The Nicholas Building is a landmark historic office and retail building located at 37 Swanston St, at the intersection of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane, in the Melbourne central business district, Victoria, Australia. Designed by architect Harry Norris and completed in 1926, it is the grandest example in Melbourne of what is known as 'Commercial Palazzo' style, featuring a solid base, vertical middle floors, and a large cornice. It has housed a range of small businesses, and is now known for its creative industry tenants such as fashion designers and artists and specialist retailers. It had the longest operating manual lifts in the city, and the ground floor Cathedral Arcade is one of the most notable 1920s interiors in the city. The building is listed by the National Trust and by Heritage Victoria.[1]
The Nicholas family, headed by Alfred Nicholas, built their fortune on the production of Aspro, a replacement for the German-made aspirin when it became unavailable during World War I.[2] The Nicholas company never occupied the building; it was instead built as a speculative office building development. It was completed in 1926, and designed by architect Harry Norris.[3] Norris established his architecture practice in the building, remaining until his retirement in 1955.[1] The building has two main facades, the one to Swanston Street the most imposing. On its completion it was hailed as a 'modern skyscraper'.[4]
Cathedral Arcade
The Cathedral Arcade, named after the Cathedral opposite, is L-shaped, with the lifts and stairs to the upper floors opening off it. The arcade features the original finely detailed shopfronts, and a leadlight barrel vaulted glass ceiling. The first floor was also developed as shops, complete with leadlight shop fronts matching those of the ground foor.[1]
From 1926 to 1967 a Coles department store occupied the basement and part of the ground floor. In 1939, a five level Victorian era building to the south was replaced by a lower three storey extension, also designed by Norris, extending the area of the Coles store.[1] Some time after this, the rooms above on that side, which only opened onto the internal light well, were opened up with windows to the south. From the 1950s on, that wall sported various painted or neon signs, with larger ones supported on a framework on the roof, all removed by 2020.
The building was home to various businesses, at first many associated with the Flinders Lane garment trade, and later commercial artists, medical practitioners and architects. By the 1990s the small rooms and relatively cheap rent attracted creative industry practitioners and specialist retailers, some of whom still serve the fashion industry, and it became renowned as one of Melbourne's 'vertical lanes'.[5]
Valerie (Vali) Myers (1930-2003) had a studio on the seventh floor from 1995 until her death in 2003; she was a dancer and artist who moved to Paris in 1949 and lived and worked in Positano and New York before returning to Melbourne in 1993.[6]
The 2003 novel Shantaram, by one of Australia's most wanted fugitives Gregory David Roberts, was written in the building.[7] In 2003, a stencil, believed by UK artist Banksy, was painted on the building, on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane. A piece of plastic was put up over the work to protect it from the elements but it was later painted over by city council workers, upsetting the art community.[8]
Before undergoing modernisation in 2012, the Nicholas Building was home to the last manually operated lift in Melbourne.[9]
Said to have been owned by the Anglican Church for many years, it was then bought by a consortium of families in the 1970s, who put it on the market in June 2021.[10] This led the Nicholas Building Association to campaign to raise funds in order to rescue the current use of the building as a creative hub from commercial development. [11]
As a result, some artists in the community have raised awareness that the lack of protection for the use of buildings can have adverse effects in protecting heritage:[12]
"However, usage is rarely safeguarded - heritage protection is mainly concerned about the look of a building. And mainly concerned about how it looks from the street. Interiors are mostly disregarded unless there's some aspect about it that has gathered some public fame. In other words, heritage protection is superficial at best and fairly ineffective in protecting what is worth protecting. Safeguarding a city entails much more than protecting the 'decorative' features of a façade."[13]
A reported sale to a social enterprise in 2022[14] did not appear to eventuate by 2023.
In 2017 the 1939 Coles extension was demolished along with many other buildings to the south as part of the development of Town Hall station, part of the Melbourne Metro project. In December 2022 a 10-storey office development to be built over the site was announced.[15]
Architecture
The Nicholas Building was built to the then height limit of 132ft (40.3 m), that lasted from 1916 to 1957. Following the style of American 'Beaux Arts' or Classical revival, the exterior has a base of four floors, supported by piers and Doric columns, while giant order Ionic pilasters divide the upper façade into bays, and the top is defined by a wide cornice.[1] The corners are given added emphasis with solid piers projecting slightly forward.
The main facades are clad in grey terracotta faience designed to give the appearance of stone, manufactured by Wunderlich as ‘Granitex’, chosen for its durability and ease of maintenance, since it was promoted as able to 'self-clean'. The rear and south facades are unadorned.
A steel-frame structure was used for the first three floors with reinforced concrete on the upper floors, where space was not a priority and cost less. The offices above the first floor are planned around a light well that runs down to the roof of the first floor.
