned quality"; and a few who, taking advantage of the earth hunger of large classes of the community, have surrounded the city with suburban Edens, Arcadian vales, hills commanding wide and matchless prospects, secluded glens like that inhabited by Prince Rasselas, sea-side retreats more beautiful than those haunted by the syrens, and bosky dells worthy for elves and fays to hold their revels in. The vendors of these have brought all the resources of a lively fancy to bear on the composition of advertisements like those of Mr. Puff, in " The Critic," which that ingenious gentleman "crowded with panegyrical superlatives." At some seasons of the year, certain of the auction rooms are transformed into green bowers. Young orange and lemon trees from the shores of Port Jackson, ferns from New Zealand, flowering plants of all kinds from near and distant nurseries, and fruit trees and odoriferous shrubs, cultivated on the mountain slopes, bring the freshness and sweetness of the country into the somewhat close and frowsy atmosphere of the dusty sale-room; and many a cottage-garden and suburban verandah is pleasantly brightened by pot-plants, baskets of ferns, trailers and creepers, which have been procured at such times and in these places. In the early days of Melbourne, the auction rooms discharged some important functions as commercial channels and distributing agencies, and they have continued to do so ever since, more especially when trade is dull in Europe and the United States; and when some relief must be sought in distant markets, even if a sacrifice has to be made, for over-production at home. Hence the astonishing variety of products which are brought under the hammer at Collins Street West, and the equally remarkable bargains which are sometimes picked up in the most unexpected manner.

Notable among the architectural ornaments of that section of Collins Street West which lies between Elizabeth and Queen Streets are the banking houses of the Union, the New Zealand, the English, Scottish and Australian Chartered, and the New South Wales companies. The first is erected on a site bought originally for the sum of sixteen pounds, and afterwards occupied by the Criterion Hotel, a building which was famous, in the auriferous era, for its bridal chamber fitted up with amber satin; and for its bars, which were thronged with customers from morning till night; where it was a favour to by supercilious tapsters with anything that might be required; for it was a time when money was unvalued, and no business transaction was regarded as valid unless ratified by a "solemn drink." The Union Bank, which has replaced the once-popular tavern, is a good example of the pure Italian style; and its facade resembles that of some princely mansion on the banks of the Adige or the Brenta, such as one of the old Venetian nobles may have passed his villeggiatura in. Pillars of the Doric order have been employed in the basement storey, Corinthian ones above, and Ionic columns in the two turrets, which form one of the most striking features of the general design. The Commercial Bank, on the same side of the street, is architecturally unpretending. At the corner of Queen Street, the, New Zealand Bank has installed itself, in the premises vacated by the unfortunate Oriental Bank. The two facades are windowless, in so far as that portion of the building which is used as a banking chamber is concerned but the walls are broken up and relieved by Corinthian columns, with architrave, enriched frieze, cornice and balustrade, the spaces between the columns being filled in with mounted panels, in which are inserted slabs of rouge-royal marble. The principal entrance is in a curve at the angle of the building.

Beyond Queen Street on the south side is the London Chartered Bank, a structure of an impressively substantial character; and nearly opposite to it is the Bank of Australasia, massive in appearance and solid in construction, the lower storey broken up by rusticated piers, supporting a Doric cornice, above which are the pilasters carrying the main cornice and parapet. The internal decorations of the banking chamber are rich in colour and thoroughly artistic in design. To the westward of this edifice is a cluster of fire insurance and life assurance offices, possessing architectural features which render them an ornament to what promises to become one of the finest streets in the southern hemisphere. Nor will the visitor fail to be struck by the magnitude and grandiose elevation of the immense edifice erected by the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company. This has been built in the Italian style, and covers nearly an acre of ground. The basement and the first storey are faced with dressed blue stone, and the four floors above with Oamaru freestone; the general effect being exceedingly massive and imposing. Scarcely less striking is the lofty pile which has received the name of Robb’s Buildings. But both will be overshadowed as regards altitude by the high-soaring and elaborate structure which owes its existence to the enterprise of the Federal Coffee Palace Company.

Retracing his steps to the eastward, and glancing at the handsome facade of the Australian Club in William Street as he crosses that thoroughfare, the stranger will find his attention attracted, upon reaching Queen Street, by the newly-erected bank of the English, Scottish and Australian Corporation, partly on account of the novelty of its style and partly because of the almost vivid colour of the Sydney freestone employed in its construction. The style is essentially and purely Gothic, of the geometrical period, and as the Building Act in force in Melbourne prohibits projections from the wall, beyond a very small limit, the architect has succeeded in avoiding flatness of effect by the introduction, on the western front, of recessed loggie —similar to those which are to be met with in so many Venetian palaces —and by balconies on the southern face. The loggie in the former are contrived by the outer wall being carried on a richly traceried arcade with polished granite columns, while the back walls of the recesses are faced with glazed tiles of a blue tint. At the angle of the building is a turret, springing from a groined corbel, and terminating in a spire thirty-five feet above the roof. The edifice is three storeys high, irrespective of the basement; and the ground floor is mainly occupied by the banking chamber, which has an area of sixty-seven by fifty-seven feet, and is thirty feet in height. In one respect it is believed to be almost unique, inasmuch as the architect has followed that canon of art which prescribes that decoration should grow out of and be subservient to, construction, instead of constructing for decoration.

