Spring Street | |
---|---|
Parliament House on Spring Street, looking east | |
Coordinates | |
General information | |
Type | Street |
Length | 850 m (0.5 mi) |
Opened | 1837 |
Major junctions | |
North end | Victoria Street Melbourne CBD |
| |
South end | Flinders Street Melbourne CBD |
Location(s) | |
LGA(s) | City of Melbourne |
Suburb(s) | Melbourne CBD |
Spring Street is a major street in the Melbourne central business district, Australia. It runs roughly north-south and is the easternmost street in the original 1837 Hoddle Grid. [1]
Spring Street is famous as the traditional seat of the Government of Victoria, as well as being central to many of the state's major cultural institutions. The street's name is frequently used as a metonym to refer to the state's bureaucracy. [2] Spring Street is also notable for its impressive Victorian architecture, including Parliament House, the Old Treasury Building, the Windsor Hotel (also known as Duchess of Spring Street) [3] and the Princess Theatre.
There are multiple theories regarding the etymology of the street's name. Some think it is named after Baron Thomas Spring Rice, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Melbourne. [4] Another theory is that the name is due to the golden wattle trees being in full bloom during Richard Bourke's visit. [5] The most plausable reason for the name is more simple than that. Spring is a relatively common street name in English-speaking countries and usually chosen for a street due to its proximity to water, or having a slope or rise in terrain.
The street runs from Flinders Street in the south to Victoria Street and the Carlton Gardens in the north. Nicholson Street branches off from Spring Street, slightly south of its intersection with Lonsdale Street.
Spring Street has a number of architecturally notable buildings in the style of Renaissance Revival architecture, with many featuring on the Victorian Heritage Register and/or National Trust of Australia. These include:
*Also classified by the National Trust
Spring Street forms the western border of the Treasury Gardens and features multiple gardens and reserves. Gordon Reserve, a small triangle of parkland created in 1863 features heritage listed statues and a fountain which was built and designed by a Pentridge prisoner. [7]
A small Chinese garden, known as the Tianjin Garden, is located at the northern end of Spring Street. It is a symbol of Melbourne's close friendship with its sister city, Tianjin, China. [8] The Tianjin Garden is designed in the classical Chinese style, Tianjin Gardens features two pairs of carved lions, rocks, water, and trees. [9]
The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons also has small public garden in front of iconic the building, complementing the other green spaces in the vicinity of Parliament station. [10]
There are several statues of historical figures on Spring Street, such as the Sir Thomas Blamey Statue, in front of the Old Treasury Building, a memorial to Sir William Clarke in the Treasury Gardens, and the Burke and Wills Monument, also in the Treasury Gardens.
A number of tram routes run along Spring Street for all or part of its length, including route 35, route 48, route 86 and route 96.
Parliament railway station, connecting to most suburban Melbourne train lines as part of the underground City Loop, lies directly beneath and parallel to Spring Street.
Docklands, also known as Melbourne Docklands, is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 km (1.2 mi) west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Melbourne local government area. Docklands recorded a population of 15,495 at the 2021 census.
The City Circle is a zero-fare tram running around the Melbourne central business district in Australia. Running along the city centre's outermost thoroughfares the route passes many Melbourne attractions including Parliament House, the Old Treasury Building and the developing Docklands waterfront precinct. Since October 2023, it operates in a clockwise direction only.
Queen Victoria Village, generally known as QV Melbourne or just QV, is a precinct in the Melbourne central business district, Victoria, Australia. Covering the city block bounded by Lonsdale, Little Lonsdale, Swanston, and Russell Streets, and located directly opposite the State Library of Victoria and Melbourne Central, QV comprises a large shopping centre, a central plaza, an underground food court, Melbourne central city's first full-size supermarket and apartment buildings.
Collins Street is a major street in the central business district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It was laid out in the first survey of Melbourne, the original 1837 Hoddle Grid, and soon became the most desired address in the city. Collins Street was named after Lieutenant-Governor of Tasmania David Collins who led a group of settlers in establishing a short-lived settlement at Sorrento in 1803.
Parliament House is the meeting place of the Parliament of Victoria, one of the parliaments of the Australian states and territories.
East Melbourne is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 km (1.2 mi) east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Melbourne local government area. East Melbourne recorded a population of 4,896 at the 2021 census.
