The Limited City Peter Mills B.Arch. (Hons) Special Research Project submitted as partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts in Public History Department of History Faculty of Arts MONASH UNIVERSITY 30  June  1997  

 

 

Abst rac t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

B r ie f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i i

Sca le . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i i i

S ta tement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i v

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v  

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 1 – The Sett ing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

The Lofty Piles .................................................................................................................................................. 6 Limitless Regulations ...................................................................................................................................... 10 The Player ........................................................................................................................................................ 12 Old andNew World Precedents ................................................................................................................... 16 (Un)real Estate ................................................................................................................................................ 24

Chapter 2 – Sett ing the Limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Draft Regulations ............................................................................................................................................ 28 Into the Narrows ............................................................................................................................................ 36 Lee’s Ladder .................................................................................................................................................... 38 Light and Air ................................................................................................................................................... 41 Argument ......................................................................................................................................................... 42 Buildings and Streets ...................................................................................................................................... 45 By-laws and Referees ...................................................................................................................................... 47 The Artful City ................................................................................................................................................ 49

Chapter 3 – The Limited City 54 Interlude 1916 - 1930 ..................................................................................................................................... 54 Consolidation 1929 - 1942 ............................................................................................................................ 57 The Post–war City .......................................................................................................................................... 67

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72  

Newspapers and Journa ls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

B ib l iography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

TABLE OF CONTENTS  

i

           

The Limited City: Building Height Regulations in the City of Melbourne, 1890-1955

 In 1916 a Building Regulations by-law came into effect which limited the height of buildings in the City of Melbourne. The effect of these height limits has been recognised by several historians as important to the subsequent form of the city, but their genesis and impact have not been examined in depth previously. This paper explores the city setting factors which led to the introduction of this measure, the process of its negotiation, and the effects which it had upon the city up until the regulation was changed to a zoning system in 1955. The seventy five year period which is most relevant to this history can be divided into three phases - setting, setting limits, and the limited city.

Chapter One - The Setting - begins with an introduction to the city of the 1880s and 1890s, the tall buildings which were built in this period, and the reactions and responses to these buildings. The context of government, property owner and professional groups which exercised control over the process of building the city after the turn of the century are explored. The precedents for city development - skyscrapers in America and limited height cities in Europe are examined, using material from the reports of Australian travellers, visiting lecturers, newspapers and building industry and professional journals.

Chapter Two - Setting Limits - follows the process of negotiation which took place between 1905 and 1916 which culminated in the passing of the new by-law which included height limits in the City. The setting of height limits was interlinked with a number of broader initiatives, constraints and viewpoints which were being considered. The elucidation of these considerations and their relation to the narrative of negotiation of the regulations is the subject of the second chapter.

Chapter Three - The Limited City - The third period of study extends from the setting of limits in 1916 up until their relaxation in 1955. The effect upon the street-scape and skyline of the substantial redevelopment of the city, punctuated by economic depression and war, is followed. The account includes parallel movements such as the Street Architecture Medal Awards. The meaning and appreciation of the height limit changes, in the context of new understandings of the city, and in response to new structures of power and the economy. The images which were developed to express this Melbourne to its inhabitants and visitors is examined. The last phase of the height limit saga is followed in the events leading to the change from height limits to a zoning system in the mid-1950s.

ABSTRACT  

1  

         

The inner city of Melbourne has a particular character which is partly a product of the skyline and

streetscape created by its older buildings. The value of maintaining a legible matrix of old city fabric

which can be used to aid in the recognition of this past is also widely accepted, to which end a heritage

framework of community, government, and professional organisations has been established.

Defensible decisions about which fabric should be maintained, or how present and future

developments should be controlled, in order to maintain that legibility, are difficult to arrive at.

Buildings, streetscapes, and skylines are valuable as texts to aid in interpretation of the past, yet are only

interpretable through an understanding of what images and meanings and symbolism were attached to

them in the past. This interpretive spiral is a joy for the historian, and a nightmare for the heritage

industry, which is impaled upon a positivist methodology for establishing significance.

Inhabitants and visitors construct their understanding of a city upon the basis of a multiplicity of

images, symbols, and meanings, which change over time. The impulse to preserve an image of an older

skyline is just another one of those understandings, and it too may be passing.

The importance of preserving historical values of the skyline and streetscape character of the central

Melbourne of Hoddle’s grid have cropped up frequently as an issue since its heritage value has become

an orthodoxy. Periodic action in this regard has included preservation of integrity of past streetscapes

either by preventing redevelopment, or by limiting it in various ways. To such ends, height limits to

maintain the existing scale have been imposed on certain zones within the city since 1985. The

justifications for reimposition of such limits are not explicitly set out in government planning

documents, but would appear to be based upon a re-valuing of a certain type of cityscape which

prevailed from the boom period of the 1890s up to the 1950s.

Among government, professional and business interests there were a number of understandings of

what paths for future development lay open to the city. The spirit of a city had long been understood to

be manifested in, if not determined by, its skyline. Spiro Kostoff termed the skyline “the shorthand of

urban identity”.1 The question of what form this should take as Melbourne grew was hotly debated.

One particular characteristic of the city of that period is frequently used to stand for its whole. In

1916 the Council of the City of Melbourne introduced a building regulations by-law, the first major

revision since 1849, establishing a regime of maximum heights for buildings within its boundaries. The  1 Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped : Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History, (London 1991), p.296.

INTRODUCTION  

INTRODUCTION

 

2

height limits remained unchanged until the mid 1950s. The height limit has commonly been used to

stand in for the whole spirit of development in that period. A number of historians have plundered the

height limit for this figurative value. A short review of their various approaches follows.

In 1959, shortly after the relaxation of the height limits, David Saunders, in a study of Melbourne

office buildings, called for a such a history.

… the story [of tall office buildings] can be traced in Australian cities, especially in Melbourne, as obviously and as continuously as in Chicago (though with less architectural distinction) and probably with equally rapid technical progress, hence, usually in advance of European cities. The historical account is one which still awaits coherent telling, and its proper assembly depends on research not yet undertaken. It will include a full account of the creation of the height limit laws, at the time (1886) that the Australasian Building, now A.P.A. House in Elizabeth Street … shot up to 150 feet.2

While the history of architectural styles and building technologies in Melbourne has been well covered

since, the account of the formation and application of height limits has received little attention. The

incorrect dating by Saunders for the introduction of the limit at 1886 is only one of a number of

misapprehensions surrounding this matter.3

Saunders, at least, was interested to view a ‘full account’. Robin Boyd in 1962 was content to bend

history to the cause of his modernist polemic:

Skyscraping began, as has been noted, in the 1880s, but it was curbed for more than 60 years by the somewhat stuffy attitude of the men who made the building laws. Then in a new spirit of adventure and expansion in the optimistic year of 1956, architects in Sydney and Melbourne were able to convince their city councils that the time had come to release buildings from arbitrary height limits.4

Boyd estimated 60 years of the limit when it was only in place from 1916 to 1955, for a period of 40

years. But his assumptions about the spirit in which the limits were created and applied, pays even less

regard to the sources. In particular his assumption that the regulations were a product of ‘arbitrary’

government initiative masks the broad involvement and broad considerations that came into play. J. M.

Freeland indulged in a similar simplification: “The Melbourne Authorities … quickly clamped a ceiling

height limit on their city.”5 A major aspect of this construction is the portrayal of the ‘height limit

period’ as an unfortunate arresting of the progress towards a modern skyscraper city begun with the

skyscrapers of the 1890s.

