1. ALEXANDER’S/NICHOLAS BUILDINGS
25/3 Pic Demolishing Monahan’s Buildings Humorously referred to by their employer as ‘Whelan’s Birds,’ the men who are now engaged in demolishing Monahan’s Buildings, Swanston street, seem to have no ‘nerves’, but fearlessly pick the bricks from under their feet, four stories above the pavement. [Two workmen atop steel girder above front parapet, picking at brickwork] (Argus, 10/3/25, p.9)
1926 Buildings of the 1920s include Nicholas Building in Swanston Street (1926) by Harry Norris… (Wilson & Sands, Building a City, pp. 146-7)
1930 Monahan’s Building, which stood on the site of Nicholas Building, had base walls six feet in thickness. The present building, constructed in steel framing to the third floor, has columns of 2.5in base, with little or no wall between them. Because of the high cost of steel in Melbourne, reinforced concrete has been employed from the third floor, where the column thickens to 3ft. (Argus, 13/3/30, Camera Supplement p. 3)
32/1 Mr Whelan said that the demolition work on the site of the Nicholas Building was a bigger feat than [Stewart Dawson’s] for his team. (Herald, 1/1/32)
32/1 Then came… Monahan’s building in Swanston Street, where the Nicholas building now stands, and hundreds of others in various parts of Melbourne. (Sun, 9/1/32)
39/5 WW tendered for demolition (£300) of ‘the buildings known as “Alexanders”’ tender accepted. (Letter dated May 1939 SLV/WW, 65/2)
39/5 Liquor signs that twinkled from the wall of a city building at travellers journeying across Princes Bridge along Swanston Street will be seen no more. Their passing indicates… the demolition of a building that was once looked upon as a comparative skyscraper in the locality. Quite recently Mr John Wren sold the Alexander Building to Mr G.R. Nicholas, who owns the adjoining landmark known as Nicholas Building. Wreckers will soon be at work demolishing the Alexander Building and in its place will rise a two-storeyed shop to be occupied by G.J. Coles and Co. Ltd.… The building was given its present name by Mr Alexander, the tobacconist, when he bought it many years ago. Later it came into the possession of the late Jimmy Mason, but was afterwards sold to the Rev. Ah Cheong. As the location of the office of Mr Dick Lean, manager of the Stadium, all the boxers, wrestlers and athletes to visit Melbourne during the past 14 years have ascended in the lift to sign articles and transact other business. (Sun, 25/5/39)
39/? WW wrote to architect, Harry A. Norris: ‘The reason for delay in not completing our contract at 27 Swanston St on time was due entirely to our inability to use Cocker Alley as means of carting our debris and bricks away. As you are aware the retaining wall of Softgoods Club along the R.O.W. collapsed taking with it parts of same, hence the Council’s decision to close the R.O.W. against our heavy traffic. This necessitated us using one entrance with one truck only at a time.’ (Letter, n.d., in WW/SLV, 65/2)
STATE BANK/CHAMPION HOUSE, 45-63 Swanston Street (NW cnr Flinders Lane)
19thC The half-acre allotment at the north-west corner of Swanston-street and Flinders-lane was the site of the first Wesleyan Methodist chapel in Port Phillip. It measured 30ft x 16ft, and was built of bricks made by Mr Horatio Cooper, at his kiln on the south bank of the Yarra. The builder was Mr John James Peers, owner of the site an an active member of the Wesleyan Methodist Society [‘a philharmonic building contractor’—Garryowen], who ‘bore the total outlay of expense, stipulating only that he should be repaid when the congregation moved to more commodious premises.’ According to a MS diary of the period (that of the Rev. William Waterfield, first minister of Collins-street Independent Church), the chapel was opened for public worshop on March 10, 1839… The building was used by the [London Wesleyan Missionary] society as their place of meeting for religious services and work until June 20, 1841, and was ‘literally crowded at each service on the Sunday, especially in the evening.’ On Thursday, June 24, the society opened their new building at the corner of Collins and Queen streets, where the Bank of Australasia now stands; and the brick makeshift—the cradle of Methodism—in due course became ‘the kitchen to Mr Monahan’s public-house’. [pic—(photo) of hotel kitchen] (Australasian, 3/3/1906, p.508)
…it remained to be put to the ignoble use of kitchen to the hotel, and as such remained for several years. (Garryowen, p. 160)
Champion’s Queen’s Arms Hotel licensed 1847 closed 31/12/1923. (Cole Collection)
19thC Monahan’s Queen Arms Hotel, built in 1845, and whose licensee, Thomas Monahan, died a millionaire in 1889. (Age, 8/6/1940)