Flinders Street railway station is a train station located on the corner of Flinders and Swanston streets in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is the second busiest train station in Australia, serving the entire metropolitan rail network, 15 tram routes travelling to and from the city, as well as some country and regional V/Line services to eastern Victoria. Opened in 1854, the station is the oldest in Australia, backing onto the Yarra River in the central business district, the complex includes 13 platforms and structures that stretch over more than two city blocks, from east of Swanston Street to nearly at Market Street.
Federation Square is a venue for arts, culture and public events on the edge of the Melbourne central business district. It covers an area of 3.2 ha at the intersection of Flinders and Swanston Streets built above busy railway lines and across the road from Flinders Street station. It incorporates major cultural institutions such as the Ian Potter Centre, Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and the Koorie Heritage Trust as well as cafes and bars in a series of buildings centred around a large paved square, and a glass walled atrium.
Swanston Street is a major thoroughfare in the Melbourne central business district, Victoria, Australia. It was laid out in 1837 as part of the original Hoddle Grid. The street vertically bisects Melbourne's city centre and is famous as the world's busiest tram corridor, for its heritage buildings and as a shopping strip.
St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Melbourne, Australia. It is the cathedral church of the Diocese of Melbourne and the seat of the Archbishop of Melbourne, who is also the metropolitan archbishop of the Province of Victoria.
Degraves Street is a pedestrian precinct and thoroughfare in the Melbourne central business district in Victoria, Australia. It is a short, narrow laneway that runs north–south from Flinders Street to Flinders Lane and is situated in-between Swanston and Elizabeth streets. Degraves, as the street is colloquially known, is famous for its alfresco dining options and because it epitomises Melbourne's coffee culture and street art scene. For these reasons it has also become a popular tourist destination.
Harry Norris was an Australian architect, one of the more prolific and successful in Melbourne in the interwar period, best known for his 1930s Art Deco commercial work in the Melbourne central business district.
Flinders Lane is a minor street and thoroughfare in the Melbourne central business district of Victoria, Australia. The laneway runs east–west from Spring Street to Spencer Street in-between Flinders and Collins streets. Originally laid out as part of the Hoddle Grid in 1837, the laneway was once the centre of Melbourne's rag trade and is still home to boutique designers and high-end retailers including Chanel, now perched alongside numerous upscale hotels like the W Hotel Melbourne and Adelphi Hotel, loft apartments, cafes and bars.
The Block Arcade is an historic shopping arcade in the central business district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Constructed between 1891 and 1893, it is considered one of the late Victorian era's finest shopping arcades and ranks among Melbourne's most popular tourist attractions.
Cathedral Arcade is a heritage shopping arcade in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
The Manchester Unity Building is an Art Deco Gothic inspired office and retail building in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, constructed in 1931–32 for the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows. The soaring stepped corner tower on a prominent intersection opposite the Melbourne Town Hall makes it one of the most prominent and best known buildings in Melbourne.
The Melbourne central business district in Australia is home to numerous lanes and arcades. Often called "laneways", these narrow streets and pedestrian paths date mostly from the Victorian era, and are a popular cultural attraction for their cafes, bars and street art.
Campbell Arcade is a pedestrian arcade located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The arcade is accessible from Flinders Street station and was built in 1955 to ensure crossing between Flinders Street and Melbourne's main train station was safer. It was completed ahead of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
The architecture of Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria and second most populous city in Australia, is characterised by a wide variety of styles dating from the early years of European settlement to the present day. The city is particularly noted for its mix of Victorian architecture and contemporary buildings, with 74 skyscrapers in the city centre, the most of any city in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Majorca Building is a neo-Romanesque, eight-storey tall building in Melbourne, Australia, designed and constructed between 1928 and 1930. Located at 258-260 Flinders Lane, it was designed by Harry Norris, one of the most prolific architects in the city during the 1920s and '30s.
The Princes Gate Towers were a set of twin office tower blocks that were located at the intersection of Flinders and Swanston Streets in the Melbourne central business district, Australia. They were designed by architects Leslie M. Perrott and Partners and completed in 1967. They were partly occupied by the Gas and Fuel Corporation of Victoria, leading to the buildings also being known as "the Gas & Fuel Buildings". They were demolished in 1997 to make way for Federation Square, the mixed-use development and public space that now occupies the site.
Town Hall railway station is a rapid transit station currently under construction as part of the Metro Tunnel project in Melbourne, Victoria. The station will serve the southern end of the Melbourne central business district (CBD) and will connect to Flinders Street station via an underground pedestrian walkway.
St. Collins Lane is a shopping centre completed in 2016, designed by ARM Architecture, which stretches between Collins and Little Collins streets in Melbourne, Australia. Previously there were restaurants, arcades and hotels on the site.
HW & FB Tompkins was an architectural firm established by the brothers Henry (Harry) William and Frank Beauchamp Tompkins in 1898 in Melbourne, Australia. They went on to become a major commercial firm, designing a large number of department stores, hotels, clubs and office buildings and banks over the next 40 years, many in central Melbourne and most still standing. They were stylistic and structural innovators, an area best known for the huge Myer Department store in Bourke Street, built in many stages in different styles from 1914 to 1933.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