This conflation of the development of tall buildings with the evolution of the modern city has been

a common enough theme worldwide. In the case of Melbourne, the height limited city was a

convenient Other against which to set up the narrative of progress. American urban historian A. P. Van

Leeuwen asserts that such accounts created an “ideal line of history” which set up “what was modern

and youthful, against what was dull and inert”, and searched the past for “presages, oracles and

 2 David Saunders, 'Office Blocks in Melbourne', Architecture in Australia, (June 1959), p.90. 3 This dating may have to do with amendments to Melbourne Building Act schedules in that year, and to the simultaneous

completion of the Australasian Building which supposedly provoked the introduction of regulations. The peculiar development of these ideas by various authors would be the subject of an interesting study.

4 Robin Boyd, The Walls Around Us , (Sydney 1962), p.60. 5 J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia: A History, (Melbourne 1968), p.220.

INTRODUCTION

 

3

prognostications” of the skyscraper form.6 The history of Melbourne’s skyline in this period becomes a

non-skyscraper history, and therefore a history of non-progress. According to Freeland post-1955

Australian cities ‘breached the impregnability of height limits” and experienced a “renaissance” in

building and established a “truly twentieth century scale”.7

More recently the height limit period has been seen in a different light. Sophia Errey, in a stylistic

review of nineteenth century central Melbourne building, placed a more positive value on the ‘non-

skyscraper’ level city:

The evolved 19th century form of Melbourne had a (potential) completeness … its diverse parts somehow forming a workable and visually satisfying whole. The city tenuously maintained this character throughout six decades.8

The city is not viewed in terms of a lack. Errey has nonetheless a nostalgic viewpoint, positing that the

low level city was “more responsive to individual, as opposed to corporate needs.”9 Her view is almost

a reversal of Boyd and Freeland’s position.

Rohan Storey has taken the revision a step further, positing the existence of a “hybrid city” that

developed between the 1880s and the mid 1950s. He suggests that the imageable remnants of cityscape

that current heritage measures and city planning guidelines seek to maintain, and which are usually

characterised as deriving from “one of the world’s great Victorian Cities”, are something more. “This is

a mid-scale city, a collection of Victorian, Edwardian, modernist and Art-Deco structures… .”10

Recently urban design academic, Dimity Reed, made a statement in support of relaxation of the re-

imposed limits in one area of the city. “The discipline of planning has developed this century as a set of

rules, which float in the freeform ether and are added to at whim. They have not grown from a broad

understanding of the built environment and how it has been, and can be, created.”11 How can they not

have evolved from an understanding, however ‘incorrect’ in hindsight? Wayne Attoe puts forward a

broader understanding of how the design of the city is controlled:

First we must recognise that every city has controls on its development whether or not they have been codified as law. Some controls are informal instead of explicit, not as apparent as height restrictions and design review boards, but controls nonetheless. Informal controls include the prejudices of the real estate market - its assumptions and biases - and pacts by landowners. The question is not 'control or no control', but how much control there should be, who should establish it, and with which goals in mind.12

This study examines the cultural processes involved in negotiating that mid-scale, limited height city in

Melbourne up to 1956.

 6 Thomas A. P. van Leeuwen, The Skyward Trend of Thought, (Cambridge Mass. 1986), p.21. 7 J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia: A History, p.298-9. 8 Sophia Errey, 'Victoria's Vanishing Buildings,1880-1901', in A. Galbally & M. Plant (Eds), Studies in Australian Art, (Melbourne

1978), p.68. 9 Ibid., p.76. 10 Rohan Storey, ‘A Short History of the Urban Form of the City’, Brochure for exhibition "Gone But Not Forgotten", Basement,

178 Collins St, March24-April 16, (Melbourne 1995). 11 Dimity Reed, quoted in Nicole Brady, ‘‘Silly rules won’t stop minister”, Age, 30 May 1997, p.C1. 12 Wayne Attoe, Skylines: Understanding and Moulding Urban silhouettes, (Chichester 1981).

INTRODUCTION

 

4

This study is not an architectural history in the usual sense, though elements of style become

relevant to the discussion. Nor is it a building industry history, though building technology too is

relevant. The central theme is really one of urban design - not urban design as the supposedly rigorous

and comprehensive discipline we know today, but as it actually and stumblingly happens.

There are two ways of explaining urban phenomena such as the setting of height limits. The first,

which has often been adopted by urban designers, emphasises their agency in shaping the city for the

benefits of the people, as a counter-force to the negative forces unleashed by private enterprise. This is

to a greater or lesser degree a discursive device which legitimises the role of the professional. An

alternative outlook, which can be equally revealing, sees the role of the same actors as one of shaping

the city to accommodate the needs of private enterprise with a minimum of damaging conflict.13 "The

skyline, in the end, is a negotiated symbol. What stands out as the city's official silhouette was given

licence to do so."14

The 75 year period from 1880 to 1955 which is most relevant to this history can be divided into

three phases. During the 1880s boom period central Melbourne was rebuilt according to a scale to

compare with the great cities of the world. The power to change the city lay in the hands of private

enterprise, state and local government, and the building industry professions. Each of these groups

observed, first hand and through the media and visitors, changing cities and regulatory precedents

worldwide. The setting was more than the physical structure of the city. The existing fabric, the power

relations, and the available models, are all examined as the setting for the development of the future

city.

In the first twenty years of the twentieth century this cityscape was renegotiated in a number of

ways. Though the setting of height limits in 1916 was a landmark in this process, it was interlinked with

a number of broader initiatives, constraints and viewpoints which were being considered. The

elucidation of these considerations and their relation to the narrative of negotiation of the regulations is

the subject of the second chapter.

The third period of study extends from the setting of limits in 1916 up until their relaxation in 1956.

The city was substantially redeveloped in a series of bursts of building activity, punctuated by economic

depression and war. The meaning and appreciation of the height limit changed in the context of new

understandings of the city, and in response to new structures of power and the economy. The meaning

for, and appreciation of the skyline by the residents of the city changed alongside these developments.

The images which were developed to express this Melbourne to its inhabitants and visitors are

invaluable to forming an understanding of this process. As Kostof points out, “Since to be

conceptualised it has to be imagined, the skyline of cities, by whatever name it might be called, has

always been indebted to the artist’s representation of it.”15

 13 Barry Maitland, 'Australian Urbanism: The Struggle for Urban Form', Transition, No.27/28 (Summer/Autumn 1989), p.156. 14 Kostof, p.296. 15 Ibid., p.283.

6  

       

     

The Lofty Piles

In the boom period of the 1880s and 1890s a number of buildings of between six and twelve storeys

were built in the centre of Melbourne.1 Though now commonly called the ‘Skyscrapers of Marvellous

Melbourne’2, they were described at the time as ‘lofty’, ‘great’ or ‘magnificent piles’. Six of the ‘lofty

piles’ were over 130 feet high, at ten to twelve storeys.3 The exemplary API (later Australian then APA)

Building, over which the topping flag was raised in late 18894, was the tallest and was a subject of some

pride. “With its twelve storeys reaching 173 feet above the pavement it would be considered a tall

building even in New York.”5 For a short period it may well have been the tallest in the world.