1895 Queen’s Arms Hotel ‘generally known as “Champions”’—bar men instead of bar maids are employed here. ‘There is a series of bars here. The one known as the “private bar” is a model of an American drinking place. …Flinders-lane, from a private door in the right- of-way, comes here exclusively. the best drinking men of Melbourne are to be seen here, for here they get the best drink.’ (‘The Vagabond’ in Leader Supplement, 16/11/1895) pic on file
06/2 In a 1906 article detailing the renovations [to be] carried out to the Queen’s Arms Hotel, Swanston Street, the [Australian Brewers’] journal reported that the hotel had once been licensed to Mr Hawkins, who had sold the business to Mr Ben Champion ‘whose widow, Mrs E. Champion (Mr Hawkins’ niece), has carried on the business to the present day in a manner that has earned the profound respect of the whole community, which respect is also shared by her family of good citizens.… As a record place of business, having been conducted by members of one family for just half-a-century, the Queen’s Arms has, we think, but one rival in Victoria—the Sir John Franklin Hotel, Collingwood, for about as many years in the Davison family. Mrs Davison, like Mrs Champion, is still with us, and both ladies amply give the lie to the aspersions cast at members of the trade by teetotal agitators.…When the new up-to-date and palatial building throws open its doors to the public, it will be the fervent hope of all of us that the present estimable licensee may long be spared to continue its management.’ Mrs Elizabeth Champion… held the licence for the Queen’s Arms Hotel for twenty years, passing it to her son William in 1916. (Clare Wright, Beyond the Ladies’ Lounge, pp. 95-6, quoting Australian Brewers’ Journal, 20/2/1906, p.283)
06/3 The new buildings [pic] to be erected in Swanston-street will have a frontage of 136.5ft, and to Little Flinders-street of 61ft, extending back to a lane known as Monahan-place. The corner of Swanston and Little Flinders streets will be occupied as at present by Champion’s Hotel. This will have a frontage to Swanston-street of 53ft, and will consist of basement and ground floor and five upper stories, with an octagonal tower on the angle, the total height from the pavement to the top of the tower being 128ft. The rest of the site will be occupied by four shops and a central entrance to the rooms on the upper floors. Each shop will have a clear width of 17ft, and will extend the full depth of the site, with a back door and windows abutting on Monahan-place. The shop fronts in Swanston-street will be handsomely treated with metal-lined framing and curved glass angles to entrances. The basements under each shop will have direct approaches from Monahan-place, and will be lighted by prismatic pavement and stall-board lights in Swanston-street. The four floors over the shops will be reached by two lifts and a stone staircase from the central entrance. They will be available as offices, chambers or clubrooms, and the building is so planned that the superimposed floors over any particular shop may be let with that shop if required. In the tenancies already effected the whole of the first floor is let—the southern half to the hotel for billiard-rooms and offices, and the northern half as the factory and show-rooms of Messrs Ingram Bros, jewellers, who will occupy one of the shops. The facades are to be treated in red brick, with cement dressings, and with polished marble facings to the ground floor. The details are classic in character, and the front is broken by bold oriel windows and balconettes in Swanston-street, and there are recessed arcades to the upper floors of the hotel, the corner being emphasised by an octagonal oriel, surmounted by a turret with pyramidal copper roof. The buildings are being erected by the Equity Trustees Company of Queen-street, as trustees for the estate of the late Thomas Monahan. The architects are Messrs Oakden and Ballantyne. The contractors are Messrs Murray and Crow. The total cost will be over £30,000. (Australasian, 3/3/1906, p.508) [pic (photo) of old buildings on the site]
23/11 New premises for State Bank in Swanston Street planned for 1924. (Herald, 27/11/23)
71/12 Demolition permit Champion House & State Savings Bank (ex-Champion’s Queen’s Arms Hotel) 6-storey brick office building wrecked for State Bank (further permit Oct 1972), $50,000. (MLC167/3 Box 25 D3393/Box 26 D3527) WATSON’S CHAMBERS, 236 Flinders Lane N side, E of Manchester Lane