A few yards beyond the bank just described is that of New South Wales. The style adopted by the architects is the Italo-Vitruvian, and the building pleases the eye by symmetry of form and harmony of proportion. The facade consists of three divisions and two storeys. Four Doric columns, resting on a balustraded base, support an enriched frieze, the columns, above are Corinthian, and the frieze over them is of an ornate character, somewhat resembling that of the Temple of Fortuna Virilis in Rome, consisting of festoons of fruits and flowers sustained by amoretti. These were carved by Mr. Charles Summers, a sculptor who subsequently achieved distinction in London and Rome. A bold cornice and a balustraded parapet complete the elevation. The three openings on each floor contain recessed windows, flanked by smaller pillars, corresponding in character with the larger ones employed constructively. The two side-divisions of the facade, with their arched doorways, pilasters, friezes and cornice are treated so as to harmonise with the central portion and heighten its richer effect by their relatively plainer character.

Coming back to Elizabeth Street, and turning in a northerly direction, the visitor perceives that here, as in so many other parts of the city, the gregariousness of persons and firms pursuing similar occupations, is strikingly exemplified. Here, for example, are some of the most important furnishing houses and ironmongery establishments; just as in Bourke Street West are to be found congregated together the principal cattle salesmen, saddlers and harness makers, and numerous stock and station agents; while in Bourke Street East are, with a single exception, all the theatres and concert halls, most of the restaurants, and several of the leading linen-drapery establishments.

But before quitting Elizabeth Street the stranger will pause opposite the Colonial Ban of Australasia, at the corner of Little Collins Street, if only to notice the bold treatment of its principal entrance, where the curved pediment rests upon the strenuous arms of two half-length telamons, or atlantes, and above them are reclining figures symbolical of Industry and Commerce. The lower portion of both faces of the structure is treated as a massive podium, with windows in the panels. From this spring the Corinthian columns, each with its projecting architrave and parapet, which give a certain character of dignity to the edifice. Near it is the Royal Arcade, running through from Little Collins Street to Bourke Street, immediately opposite to the General Post Office. In the smaller thoroughfare, three or four hundred yards to the eastward, is the central station of the Melbourne Fire Brigade, which is in telegraphic or telephonic communication with the watch-tower at the west end of the city and with many important buildings in Melbourne and its suburbs. Day and night, firemen with horses, hose and reels are ready at the first alarm of fire in any direction to make an immediate rush to the locality indicated. There is a clatter of hoofs, a rattle of wheels, and a ringing of the warning bell; and everywhere the vehicles of ordinary traffic make way for the eager fire-fighters who are urging their horses to the utmost speed, and are guided, like the Israelites of old, by a cloud of smoke in the day time, and a pillar of fire by night. But no matter at what hour a serious conflagration may occur, it seems to possess a. strange fascination for the multitude. Where they spring from is a mystery. They gather together so suddenly that they seem to have issued out of the ground. A few score grow into hundreds, and hundreds swell into thousands; and in the crowd that congregates around the scene of the disaster, the lurid light of the leaping flames shines upon faces that are rarely visible at any other time —the faces of men and women who hovel in back slums —the social birds of prey —and many of whom only creep out from their lairs at night, to steal purses and to practice burglary or petty larceny. Usually, a fire is promptly suppressed —drowned by the volume of water which can be poured on it from the mains; but if in a season of unusual heat the pressure happens to be weak —owing to an excessive demand upon the reservoirs for manufacturing, domestic and gardening purposes; or if it be a theatre or a kerosene store which is on fire —the utmost that can be done is to isolate the burning building, and so circumscribe the area of the disaster.

Little Collins Street West loses its name after it crosses Queen Street, and becomes Chancery Lane. It is almost given up to barristers, solicitors, and law stationers. There are nests of chambers to the right and to the left. Before ten o’clock in the morning the occupants of those chambers come trooping in from all points of the compass, but chiefly from the railway stations in Flinders Street, carrying brief bags and wearing in many cases an unmistakably legal expression on their countenances. They are for the most part men of spare habit, with a lack of colour in their cheeks, an early tendency to wrinkles, baldness and indigestion; intellectually acute, physically delicate, and addicted —owing to the nature of their occupation and their daily familiarity with the seamy side of human nature —to rather pessimistic views of mankind in general, and of that section of it amongst which they live and breathe and have their being, in particular. During term time, the relations between Temple Court, Shelborne, Normanby and Eldon Chambers, and indeed the whole neighbourhood, and the Supreme Court are close and continuous. Clerks and messengers seem to oscillate like so many pendulums between the two neighbourhoods; and when the courts rise at the close of the afternoon, it requires but little skill in physiognomy to determine which are the plaintiffs and which the defendants in civil actions; which the friends and relations of men and women on their trial for criminal offences on the one hand, and the barristers who hold the briefs and the attorneys who have prepared them on the other. Both classes of practitioners seem to straighten themselves up and to cast off their "nighted colour," as Hamlet was directed to do. The task is over, for the day, of

Proving by reason, in reason’s despite,
That right is wrong and wrong is right,
And white is black and black is white,

and the legal gentlemen go home to their suburban villas, or drop in for an hour or two at their clubs; or take a hand at whist with some neighbours at Kew, or Hawthorn, or Elsternwick; and Chancery Lane and the Supreme Court are forgotten until after the breakfast things have been cleared away on the following morning.

cont...