(Melbournians seem to have a particular passion for unearthing ‘firsts’ for their city.) (illustrations 1 &

2) The investments in buildings of this scale and quality were huge. The cost was often not realised for

another 50 years. The Equitable building of 1891 cost £5-600,000 (with land), yet it was sold to

Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society in 1923 for only £280,000.6  1 Miles Lewis, Melbourne: The City's History and Development, (Melbourne 1995), Chapter 4 passim, This 1908 list contains most of

the ‘great piles’: Melbourne's tallest buildings:

Australian [API], Elizabeth St. 153 feet Equitable, Collins Street, 132 feet Colonial Mutual, Market Street, 125 feet Prell’s, Queen Street ,125 feet Robb’s, Bourke Street, 115 feet Fink’s, Elizabeth Street, 115 feet Craig & Williamson’s, Elizabeth Street 109 feet Trustees Executors & Agency, Collins Street, 102 feet Stock Exchange, Collins Street, 102 feet Modern Permanent, Collins Street, 100 feet Petersons, Flinders Street, 100 feet

(ADP, V.3,No.8 (1 June 1908), p.231. 2 M. J. Taylor, The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne's Skyscrapers. Bachelor of Architecture Report, Melbourne University, 1972. 3 Melbourne Once Skyscraper City: Led World in the Eighties’, BLE, 24 April 1956, pp.87-88.) 4 ABCN, 16 November 1889, p.446. 5 Australian Builder 1888 quoted in Mary Turner Shaw, Builders of Melbourne: The Cockrams and their Contemporaries, 1853-1972,

(Melbourne 1973), p.31. Sixteen storey buildings were completed in the United States within a few months. The top two floors were in a mansard roof, the flat top of which reached 150(3) feet. The tower above made up to the penultimate 173 feet. Thus the main facade line was quite close to the 132 feet which was eventually to be the height limit for the wide streets. Alterations were made in 1957. (BLE 24 July 1957, pp.65-7.) Ken Edmonds, ‘The Australia Building “Skyscraper” 1889-1979?’, Architect, V.3, No.56 (December 1978), pp.11-13 & V.3, No.57 (February 1979), p.9.

6 ‘Historic Building Changes Hands’, Argus, 7 March 1923, p.17; ‘Fifty Years of City Progress’, Argus, 7 April 1923, p.12.

THE SETTING

1

THE SETTING

 

7

The term ‘lofty pile’ itself is indicative of the way in which Melbourne’s taller buildings were

regarded. ‘Pile’ was not derogatory. It was a common appellation for large masonry buildings, and was a

word more expressive of the mass of a building, and of its layered quality, than its great height. The

inner city was a ‘great pile of buildings’. The use of the term implied a distinct difference in mass and

proportion from the tower or spire, which were characterised by their slenderness and lack of layering.

These ‘lofty piles’ were a self limiting form. The technology of load bearing masonry construction

had been taken as far as it could go. Above twelve to fifteen storeys the thickness of the masonry walls

in the lower floors would occupy so much space as to nullify the financial advantages of any increase in

storeys. Some savings in space (as well as improvements in daylight penetration and ventilation) were

made through use of cast iron or wrought iron columns, and of built up wrought iron plate and box

riveted girders, though in this period these were usually confined to internal structure.7

Lifts had made the tall building viable. Melbourne had almost no passenger lifts prior to 1886, and

consequently very few buildings above four storeys.8 By 1890 lifts were common in buildings four

storeys and over with the majority being hydraulically powered, either suspended or on a hydraulic ram.

Mr. Prell started the ram rising with his hydraulic lift serviced building of six storeys in Queen Street.

The result encouraged Prell to build two more nine storey buildings. Mr Fink had gained “the revenue

of two ordinary buildings from the ground space formerly occupied by one”, when he erected his new

building on the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth Streets using three hydraulic lifts rising 100ft to service

its nine storeys.9 Expansion upwards on expensive main street frontages became increasingly attractive

with these precedents. As one lift expert explained, “The only value of the upper storeys in those high

buildings is quick and certain access”.10 While lifts were gaining acceptance, they were still occasionally

dangerous, mostly due to poor maintenance and operating procedures in industrial use. The newspapers

of the day relished the detailed reporting of frequent lift accidents, with their currency of humans

powerless in the clutches of a machine and the drama of the endless moments before the inevitable

impact.

Fire was recognised as an ever-present threat in the nineteenth century city, and tall buildings quite

justifiably magnified this fear. Though Melbourne was fortunate to have avoided great conflagrations to

match the likes of that in Chicago in 1871, fires were constant and occasionally extensive. The most

notorious of these was the 1897 fire which started in the Craig and Williamson’s store, and demolished

three to four acres of the five acre block bounded by Swanston and Elizabeth Streets, Flinders Street

and Flinders Lane. Twelve warehouses were destroyed with damages of over £1,000,000.11 It was a

 7 Graeme Butler, ‘Twentieth Century Multi Storey Commercial Buildings in Melbourne: Historical and Architectural Context for

94-110 Queen Street’, Melbourne, p.(1)13; & Miles Lewis, Melbourne: The City's History and Development, City of Melbourne, (Melbourne 1995), p.80.

8 M. J. Taylor, The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne's Skyscrapers. Bachelor of Architecture Report, Melbourne University, 1972, p.8.

9 E. J. Rigby, Building & Engineering Journal, 11 April 1891. 10 Report from the Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly upon the Hydraulic System Bill’, VPP, 1887 V.1, pp.1479-1514,

(p.3). 11 “Famous Victorian Fires: Craig and Williamson’s Fire”, Age, 26 December 1931, p.4.

THE SETTING

 

8

month before the brigade considered the smouldering remains safe from further outbreak and collapse.

According to one account, “the heat from [the fire’s] passing blistered the paint on the far side of

Elizabeth Street.”12 (illustration 3)

The Fink’s Building on the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth Streets (on the right of illustration 4)

was one of the first to succumb to the fire. Buckling of the iron floor joists tore the walls apart,

accelerating the progress of the fire. The Mutual Store, close by on Flinders Street, which had been

rebuilt after an earlier fire in fireproof construction and with wired glass windows, survived the direct

onslaught. Despite incorporation of some fireproof features - cladding of metal columns, and fire-proof

floors at lower levels - most of the lofty piles were still woefully inadequate, despite the claims of the

owners. Upper floors and roof structures were given less if any fire resisting treatment, and there was

little or no opportunity of escape from the upper floors.13 Single stairwells were wrapped around open

lift wells which acted as massive chimneys. The tall buildings were not in close proximity to each other,

and adjoining buildings were much lower, so fighting fire on the upper floors from neighbouring roofs

was ruled out. Extension ladders could only reach to around 80 feet. Existing water pressure was

insufficient to fight fires at high levels. “If the means of putting out fires are limited to the fourth or

fifth storey, of course it is to be expected that the companies are going to be shy of building ten, nine,

eight, or even seven storeys high.” Insurers were shying away from tall buildings or raising their

premiums. 14

With the completion of Prell’s ten storey pile in 1889, critics protested that “elevators will be the

bane of the artistic side of architecture”.15 Aesthetic critics were not blindly resistant to tall buildings,

but rather considered that they presented aesthetic problems which had not been solved. One major

source of difficulty lay in the use of the revivalist styles which could really only accommodate buildings

of a few storeys within their strict systems of proportion. The assistant Government Architect of

Victoria, E. W. Dobbs, decried the ‘lofty piles’ as “Box like… gigantic …hideous …grotesque

…gruesome …ugly …[and]monumental without being sublime.”16 J. M. Freeland commented on

Dobbs’ outburst:

He voiced the views of many of his contemporaries who were scandalised by the fact that in many cases ‘each floor is similar in detail’. The Romans had only five orders and with 10 or 12 storeys there were not enough of them to conform to the established tenets of allotting a more complicated order to each surmounting floor.17

Difficulties arose, too, with the requirement for repetitive and generic internal spaces to lease to

businesses. Architects baulked at the insult to the thematic unity of internal and external design, and the

great reduction in their role which such repetition brought about.