11/5 CITY WAREHOUS ABLAZE. ROOF CRASHES IN. EARLY MORNING FIRE.— Effective work by the fire brigade early yesterday morning prevented a six-storied building in Flinders-lane from being totally destroyed. As it was the roof and the two upper floors fell in and the third floor supported a mass of twisted girders, charred wood, and ashes of what had a few hours before been valuable stock of various kinds. At 20 minutes to 4 o’clock the brigade was summoned… Flames were bursting from the roof of Watson’s-chambers, a building on the northern side of Flinders-lane, not far to the westward of Swanston-street.… Deputy Chief Officer Wilkins smashed a panel from the front door, and climbed the staircase through black smoke to the top floor. Lines of hose were brought up after him, and with difficulty the water was played on to the fire, which was burning at the rear of the building. The Morris ladder was reared to the top of the building adjoining on the eastern side, and, three lines of hose having been taken to the roof, streams of water were poured into the heart of the fire. Another line was run to the roof of the Softgoods Club, opposite the burning building, while hoses were also brought down a right-of-way from Collin-street. The premises of Banks and Co., on the other side of the right-of-way, were forcibly entered by the firemen, and from the upper windows streams of water were directed into the windows of the burning building. The heat became intense. The back wall of Watson’s-chambers buckled, and the wall facing the right-of-way looked so dangerous that he firemen were temporarily withdrawn from the vicinity. The flames shot from the upper windows till the building looked like a huge torch, that threatened destruction to the adjoining warehouses. There was no wind, otherwise the whole block might easily have been destroyed. After half an hour’s work the fire seemed under control, but then it began to eat down through the centre of the building, and the firemen inside were almost suffocated before they reluctantly withdrew to a safer position. At half-past 4 o’clock the roof crashed down, and again there was uncertainty as to whether the building could be saved. However the chief inspector of water supply (Mr W. Larkins) had concentrated an excellent pressure of water to the mains in the fire area, and the copious flow enabled the firemen to obtain control of the blaze at 10 minutes past 5. Strangely enough, fire-sprinklers were about to be installed in the building, and this work would shortly have been completed. Had it been begun earlier a loss estimated at £30,000 would probably not have to be chronicled. The fire screens over the windows of Banks and Co’s premises prevented the flames from securing a hold there, though the parapet of the roof was cracked by the intense heat. Watson’s-chambers is owned by Mr G.A. Jury, who purchased it a few months ago for £45,000, and it is insured in various companies for £27,500. The two top floors and their contents were gutted, while the middle of the building on the second and third floors, with the stock, was also converted into a mass of rubbish. The remainder of the building, with the contents, was damaged by heat and water.… Little was saved from the three top floors, which were occupied as follows:—Top Floor—R.G. Turnleigh and Son, fancy goods merchants; W.J. Gunning and Co., softgoods indentors; E.M. Marks, fancy goods indentor; Richard Searle and Co., Japanese goods merchants. Fifth Floor—Stanley Mullen and Co., stationers and publishers. Fourth Floor—A. Schutze and Co., fancy goods merchants; W. Hume, softgoods merchant; Frank Stone and Co., clothing manufactuers; Syme, Harris and Co., softgoods importers. The ground floor was unoccupied, and the stock on the second and third floors was damaged only by water. These floors were occupied as under:—Third—Buswell and Ostberg, softgoods merchants; J.A. Duff, fancy goods merchant; A. Matheson, fancy goods merchant; W.E. Ward and Co., clothing manufactuers. Second—McMurtrie and Co., boot importers.… The chief officer of the brigade (Mr Lee) stated after the fire that the windows of buildings in Flinders-lane which looked on to right-of-ways should be fitted with fire- screens. These right-of-ways are only 10ft. in width, and if a building caught fire the flames easily spread across from window to window. Thus a whole block might go owing to the absence of these screens. The undergrounding of all telegraphic and telephonic wires was also a matter of importance. When the Morris ladder was being reared to the top of Makower and McBeath’s building it fouled several wires and had the conflagration spread, the telephonic service would have been badly interrupted.… Ten men were left on duty at the fire last night, for the debris that cumbered the fouth floor smouldered in spite of all the water that had been poured upon it. The firemen… stood under great girders that were prevented from falling only by buckled walls or charred beams. Sheets of corrugated iron hung from the front portion of the roof, the only part that had not caved in. Nevertheless, the firemen worked away as if the girders were set in solid masonry, and gave no thought to the danger of their position. The police barricaded the street, and none of the public were allowed to pass if his object was mere curiosity. (Argus, 26/5/11, p.6)