The Treasury Gardens consist of 5.8 hectares on the south-eastern side of the Melbourne central business district, East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The gardens are bounded by Wellington Parade, Spring Street, Treasury Place, and by the Fitzroy Gardens across Lansdowne street to the west. They form part of a network of city gardens including Fitzroy Gardens, Carlton Gardens, Flagstaff Gardens and Kings Domain. The gardens are listed on the Australian National Heritage List and the Victorian Heritage Register for their historical, archaeological, social, "aesthetic and scientific (horticultural) importance for its outstanding nineteenth century design, path layout and planting".
Melbourne is Australia's second largest city and widely considered to be a garden city, with Victoria being nicknamed "the Garden State". Renowned as one of the most livable cities in the world, there is an abundance of parks, gardens and green belts close to the CBD with a variety of common and rare plant species amid landscaped vistas, pedestrian pathways, and tree-lined avenues, all managed by Parks Victoria.
King Street is a main road in the Melbourne central business district, Australia. It is considered a key hub of Melbourne's nightlife and is home to many pubs, nightclubs, restaurants, and adult entertainment venues.
Lonsdale Street is a main street and thoroughfare in the Melbourne central business district, Australia. It runs roughly east–west and was laid out in 1837 as one of Melbourne's original boundaries within the Hoddle Grid. The street extends from Spring Street in the east to Spencer Street in the west.
The Hotel Windsor is a luxury hotel in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Opened in 1884, the Windsor is notable for being Melbourne's only surviving purpose-built "grand" Victorian era hotel. The Windsor pre-dates other notable grand hotels including The Waldorf Astoria in New York, the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, the Ritz in Paris and the Savoy in London.
The Old Treasury Building on Spring Street in Melbourne was built in 1858-62 in the grand Renaissance Revival style. It was designed to accommodate the Treasury Department, various government officials' offices including the Governor In Council, and basement vaults intended to house gold from the Victorian gold rush. It now houses a range of functions, including a museum of Melbourne history, known as Old Treasury Building Museum.
Melbourne Central is a large shopping centre, office, and public transport hub in the central business district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The main tower is 211-metre (692 ft) high, making it one of the tallest buildings in Melbourne at the time it was built in 1991. Other parts of the complex include the Melbourne Central Shopping Centre, the underground Melbourne Central railway station and the heritage-listed Coop's Shot Tower.
Australian non-residential architectural styles are a set of Australian architectural styles that apply to buildings used for purposes other than residence and have been around only since the first colonial government buildings of early European settlement of Australia in 1788.
140 William Street is a 41-storey 152m tall steel, concrete and glass building located in the western end of the central business district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Constructed between 1969 and 1972, BHP House was designed by the architectural practice Yuncken Freeman alongside engineers Irwinconsult, with heavy influence of contemporary skyscrapers in Chicago, Illinois. The local architects sought technical advice from Bangladeshi-American structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan, of renowned American architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, spending ten weeks at its Chicago office in 1968. At the time, BHP House was known to be the tallest steel-framed building and the first office building in Australia to use a “total energy concept” – the generation of its own electricity using BHP natural gas. The name BHP House came from the building being the national headquarters of BHP. BHP House has been included in the Victorian Heritage Register for significance to the State of Victoria for following three reasons:
Seabrook and Fildes was an Australian architecture practice in Melbourne, Victoria that played a significant role in the introduction of modernist architecture that first occurred in the 1930s. They are most well known for the Dutch modernist inspired Mac.Robertson Girls High School, designed by Norman Seabrook in 1933.
The Federal Coffee Palace was a large, elaborate French Second Empire style 560 room temperance hotel in the city centre of Melbourne, Victoria, built between 1886 and 1888 at the height of the city's 1880s land boom, and demolished in 1972-73. Located on Collins Street, the premier thoroughfare, on the corner of King Street, near Spencer Street Station, it is prominent in lists of the buildings Melburnians most regret having lost.
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 in various structures 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.
Alcaston House, located on the corner of Melbourne's Collins and Spring St, rises seven levels over a basement, and is one Melbourne's first mixed-use Art Deco buildings. It was designed by the firm of architects, A. and K. Henderson and erected by T Donald and Co. in 1929-30. The Renaissance Revival complex was erected for the trustees of Dr EM James, whose home previously occupied the land. Located at 2 Collins St, Melbourne; it is amongst is an early example of multi-storey residential accommodation in the city at a time when the post-war preference for flat living in Europe and the USA was becoming manifest in Australia. The art deco building is directly opposite the Old Treasury Building and Victoria's Parliament Building.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Media related to Spring Street, Melbourne at Wikimedia Commons