 12 Sally Wilde, Life Under the Bells: A History of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, Melbourne 1891-1991, (Melbourne 1991), p.211. 13 Michael Cannon, Australia in the Victorian Age: 3 - Life in the Cities, (Melbourne 1975), p.26. 14 ABCN, 8 February 1890, p.748. 15 J.M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia: A History, (Melbourne 1968), p.166. 16 E. W. Dobbs: Rise and Growth of Australasian Architecture, Reprinted by Australasian Builders and Contractors News Office 1892,

p.13, quoted in J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia: A History, (Melbourne 1968), p.166. 17 J. M. Freeland, p.166.

THE SETTING

 

9

The other aesthetic problem presented by the ‘lofty piles’ lay in their large masonry side walls bereft

of windows or almost any architectural treatment, which were necessary to accommodate party wall

regulations and in anticipation of tall neighbours. Of course, the advertisers had no problem with these

gigantic predecessors of the bill-board, and today we value the few remaining examples for the style of

their typography. And the practice was by no means confined to the tallest buildings, as any perusal of

photographs of the period will show - a six storey building next to a two storey building provided quite

as large an expanse of unadorned masonry, and much closer to street level. Architects and other

professionals lamented the poor aesthetics of the advertisements, and at times tried to prescribe that

sides be architecturally treated.18

The great contrast between the old skyline and the tops of the lofty piles shaped early aesthetic

judgements. At the annual dinner of the RVIA in 1890, the new president G. C. Inskip “commented

adversely on the lofty buildings which disfigured and dwarfed the well proportioned building in their

vicinity.”19 The imagery of Waldemar Bannow in 1896 is used so frequently it is almost a truism.

Melbourne has of late years indulged in a strange freak of running up houses of immense height, buildings from eight to thirteen storeys meeting the passers-by in every direction. These extreme contrasts to the, of old, very generally pervading squat two-story buildings, give the city a straggled and uneven appearance. When looking down one of the long main streets, the house rows on both sides remind one of an old dilapidated hair-comb lying on its back with the most of its teeth more or less short(sic) off, but with an odd one rearing its full length skyward.20

The old unity of scale was most noticeable after it had been disrupted. Bannow may have had in

mind American cities in which the older base was less ‘squat’ and hence the disruption less obtrusive.

Bannow’s imagery indicates that he considered that more tall buildings would complete the

composition, and that the ‘squat’ buildings should be replaced. To Bannow the old was the problem.

The contrast in building sizes between one storey and four to five storey buildings was observed by a

visitor in an earlier period, though it was the taller buildings which were the problem.

In 1882 a traveller remarked that in this city there were no houses with more than two storeys, but, on account of the expense of the land, some of the newer shops in Melbourne proper have a tendency to look absurd, because their neighbours are so much shorter in stature. In time much of this inequality will be removed.21

Regardless of whether or not the makers of the ‘lofty piles’ anticipated a ubiquity of such buildings

in central Melbourne, the buildings acted as tools to think with - to react against, to emulate, or to

eclipse.

Sophia Errey believes that the late nineteenth and early twentieth century city formed a blueprint

which stamped a certain quality upon the future city. The blueprint involved “a relatively regular

skyline, rising and falling only by a few storeys from block to block, easily seen from street level and

 18 ABCN, 4 October 1890, p.243. 19 Ibid. 20 Waldemar Bannow, The Colony of Victoria Socially and Materially, (1896), p.10. Bannow was perhaps prone to seeing contrasts -

he also picks out that between the many wooden buildings still present in less developed areas of the central city and the new stone and brick buildings amongst them.

21 'Australia's First Century', 1889, in E. E. Morris (Ed.), Cassell's Picturesque Australia, (Sydney 1980).

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indeed treated as an important part of the ornamental area of the facade; moreover a feeling of light

and space persisted, at least in the major streets.”22 By this stage the contrast which so disturbed

Bannow was less strident. A great many other lower, but nonetheless extraordinarily costly, extravagant

and solid buildings constructed in the boom period perhaps contributed as much to the overall

impression made by Melbourne’s central city at the time. These buildings also contributed by forming,

on the most valuable blocks, a solid ‘undergrowth’ from which the ‘lofty piles’ emerged. The loftiest of

these were only twice the height of the increasingly common five story buildings. This Melbourne was

not the conscious great statement brought about by despotic vision but a reflection of the consensus of

predominantly mercantile aspirations.23

Limitless Regulations

Building regulations in Melbourne had been drafted for a town which had barely begun, not for a

metropolis. The first Melbourne Building Act had been passed by the New South Wales Legislature in

1849 just before the separation of the State of Victoria. The Act was based on British precedents. A

British architect described their basis:

In modern building regulations three things were considered:- (1)The prevention and spread of fire; (2) The construction of the building to guard the safety of the public; and (3) public health. It was the regulations that dealt with the prevention of the spread of fire that had the greatest influence on the architecture of the period. The regulations based after the great fire of London set the fashion for brick and stone-fronted buildings, which altered the appearance of all the towns in the kingdom, and in more recent times the Metropolitan Building Act (United Kingdom), which was the first set of building regulations that seriously dealt with the problem of the prevention and spread of fire, made marked changes in the architecture of the 19th century.24

This architecture of Melbourne was similarly influenced by regulations for party walls and masonry

construction. Height limits, however, were not yet part of the equation.25

Amendments had been made to the schedules of the regulations several times since, the latest in

1886, but they did not accommodate emerging constructional technologies. Very conservative increases

in wall thickness were prescribed for increases in storey height in conventional masonry construction,

and this effectively discouraged buildings over ten to twelve storeys. Amendments to the Act aimed at

fire prevention were inadequate for the new larger buildings and greater densities of the inner city.

The questions of whether building height should be limited at all, and if so how it should be

achieved, had been debated publicly since the end of 1880s. In 1890 the Melbourne City Council had

discussed “… the question of erecting the current style of high buildings”, concluding that “if an

appropriate by-law could not be created to control them, the Building Act should be amended.”

Councillor Godfrey stated that “… there was not a city in the world where buildings were allowed to  22 Sophia Errey, 'Victoria's Vanishing Buildings,1880-1901', in A. Galbally & M. Plant (Eds), Studies in Australian Art, (Melbourne

1978), p.69. 23 Donald J. Olsen, 'The City as a Work of Art', in D. Fraser & A. Sutcliffe (Eds), The Pursuit of Urban History, (London 1983), p.273. 24 M. Searles Wood, “The Evolution of Building Regulations”, Building (12 April 1912), p.98-9. 25 The old regulations did have an inverted form of limit system - a minimum street width. Buildings frequently went up outside

the city grid before streets were laid out, and there was an unfortunate tendency to economise on street width where private owners funded the street building. The streets were required to be at least 33 feet wide, or as wide as any building over 40 feet was high. (Melbourne Building Act 1849, Section 48, p.26.)