1911 Building gutted by fire, then demolished by WW. JPW hit on head by falling brick. Pics x 2 on file at SLV/WW 54/11.
63/ Now known as Manchester Buildings. (MJW speech, 1962 or 3 SLV/WW 64/2)
2. BOURKE ST EAST
1897 …towards the corner of Bourke-street the path [of Swanston] is market by the cafes, oyster saloons, and restaurants which signify the neighbourhood of the theatres. (Melbourne Guide Book, c.1897, p.45)
…this neighbourhood…30 years ago boasted 17 hotels all within a stone’s throw of one another… They were brave days when, standing at the corner of Bourke and Swanston streets, one could take the choice within an area of about 200 yards of the Royal Oak, the Vendome, the American, the Queen’s Arms, and the Gippsland in Swanston street; the Reform Club Hotel (WW), in Little Collins street; or His Majesty’s, the Albury, the Victoria [Hall], better known as Mick Nathan’s, the Bull and Mouth (WW), the Mechanics’, the Canton, the Albion, the Sunbeam, the Orient, the Old England, the Opera House, and the Theatre Royal bars (WW), all in Bourke street. At the old Mechanics’ Hotel, which used to stand on the site of Coles’s shop in Bourke street [329, west cnr the Causeway], the licensee, the late Mr Ascenio de Freitas, distributed to the poor of the city the viands left over from the evening meal.… From the front door of the Bull and Mouth, which occupied the site of Woolworth’s new shop, the coaches set out in the old days for the gold diggings. Old sporting enthusiasts will remember the boxing matches that were held 30 years ago in the Victoria, since given place to the Melba Theatre [283 Bourke, WW]. (Argus, 26/12/33)
EASTERN MARKET
Pics in Cole, Melbourne Markets: p.2 (engraving, 1862; p. 35 (engraving 1864); p. 36 (floor plan, 1859-78); p. 39 (aerial photo, 1873); p. 41 (engraving, c.1870); p.44 (photo, 1880); p.45 (interior photos, 1908); p.46 (engraving, interior upper level, 1880).
1840 In 1840 the Female Penitentiary was built at the corner of Exhibition and Little Collins streets, on part of what later became the [Eastern] Market site. (Miles Lewis, Melbourne: The city’s history & development, p. 30)
1842 Watch-house built on Eastern Market Reserve. Occasionally served as a temporary lunatic asylum. (Garryowen, pp.76, 425)
Early 1842—temporary hay and corn market started business in NE angle of Eastern Market site. (Garryowen, p.255)
2-acre site originally set aside for Methodist Church but congregation refused site because it was too far from town. Vegetable market established 1859. (Rogan, p.66)
1846-77 Since Melbourne was expanding rapidly to the east, most vendors quit the chaotic Western Market scene [in mid-late 1850s] and opened stalls on ground reserved for an Eastern Market. This three-acre site… had originally been intended for municipal buildings. However, as Melbourne Town Hall rose on its present site in Swanston Street, the eastern block became available for other purposes. The site had been used as a hay and corn market since 1846, with a row of brick stalls built on the Exhibition Street frontage in 1847 to make a small general market. The Bourke Street frontage was divided into 30-ft square allotments, where retailers of cheap clothes, shoes and books erected temporary timber shops. These were destroyed by fire in November 1855, and replaced by rows of carts and stalls trading in the open air. The Leader in July 1858 thought the greatest attraction of this impromptu market was ‘confectioners’ stalls, blazing with light and glittering with wonderful feats in the art of making sugar candy’. Noisy vendors offered ‘heating happles, three pounds a shilling’, or ‘brooms for a bob’. (Cannon, Melb After the Gold Rush, p.187)
Here we have long lines of stalls, carts, and wheelbarrows selling everything. One man is sailing up and down, like Admiral Van Tromp in the Channel with a broom aloft, proclaiming ‘brooms for a bob’. Cheap John, in a cart ornamented with Chinese lanterns and hung around with saddles and bridles and bundles of clothes pegs, is suby selling a packet of envelopes, lett-erpaper and sealing wax by Dutch auction. The great competition is in apples. We hear a man roaring at the top of his voice, ‘Heating happles, three pounds a shilling.’ Another not less noisily announces, Baker’s and boilers, four pounds a shilling.’ Next we come to a miniature drapery shop, where a man in a white beaver with a blue paper of pins fastened round it is inviting attention to his wares: ‘Now’s your time ladies, a Paisley shawl for three and sixpence,’ and then he wraps it round him to show its beauties. Looking over the shoulders of the crowd, we see a man selling soap, to which he ascribes miraculous cleansing powers. Not the least among the attractions of the market is a book-stall. But the feature of the Market is the confectioners’ stalls, blazing with light and glittering with wonderful feats in the art of making sugar candy. (Leader, 31/7/1858)
