Modern Love
Melbourne has some of Australia's most finely preserved Art Deco buildings, remnants of a modernist building frenzy after WWI. Sally Webb walked the city's CBD in search of its decorative masterpieces.
For lovers of art deco architecture, central Melbourne is as fascinating as any museum. Trams rumble past and Melburnians stride purposefully about their business oblivious to anything that's out of their street-level line of sight. But tip your head back and look up and it's hard to ignore the landmark buildings which, in their day, transformed the urban skyline and the attitude of the inter-war city.
The only problem – viewing this outdoor museum is, literally, a pain in the neck, as I discover on a self-guided walking tour of Melbourne's Art Deco gems. Armed with a guide published by the Art Deco Society (which conducts its own guided walks), I traipse the streets of the CBD admiring an architect's lexicon of features: soaring ribs, spandrels, terracotta faience and parapets. After several hours of sensory overload, I'm seeing the city with completely new eyes, and a very sore neck.
Deco's influence was far reaching, covering every field of creative endeavour from fashion and jewellery to photography, film, furniture and industrial design, all of which will be on display in the forthcoming exhibition Art Deco 1910-1939 at the National Gallery of Victoria (see panel, page 68). In Australia architecture was at the time, and remains, its most prominent manifestation.
The starting point for my Melbourne tour is the landmark Manchester Unity building on the corner of Collins and Swanston streets. When it was completed in 1932, it was the tallest edifice in the city, built to the maximum allowable height limit of the day (132 feet or 40.2 metres), with a tower protruding another 78 feet (23.7 metres) above that. Inspired by the Chicago Tribune Tower (completed in 1925) and built in the Modern Commercial Gothic style that was especially popular in America, this Art Deco treasure has a facade of narrow columns and shafts, clad in faience, that soar to the sky. The ground floor arcade boasts marble-faced walls, gorgeous copper-panelled lift doors and decorative plaster ceiling panels.
In an age when skyscrapers are ubiquitous, it's easy to lose sight of the impact that such a building would have had. As decorative as it was technically advanced – this was the first building in Victoria to have escalators installed – Manchester Unity was the crowning achievement of architect Marcus Barlow's career. His later Century Building (1940), with vertical ribs clad in dazzling white faience, sits at the northern end of the same Swanston Street block. In between them sits Capitol House and the extraordinary Capitol Theatre, the largest civic work by Walter Burley Griffin, constructed in 1923-24. The theatre, which now belongs to RMIT University and is used for academic and cultural activities, is off limits when I walk past, although a ticket to that evening's Comedy Festival gig would have got me in to see the ceiling, described in my guide as a "maze of plasterwork prisms and thousands of coloured lights of red, green and violet, making the view from the seats below one of ever-changing colours and patterns".
Indeed colour became a hallmark of Art Deco architecture – a marked departure from the rather drab greys so prevalent in earlier Victorian buildings – as was the utilisation of the newest and latest materials and the most progressive design. In commercial buildings the intention was to attract customers and project your "brand" into the market. Walking up to Bourke Street, still the retail and department store epicentre of the CBD, I see clear evidence of this in the Buckley & Nunn Men's Store building (now part of David Jones) which was designed in 1933 by architects Bates Smart McCutcheon. Its decorative facade features black terracotta with expansive glazing over multiple storeys punctuated by chevron-decorated panels. At the very top are three stylised depictions of well-dressed men, which were exactly the type of clientele that Buckley & Nunn wanted to attract. In the same year, a few metres along the same street, the Myer Emporium was remodelled, its bright white facade constructed with a novel material called Snow-Crete.
There are another eight noteworthy Art Deco buildings in this part of Bourke Street and in the adjacent block. Back on Collins Street I stop to inspect four more, including Newspaper House (No 247-249) with its beautiful external murals by artist Napier Waller and, near the Elizabeth Street corner, Block Court, which boasts ornate ceiling plasterwork and terrazzo flooring featuring highly stylised motifs.
The period around 1934 was important for Melbourne. It was the year nominated for celebrations of the city's centenary (even though the exact date was 1835). "There was a lot of emphasis on modernising the city, and a bit of money around at last," says Robin Grow, president of the Art Deco Society. As the effects of the Great Depression eased, construction in the central city resumed in earnest, and the changes to the physical face of Melbourne were significant. Architectural historian Robin Boyd referred to it as the "year of revolution of modern architecture in Victoria."
The Streamlined Moderne variant of Art Deco became the fashionably racy commercial style in the city for office blocks and showrooms, expressing movement and symbolising speed. (It was also popular in domestic architecture, particularly for the blocks of flats that were being built in suburbs like Toorak and South Yarra as large estates were broken up.) At the western end of Collins Street the McPhersons Building, constructed in 1934-35 as a warehouse, office and showroom for hardware magnate Sir William McPherson (who later became premier of Victoria), was one of the first to adopt the style. Reinforced concrete was used, providing an uncluttered column-free facade with a distinctive horizontal emphasis, large expanses of glass, and highly visible display areas.
If McPhersons epitomises the Streamlined, then Alkira House (18 Queen Street), built in 1937, epitomises the more decorative Jazz Moderne style which incorporated stylised geometries. This gem of an office block must have been a bold statement in its day: constructed of reinforced concrete, cement, glass bricks and faience, its striking black-grey tiles are used to dramatic effect and set off by emerald green accents arranged in strong vertical panels and shafts. Colourful and decorative, it's the highlight of the Art Deco museum that makes up Melbourne's CBD.
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