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run up to such a height as in Melbourne.” In reporting these events, the industry magazine Australasian

Builders and Contractors News (ABCN) suggested that rather than making such “haphazard statements”,

Councillor Godfrey should spend his next holiday in the United States.26 The Royal Victorian Institute

of Architects (RVIA) also expressed interest in either amendments to the by-laws or changes to the

Building Act.27

One commentator in 1890 made an almost prescient assessment of the issues which would be

discussed for the next sixty five years. This correspondent for the ABCN called for three dimensional

planning of the city:

In most cities of the world, in order to ensure some degree of uniformity and harmony, it is required that buildings to be erected shall be of a stipulated height; in Melbourne the time has come when it should not only be required that buildings fronting to the business thoroughfares shall be of a certain height, but that the height should be limited too. Can anything be more flagrantly inharmonious than to see an edifice of eight or twelve storeys standing alongside of a building of only two? The lofty buildings now going up above the general ruck of the houses in Melbourne bring to mind instinctively the appearance presented by a number of tombstones rising from out of the rank grass of a grave-yard. Yet to call up a picture of a street 99 feet wide lined on both sides with buildings eight and nine storeys high for a length of say - from Spring Street to Queen Street - would be to realise a nobler thoroughfare than the world has ever seen.28

After presenting this vision of a unified height city, the correspondent suggests, with Paris in mind, that

only under despotic control could such a vision of “Melbourne the city of palaces” be realised. With a

system of government such as Melbourne’s, however, “where every publican is a real power, the

difficulties are enormous.”29 The brightness of this strong aesthetic vision was to be reduced to

glimmers for much of the successive negotiation.

In the outgoing president’s address to the RVIA annual meeting for 1890, Mr Lloyd Tayler was

more restrained. He proposed that:

… for sanitary reasons, as well as for consideration of danger in case of fire, there should be some limit imposed. And do you not think that it would be wise, and would not unduly interfere with the liberty of the private owner, if the limit of height were made the width of the streets in which the building were erected.30

The problems caused by skyscrapers, and the need for limitations to height, were discussed in America

in strikingly similar terms in the 1890s. Even American architects who had designed a number of major

skyscrapers, such as George B. Post, were moved to call for limits, citing European precedents, and

praising European achievements in public health and services. A bill to limit heights to 200 feet in New

York was put forward as early as 1897, but stopped in anticipation of a Greater New York Charter.31

 26 ABCN, 20 April 1889, p.379. 27 J.M. Freeland, The Making of a Profession: A History of the Growth and Work of the Architectural Institutes in Australia, (Sydney 1972),

p.39. JPRVIA, V.6, No.1 (March 1908), p36 - “… every credit was due to the Institute for endeavouring many years ago to bring about either an amendment of the present regulations or the substitution of a better code.”

28 ABCN, 22 February1890, p.785. The metaphor of the graveyard outperforms that of Bannow’s gap-toothed comb. 29 The correspondent is referring to the notorious prevalence of publicans in the ranks of the Melbourne City Councillors. 30 ABCN, 8 February 1890. Tayler was president of the RVIA 1889-90. Not to be confused with George. A. Taylor. 31 Sarah Landau & Carl Condit, Rise of the New York Skyscraper 1865, (New Haven 1996), pp.187-90. A curiously similar scenario

to the events to take place in Melbourne 15 years later.

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The ‘depression’ in Victoria in the 1890s put a stop to most of this activity. Beverley Kingston

acknowledges the usual economic explanations for the downturn, but adds that “There was no more

need for building”.32 The requirement for buildings was fulfilled for years to come. The depression was

felt particularly heavily in Melbourne, the epicentre of the boom, and where a considerable proportion

of the work-force had been involved in the building industry. Miles Lewis makes a précis of the

accompanying change in mood - “…the depression of the 1890s turned flashy young Melbourne into a

sober Edwardian matron, and the go-ahead image was appropriated by Sydney.”33

The players

The form of the central city of Melbourne was being negotiated by three principal interest groups.

The distribution of buildings in the city had already crystallised into a physical layout which

demonstrated the dominance of capital - public buildings, including central government, occupied

positions around the edge of the grid. Private enterprise had free rein in the centre, and local

government sat within this matrix of private enterprise.34 The professionals, architects and engineers,

were a fluid group occupying positions and allegiances distributed through and between government

and private enterprise.

Employer organisations and the Chamber of Commerce grew in response to the need for

parliamentary representation in struggles with labour.35 They were well versed in the lobbying and

pressuring of local government and State government in matters in which their established rights were

threatened. But the negotiation of new controls for building height, while affecting business viability,

also involved complex aesthetic, health and infrastructure considerations. While chambers of commerce

in the United States were heavily involved in community projects and projects to beautify the city, this

was not the pattern in Melbourne. Business delegated much responsibility to the professions,

particularly architects, as interpreters, advocates and whistleblowers in negotiations with city

government.

In a capitalist society the power of business is only partly expressed in overt political activity. A large

part of its power is exerted through its structural role in society, and in particular through its ability to

shape the physical space of the city by building. According to David Harvey, “Control over spatial

organisation and authority over the use of space become a crucial means for the reproduction of social

power relations.” The spatial organisation of Melbourne into central city business area, industrial

suburbs, and residential suburbs was already established and exerted control in this way. Within its own

district of the city centre, business exerted a detailed and almost monopolistic control of space. The

mechanisms of real estate value reflect this value of power over strategic space. As Harvey asserts,

“…command over a strategic space within the overall construction of social space is worth its weight in

 32 Beverley Kingston, 1860-1900: Glad Confident Morning, (Melbourne 1988), p.44. 33 Lewis, p.101. 34 Churches remained rooted in the centre, but were increasingly surrounded and left behind in their own isolated space. 35 Stuart Macintyre, The Oxford History of Australia Volume IV The Succeeding Age 1901-1942, (Melbourne 1986), p.118.

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gold. This value of space lies at the root of land rent.… Control over strategic land parcels within the

urban matrix confers immense power over the whole pattern of development.”36

The stability of capital is achieved through a process of constant growth and change. This process

commonly results in cycles of prosperity and depression, such as that which Melbourne had so painfully

undergone in the 1890s. Investment in the ‘fixed capital’ of the built environment of the city, bricks and

mortar, is also subject to cycles of investment and disinvestment. This entails a constant rebuilding of

the city, a process which Harvey labels “creative destruction”.37 Within these processes strategic

choices can be made - choices can be made about both the concentration of this ‘fixed capital’ and

exclusion of certain types of use, about spatial relationships which define the social order in the city,

and about the symbolic representations of this new space which ‘explain’ it to its public. Sharon Zukin

calls this “the material control of symbolic resources”. Zukin posits that if power over a space gives the

power to impose a vision on that space, so in the Foucauldian reversal does the power to create a

coherent vision of a space enable a group to claim power over that space.38 The choice to invest in tall

buildings at strategic points within the city could induce, through the ‘natural’ action of the real estate

system, adoption of that strategy on a broader basis. Height limits are at the cusp of a number of these

choices - choices about density, about the proportion of public to privatised business space, about the

aesthetic of the business district, and about symbolic relations to public buildings.

The Melbourne City Council (MCC) existed to mediate the needs of its business constituents with

the maintenance of a satisfactory social order. The cities of the Australian colonies had inherited the

British model of municipal government by councillors elected by the owners of property. Wealthier

landowners commanded more votes, and a minimum level of ownership was required to be able to

stand for election. Councillors thus had, according to Leonie Sandercock, at least “a vested interest in

protecting existing property and privilege or in real estate and land speculation”39 Michael Cannon may

be anachronistic in his estimation: “… short term commercial influences became paramount in the

making or avoiding of decisions, and the management of municipal affairs became hopelessly muddled

and incompetent.”40 The observations of Beatrice Webb in 1898 were more pertinent. “One gathers

that business is efficiently conducted: there are no parties in the council and not a suspicion of

philanthropic sentiment: they are there in the main to improve the value of city property by economic

and wise corporate action and indirectly to provide for clean and well lighted streets, for the mass of

the citizens.”41 Webb had no illusions about the primary role of Council as a facilitator for private

enterprise.