Some poorly-built wooden shops had sprung up along the Bourke Street frontage of the Eastern Market site, but rather as at the Western Market, sixteen of these were destroyed by fire in 1855, and Council then ordered the removal of the rest because of their poor condition. The market site still formed an L-shape around the old female penitentiary, which had become a gaol hospital in 1845, when the prisoners were removed to the new gaol in Russell Street. In 1858 the government approved the transfer of the site to the market (thought it was not officially granted until 1881), and a shed was built over it in 1860. Meanwhile in 1854 the Council began to prepare designs to let the [market] site on ten-year building leases, but encountered various difficulties in this… [In 1856]… a public petition to the Legislative Council inspired the government to make the improvement of the market a condition of the Council’s next grant money, and this resulted in the construction of covered sheds with open aisles between them in 1858-9. (Miles Lewis, Melbourne: The city’s history and development, pp. 49-50)
Better arrangements for vendors were made in 1858, when the City Council paid John Moore £3,400 to build four long corrugated-iron arcades over most of the site. Each of these shed-like structures was 42 feet wide, with flagstones laid to protect shoppers from mud and manure. All 224 stands were occupied by market gardeners, fruit growers and general dealers by the opening date in May 1859. The site soon became known as ‘Paddy’s Market’, a noisy jumble of shouting tradesmen, haggling customers, squealing animals, and fervent political orators. The open-air arcades were demolished in 1877, and a much more solidly-built Eastern Market erected with regular lockup shops and gas-lit walkways. (Cannon, Melb After the Gold Rush, p.187)
On Saturday nights ‘a moving mass of boys’ conducted a ‘pigeon exchange’ in Stephen Street, ouside the market. On Friday nights the growers’ carts overflowed into Bourke Street, extending along the gutter nearly as far as the White Hart Hotel. (Argus, 18/3/1939—‘Bygone Days’)
…the great early-morning centre for the sale of garden produce, to become later in the day a hay and corn market—on Saturday nights a popular fair, on Sundays the battle- ground of religious enthusiasts, and in between times the ‘people’s forum’ for the discussion of political grievances and for gatherings of unemployed.… Although a single row of stalls had been built there in 1847—the first year of its occupation—by 1855 the place had become cluttered up with ‘miserable shanties’ of wood and canvas, most of which were swept away by a fire which occurred on October 30 of that year. In the vacant space thus created the process of buying and selling still continued, gaining an impetus from the virtual closing-down of the older Western Market about this time, and soon ‘long rows of stalls, carts, and wheelbarrows’ sprang up, ‘selling everything’. About the beginning of 1859 the City Council commenced the erection of a proper market, providing four long sheds running parallel to Exhibition st., and running a row of brick shops along the western boundary of the market-place a little later. The regular routine at this time was the occupation of the sheds in the early morning by market gardeners, whose place was taken later by the farmers with their hay carts. The latter held the field from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; and on Saturdays, at 3 p.m., about 300 dealers of all descriptions crowded into the place and transformed it into a bazaar. It was this lastnamed phase of activity which gave rise to the name ‘Paddy’s Market’, first applied about the middle of 1851. Twelve months later we find the Illustrated Melbourne Post giving a graphic description of this week-end commercial orgy, stating that ‘cries from Whitechapel, the Saltmarket, Dublin, and every kind of marketable and unmarketable commodity seem suddenly mixed in one monster incantation, in which brass bands and nigger melodists, nasal prophets and itinerant wizards, gongs and drums, make up one terrific din and grotesque pandemonium.’ The writer goes on to domment on the variety of goods offered for sale, the ‘dazzling’ display of gas jets, and the background of human noise provided by the continuous hum of human voices, and singles out for description the ‘cheap John’ on his van—a youth ‘with a florid complexion andpossession extraordinary volubility’— Chinamen selling ‘tea, silk handkerchiefs, and walking-stick pipes,’ and, ‘to complete the scene, the ever-remembered performance of Punch and Judy.’ Political meetings at Paddy’s Market reached their climax in August 1860, when inflammatory speeches on the vexed question of ‘unlocking the lands’ brought about something in the nature of a riot in the vicinity of Parliament House. ‘When these tribunes of the Eastern Market began to gasconnade about rifles, and to incite their deluded followers to acts of open violence,’ says ‘The Argus’ of September 1, 1860, ‘indifference was rapidly replaced by indignation in the public mind, and this found emphatic expression in the spontaneous enrolment of between 2,000 and 3,000 persons as special constables.’ The threatened outbreak came to nothing, and within the next two or three years the political importance of the ‘people’s forum’ declined. ‘The trade of the agitator is gone,’ says The Argus on January 1, 1864, ‘the voice of the Eastern Market is hushed—the oracles of the stump are dumb.’ Then there were the open-air preachers who made use of Paddy’s Market—turbulent as politicians and provocative as demagogues. About 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 13, 1862, there was a scene between two rival orators, one of whom, having finished his own address, devoted himself to the task of constantly breaking in upon the discourse of another ‘with texts from Sripture, calculated to rate an angry controversial discussion. Two years later, in July, 1864, we hear of a regular pell-mell fight among the congregations of no fewer than four rival preachers who were in the field at once—and these are only samples of thedisturbances which were constantly recurring. Pressure on the resources of the Eastern Market for its legitimate uses continued to increase, and in June, 1864, a deputation of market-gardeners to the acting president of the Board of Land and Works, stated that upwards of 600 of them attended the market, which only had accommodation for 200. The City Council lengthened the existing sheds and added a new one in 1865, and about the same time suburban markets came into existence and helped to relieve the situation. In 1877 the City Council decided to rebuild the Eastern Market, and the Victoria Market was made ready for the occupation of growers, who were transferred thithere in March 1878. Two years later a new Eastern Market was opened—but ‘Paddy’s Market’ was gone for ever. (A.W. Grieg, in Herald?, 1930s—in FJA maroon scrapbook, p. 101)
50s-70s In the gold digging era, this space, which had from the first been kept vacant as a reserve, began to be frequented by dealers of all sorts, and it grew into what was known as the ‘Paddy’s Market’. Subsequently the corporation erected light sheds, and charged a rent for occupation, yet still it was the same miscellaneous place, thronged on Saturday nights by crowds who were densely packed, but who moved slowly along beneath the flaring wicks of rough oil lamps to the crowing of poultry, the barking of dogs, the hum of innumerable voices, but above all to the stentorian invitations of sellers, who mostly worked themselves red in the faces in the hopes that superior noise would lead to prompter business. Here also, in the times of great political excitement of the sixties and seventies, many a great open-air meeting was held. Often have Sir Graham Berry, the present Speaker of the Lower House, and other men now in prominent places, held forth from the rear of cart or dray to vast crowds whose upturned faces were dimly lit with the yellow glare of a few oil lamps. All these humours of bygone times are replaced [in 1897] by tameness and quite order. No longer does the Cheap Jack and the vendor of miraculous pills, the patent-cement man or the thimble-rigger, ply his vociferous trade. (Melbourne Guide Book, 1st ed, c.1897, pp. 27-8)
At the Eastern Market the Council extended the existing sheds in 1865 to fill the site to the maximum possible on a single level, but was soon considering plans for a major redevelopment. In 1871 a competition was held for designs for a building to cover the site, while at the same time increasing the accommodation for ‘market gardeners’. Designs were selected and published, but the issue became a hot potato due to concerns that the wholesale market would be removed permanently from the site. A new competition was held in 1875, and in January 1876 it was announced that the entry of the architects Reed & Barnes had won. …most tenants had to move to the Victoria Market by 1 February 1878. The new building was opened by the Governor on 22 December 1879, and then for three months the lower level, which was intended as the wholesale market, was occupied by the Intercolonial Juvenile Industrial Exhibition. When, finally, the growers were invited back to the market, few of them appared. The Queen Victoria Market, to which they had so much objected, was now the established and preferred location… The Eastern Market was finished as a wholesaling venue, but as a general market and amusement centre, it had a long career ahead of it. (Miles Lewis, Melbourne: The city’s history and development, p. 74)
Market designed in 1877 a series of great arches, supported by cast iron bracket which incorporated the Coat of Arms of the City of Melbourne