Professionals considered themselves as being more capable in important decision making than the

council members:  36 David Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanisation, (Baltimore.

1985), p.22. 37 Ibid., p.27. 38 Sharon Zukin, The Culture of Cities, (Cambridge Mass. 1996), p.278 & 279. 39 Leonie Sandercock, Cities for Sale: Property, Politics and Urban Planning in Australia, (Melbourne 1975), p.56. 40 Michael Cannon, Australia in the Victorian Age: 3 - Life in the Cities, (Melbourne 1975), p.22. 41 A. G. Austin (Ed.) The Webb’s Australian Diary 1898, (Melbourne 1965), p.72.

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Our Aldermen are at their business all day long. They may be tailors, timber salesmen or tinkers, but no matter how conscientious they may be, no matter with what good intentions they come to their evening work of administrating a great city, they only bring tired and second hand mental power for high class expert work.42

This is an exaggeration. Several of the councillors and aldermen had professional backgrounds, and a

good many were wealthy and well educated.

Architects occupied a powerful position in the city in their role as shapers of space:

The power to shape space … appears as one of the crucial powers of control over social reproduction. And it is exactly on this basis that those who have the professional and intellectual skills to shape space materially and effectively - engineers, architects, planners and so on - can themselves acquire a certain power and convert their specialised knowledge into financial benefit.43

They held close ties to the property owners and developers for whom they worked, doing a great deal

to smooth the way for projects, and competing fiercely for the few commissions available in the slow

economic climate after the 1890s. Architects were attempting to negotiate a professional status and

registration system kin to that of lawyers and doctors which would reinforce their position, though

without much success in this era.44

The architects also occupied a Janus-faced position in that they perceived themselves as having a

role in checking the effects of the excesses and destabilisation that were an inevitable result of

unrestrained capitalism. This ambiguity was possible because the counter-movement was directed

towards ameliorating the harsh consequences of the advance of capital, without questioning capital

itself.45 The ambiguity of the discourse of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects (RVIA) and

Victorian Institute of Engineers (VIE) journals reveals signs of this double movement - the separation

of discourses of hygiene, aesthetics and beauty, which improve the life of the masses, and the pragmatic

discourse of their negotiating position between business and local government.

Conventional masonry construction had required little recourse to specialist engineering expertise

for many architects. With the introduction of new building technologies involving more specialised

engineering calculations, engineers began to occupy a special niche in the building process. Some of the

older professionals moved ably in both professional spheres, but increasingly such movement became

more difficult. These contests over domain were to erupt later in regulation negotiations.

Changes which took place in the city administration of building early in the new century serve to

illustrate the relationship between local government and professions, and also impact directly on the

later process of negotiation of building regulations. The office of the City Surveyor had become

inadequate to the task of administering building in an expanding and increasingly complex city.46 In

1905 the imminent retirement of long-standing City Surveyor A. C. Mountain was taken as an  42 George A Taylor, ‘The Healthy City’, Building, V.21, No.121 (12 September 1917), p.84. 43 David Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanisation, (Baltimore

1985), p.23. 44 Graeme Davison, The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, (Melbourne 1978), pp.109-10. 45 Thomas L. Haskell (Ed.),The Authority of Experts, (Bloomington 1984), pp.183-6 passim. 46 City of Melbourne Council Minutes (CMCM), V.37 (1905-6), 12 March 1906 15th ood.

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opportunity for reform. In anticipation of increased work load and the requirement for specialised

skills, resulting from revision of the Building Act to include new forms of construction, a new office

was created which was to be headed by a City Architect and a Building Surveyor.47 The new office

would also design and supervise buildings for the MCC. Assistant City Surveyor Morton was appointed

as the first City Architect and Building Surveyor. Work previously undertaken in the City Surveyor’s

office to do with building construction was transferred to the new office.48 This move towards a

municipal architectural practice paralleled that in Britain, particularly in the London County Council’s

Architect’s Department.49

The newly formed Royal Victorian Institute of Architects (RVIA) reacted negatively to the prospect

of municipal work being undertaken by municipal architects.50 A similar distaste for ‘public’ practices

was displayed by British Institutes. As Andrew Saint explains “… since artistry was equated with

individualism, the natural and healthy development of collaborative architecture during this century was

constantly being stifled. This was especially so for the growing municipal and other ‘public’

practices.”51 The negativity about government was tied to the common assertion that government in

Australia failed to encourage private enterprise, and was monopolising the great works which were

handled by private enterprise in other countries.52

Old and New World Precedents

Melbournians looked to the great cities of the world to provide models for the created space of their

society. Historians have frequently pointed to such an approach being applied to problems arising in

Australia. Victoria had sent representatives to a series of world exhibitions. Various other problems in

Australian development (irrigation) had prompted the sending of experts to view solutions elsewhere,

and international experts were commonly brought to Australia. Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade

Chief Officer Lee, and City Surveyor A.C. Mountain both visited America for the City Council to view

state of the art technologies and solutions.

The architects of the old world had a long tradition of making tours of the great cities and

architecture of the world. The new world was now becoming established as a necessary part of the tour.

The world trips of two Melbourne architects who would loom large in the Melbourne scene, Kingsley

Henderson in 1907, and Harry Tompkins in 1911, were typical examples of such excursions.

 47 City of Melbourne Council Proceedings (CMCP), 1906-7, pp.232-4. 48 CMCM, V.38, 10 June 1907. 49 Andrew Saint, The Image of the Architect, (New Haven 1983), p.70. 50 CMCP, 1906-7 p.235. During the idleness of the 1890s slump competitions had been used as a form of competitive tender,

often with very small prizes, and the winner might not even get to take the job further. It was feared that this would happen in the City Architects office - a competition had recently been held for a Town Hall extension. The piqued Institute also complained that the new appointee, Morton, did not have proper architectural training. (JPRVIA, (May 1907), p.48.) Yet at one stage he managed to hold the positions of City Surveyor, City Architect, and City Engineer simultaneously.)

51 Saint, p.70. 52 Col. W. L. Vernon, ‘Review of the Existing Conditions of the Twin Professions in Australia’, JPRVIA, V.10, No.6 (January 1913),

p.246.

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A number of travelling commentators had already noted the similarity in spirit of Melbourne to

American cities. Frederic Spurr believed that : “A touch of Paris would make Melbourne the most

attractive city in this hemisphere. The streets and pavements are wide enough to allow the open air cafe.

But in its life Melbourne follows America rather than Paris. The American hustling spirit is manifest in

everything, religion included.”53 Melbourne engineer John Monash was inclined to agree: “An

Australian was more at home in America than amongst any other people”. 54

Conrad Hamann believes that New York had replaced London in the Australian imaginary as the

desired metropolis in the teens and twenties.55 It may be more appropriate to call it the admired

metropolis. Other American cities which had adopted different models also sparked interest. Certainly

there is a great volume of material in the architectural, engineering and building press dedicated to the

cities of that other New World. Nearly all commentators found the American skyscrapers magnificent.

But alongside all the admiration there ran a critical dialogue about what models for the city-scape

should be adopted in Australia. A traveller’s tale serialised in Building journal reflected this dialogue.

Three Australian characters, the Editor, the Master Builder, and the Engineer, travelled the great cities

of America and engaged in a critical and comic conversation about the relative merits of various aspects

of American cities and culture.56

Builders were the most willing to embrace the New York model. Part of this attraction lay in the

American ‘System’ of building on these very large projects, which placed a great deal more

responsibility in the whole building process on the builders as managers. Sydney Master Builder J.

Burcham Clamp recommended that Australians should follow the guidance of America, “a country

older, wiser, richer and more progressive than ours”, and adopt the steel framed skyscraper as “the

material solution of an inevitable problem.” Clamp particularly admired the Gothic treatment of the

Woolworth building, which had been completed during his visit (illustration 5). He was a little unsure

of the propriety of the “false marble” (faience) finish - he quoted “This form severe is but a mere

veneer.”57 Clamp and others, especially engineers, typically regaled their readers with a constant stream

of impressive statistical detail on America’s newest skyscrapers, though “these are but figures and no

figures can so touch the imagination as an ascent to the top of New York’s latest and greatest

skyscraper.”58

 53 Frederic C. Spurr, Five Years Under the Southern Cross: Experiences and Impressions, (London 1915), p.52. 54 John Monash, ‘My Recent Travels’, JPRVIA, (May 1911), p.49. 55 Conrad Hamann, 'Against the Mainstream: the inclusive tendency in Victoria's architecture, 1890 -1984', in A.G.L. Shaw (Ed.)

Victoria's Heritage, (Sydney 1986), p.153. 56 George A. Taylor, “There, Being the American Adventures of Three Australia During the Period of the Great War, - Chapter

XXX - Modern Towers of Babel’, Building, V.17, No.101, pp.111-127, and following issues. 57 J. Burcham Clamp, ‘The Steel Age No.3: Impressions of a Tour Abroad’, Building, V.13, No.76 (12 December 1913), p.63; &

V.13, No.77 (12 January 1914), p.89. 58 ‘The Beauty of the Skyscraper”, Building, 12 February 1914, p.58. A London Daily Telegraph article reprinted in Building carried a

similar example: “Perhaps any skyscraper - unless it be such an inspiration as New York’s Woolworth Tower - is unlovely if it stands alone in an undergarden of five storey buildings. But when … the steel and stone giants are no longer nakedly alone, they cluster in kingly groups and line whole streets like halls of the Neibelungs.” (‘The Beauty of the Skyscraper’, Building, 12 February 1914, p.57.)

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The rhetoric of the skyscraper adopted by its aficionados in Australia would provide rich fodder for

psychoanalytic interpretation:

The skyscrapers of New York have made the centre of that city one of the most impressive places on earth. The grandeur and vehement strength of the piles and buildings gives it a life and character, and touches the imagination in no way that meaninglessly imitative buildings can so. An enthusiastic authority describes the buildings as suggesting titanic cliff-like ranges of steel-built towers embodying a fierce, wild energy of a living kind. In them is the real grandeur, the grandeur of explosive, lawless vehement strength.59

Such reactions to the skyscraper form may well have put off the more conservative of the business

community in Melbourne.

Engineers, too, scented an opportunity for a more important position in the building hierarchy. The

travelling ‘Engineer’ was

… excited. He felt these mighty structures held a triumph for his craft. He knew that without the engineer the skyscraper was impossible. Building a skyscraper was not the mere placing of stone upon stone that built the great structures of the past; it was only possible by the use of the steel frame and the speedy elevator, two essentially engineering factors.60

On the other hand, engineers, who commonly worked on design of service and transport infrastructure

for the city, were most aware of the potential problems and costs of congestion, overuse of existing

service infrastructure, restriction of light and air, and fire hazards.

Architects were subject to a kind of ambivalence about what they saw. They could hardly resist the

glorious prospect of a commission to design a skyscraper themselves, and were fascinated with the

design challenges of tall buildings; but in their role as protectors of the public interest they were not so

sure that the whole set of values, the new city paradigm which went along with the skyscraper, was

appropriate to Australia, and particularly the Melbourne scene. By the logic of environmentalism, the

built skyscraper environment would tend to reproduce the same conditions in Australia as had resulted

in American cities. The costume was admired, but Melbourne wasn’t sure it could wear it.

Architect Kingsley Henderson came home with a favourable impression, and was particularly

interested in the connection between the skyscraper city and its lifestyles: “I suggest that there you must

go hard, for you must live well and work hard, you must spend, and feast and be entertained. The

concentrated spirit of the whole American race is there. Everything is huge and costly, and there is a

daring about it all in their buildings, bridges, tunnels, shipping, transport, and a great display of wealth.”

Kingsley concluded that in Australia “we do seem to want a little more hustle sometimes.”61

The old guard was more hesitant. One RVIA member commented that the buildings were “…

perfectly unsuitable to our needs. They were the work of men who lived at high pressure, and who did

their life work early, becoming quite worn out at 45.” Another commentator thought, with a strong

dash of environmental determinism, that “… both in his buildings and in his manner of living, the

 59 ‘The Skyscraper. Is it to Be Denied to Australia? Reasons Why it Should be Sanctioned’, Building, V.5, No.59 (12 July 1912), p.46. 60 George A. Taylor, “There, Being the American Adventures of Three Australians During the Period of the Great War, - Chapter

XXX - Modern Towers of Babel’, Building, V.17, No.101, p.111. 61 Kingsley Henderson, ‘A Trip Through the United States and Western Canada’, JPRVIA, V.12, No.2 (May 1914), p.65.

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American failed aesthetically, missing the trees and those other objects which gave inspiration, and

becoming just like the steel in his building, cold, hard and calculating”.62 In Australia, as in America,

opinion was strongly divided as to whether or not the new paradigms should be adopted. “The

question of skyscraper limitation remained a matter of endless debate, with the architects usually

speaking in favour of such limitation.”63

The architects were also threatened by the American ‘system’ of building in which their role was

almost secondary to the big builder/manager companies on skyscraper projects. The great urban

American contractors such as Starret had set up a chain of command in which architects lost their

position at the top of the chain of command, and became a mere cog in the wheel of the large

company.

The aesthetic difficulties which Dobbs had remarked upon in the lofty piles of Melbourne were

magnified when the prevailing revivalist styles were applied to the far taller structures in America, as an

Australian engineer observed:

There is nothing more difficult than the artistic treatment of the object with but one direction… the difficulty of the problem lies in the monotony which is forced upon the architect. Nothing like this has happened before, and, in an art which, like architecture depends so largely on precedent, there need be little wonder that American architects have not always achieved satisfactory results.64

Architects commonly manipulated an eclectic variety of historical architectural styles to produce

appropriate and recognisable codes of meaning to attach to various building types. Thus banks adopted

the language of temples with connotations of solidity and endurance, and the Gothic treatment of the

Woolworth Building in New York carried connotations of splendour and wealth.65 Georgian urban

architecture in London had been criticised by Victorian era architects for its lack of communication.

Nineteenth century city builders believed, according to Olsen, that “the function of art was to please

and instruct, or more accurately, to please in order to instruct.”66

The adaptation of these old styles to very large and tall buildings created problems not only with

verticality, but with scale.

…it cannot be said that it is possible to design a skyscraper under practical conditions so as to get the value of the architectural work put into it shown to the same proportional extent as would appear in the case of a building six or eight storeys high.67

Fine detailing and its relationships to the larger scheme, which were observable from street level on a

ten storey building, was lost at twenty storeys. Yet without decoration the buildings were seen to exhibit

an unacceptably ‘severe plainness’.

 62 JPRVIA, V.8, No.5 (September 1910), p.189. 63 Sarah Landau & Carl Condit, Rise of the New York Skyscraper 1865, (New Haven 1996), p.294. 64 Sydney H. Wilson, ‘New York’s Tallest Buildings’, JPRVIA, V.8, No.5 (September 1910), p.184. 65 Diana Agrest, Architecture From Without: Theoretical Framings for a Critical Practice, (Cambridge Mass. 1993), pp.79-106 passim. 66 Donald J. Olsen, The City as a Work of Art: London Paris Vienna, (New Haven 1986), p.271. 67 The Skyscraper’, Building, V.1, No.1 (September 1907), p.25.

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The new styles pioneered by Chicago architects, notably Louis Sullivan, since the 1880s, were seen

by some as a solution, though Australians were slow on the uptake, and in America there was a reaction

against their work as Beaux-Arts influence gained ground. Louis Sullivan’s Prudential Building in

Buffalo appeared in Building in 1907 under the title “An ‘Anti-Tradition’ Building”. Sullivan was

described as “… the founder of a new school of democratic architecture. It is a school which ignores

tradition and comes closer to the modern ideals of art, utility and good construction in general.”68

While the elaborate faience surface decoration on the Buffalo Building was considered excessive, the

other aspects of the style - expression of the frame, increased area of window openings, and

emphasised verticals and recessed continuous spandrels - were admired. The Building reporter pointed

out that “… there are two people gone from this office on a pilgrimage to the Prudential Building with

the same feeling as the Arabs visit Mecca”.69

Chicago had not evolved into a cityscape of isolated towers. As Kingsley Henderson observed,

“Chicago has a 250 foot building limit, and the consequence is that the city is very thoroughly built up

to the limit, and one might say, from the building point of view, it is the most typical of American

cities.”70 The Chicago skyscrapers up until 1914 were block-like masses filling their sites and reaching a

maximum of twenty storeys, subject to zoning and height limit regulations. This tendency towards a

uniform height was presaged in the perspectives of Burnham and Bennet’s Chicago Plan of 1910.71

The tall building possessed a monumentality which gave it a particularly dominating relationship to

the urban fabric. Sullivan in his 1896 manifesto The Tall Office Building Artistically Reconsidered describes

the power of the symbolism: “It must be tall. The force and power of altitude must be in it, and the

glory and pride of exultation must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing …”.72 But

what was symbolised? Charles Jencks asserts that this symbolism is usually implicit and unstated. “The

symbol of corporate power, the rising up of real estate, services, production, the variety of city

functions integrated for a single end - a ‘capital’ symbol.73 The tripartite scheme which Sullivan

advocated could not be applied to very tall structures, which were tending towards composites of

massive conventional blocks with much taller narrow towers set back or off to one side, as in the Singer

and the Woolworth Buildings. (illustration 5)

Congestion inevitably followed the skyscrapers, which were ‘small cities in themselves’. (illustration

7) Melbourne architect C. L. Cummings described the scene: “At 5 o’clock 15,000 persons poured into

the streets of New York from the Woolworth Building alone, and it was evident that groups of such

 68 ‘An “Anti-Tradition” Building: A Wonderful Example of the New School of Architecture’, Building, V.14, No.82 (12 June 1914),

p.56. Sullivan was at the time on the judging panel for an international competition for the new Federal Parliament house in Canberra.

69 Ibid., p.58. 70 Kingsley Henderson, ‘A Trip through the United States & Western Canada’, JPRVIA, (May 1914), p.64. His accuracy on the

Chicago limit is questionable. 71 Carl W. Condit, Chicago 1910-29, (Chicago 1973), p92. Slender towers would not appear in Chicago until the mid 1920s. 72 Louis Sullivan, ‘The Tall Office Building Artistically Reconsidered’ (1896), in Charles Jencks, Skyscrapers - Skyprickers - Skycities,

p.14-15. 73 Jencks, p.15.

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buildings would mean impossible overcrowding.”74 Australian engineer Wilfred Sprusson calculated

that even where a city was uniformly built up to only ten or twelve storeys, where before it had been

from two to six, the traffic on the street would increase six times.75 How could such quantities of traffic

be dealt with? City Surveyor A.C Mountain’s broad interest in the welfare of the city is reflected in his

alarm at infrastructure responses to the congestion caused by the skyscraper in Chicago.

The elevated railway in places almost covers over the whole width of the main streets, leaving a comparatively narrow slit of clear space - say, about 9 feet wide - to light up the shop fronts. This evil is intensified at the street intersections which (in one or two cases) are practically entirely roofed over and shut down from the daylight.

When extrapolated to its extreme, futuristic visions of the multilevel city were produced.

Fitzpatrick’s vision of the future appeared in Building more than once.

There would be tunnels for rapid transit, the main street for heavy hauling and principal access to buildings, the elevated railway, and then these substreets at, say, the ninth or tenth storey level.! These streets would be connected at the intersection of the main streets by narrow bridges, and the streets could be carried up and stepped back at various determined heights up to sixty or seventy storeys…76

The accompanying illustration (illustration 8) was hardly enticing, with its deep ravine streets and

convergence in endless massed buildings, yet such visions were presented by some as utopian.

Hugely increased demands were placed upon other services such as water, sewerage and electricity.

This was hardly likely to appeal to a City Council already over-burdened in this regard. “It does not take

a moment’s thought to realise that what an owner saves by utilising his building block to the fullest

advantage, resolves itself into a charge on the city government for reconstruction of service pipes and

conduits. This throws a new light on any plea for taxing land values. On the other hand, of course, the

city gets an added rate to recoup it.”77

American pundits were generally optimistic about fire in their skyscrapers. Fitzpatrick contended

that if tall buildings were constructed with best fire resisting and preventative practice, “… not only are

they not a menace, but that they actually constitute a bulwark against the progress of fire in the districts

in which they are located.”78 Another architect, Mr. Anderson, was confident in the taller American

skyscrapers. “In those great buildings there was nothing of an inflammable nature. Men wrote at steel

desks.”79

Australian town planner George A. Taylor voiced fears about movement in tall buildings. “The

height limit has apparently now been reached in New York, for it has been found dangerous to health

to live above the twenty-third storey; there being a vibration and swing in every structure. So much so,

that at fifty storeys it is like a chimney with a distinct movement. The skyscrapers actually “scrape” the

 74 ‘Modern Architecture - America Leads the Way’, Argus, 27 April 1914, p.14. 75 Wilfred J. Sprusson, ‘The Skyscraper II’, Building, V.1, No.2 (15 October 1907), p.33. 76 F. W. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Tall Buildings Question’, Building, V.3, No.14 (15 October 1908), pp.50-3. 77 The Skyscraper’, Building, V.1, No.1 (September 1907), p.25. 78 Building, V.3, No.39 (12 November 1910), p.41. 79 ‘Skyscrapers’, Building, V.3, No.42 (13 March 1911), p.47.

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sky, hence their top storeys are becoming tenantless.”80 Engineer Wilfred Sprusson vigorously

countered this argument: “… any such criticism should not be seriously considered, as the erection of a

skyscraper “seemed a poor proposition to engineers”, who build steel ships 800 feet long, capable of

withstanding all the tumults of the restless ocean, and carrying with them a vibrating mass of parts,

imposing a strain on their framing which is never imposed upon a building.”81 (see ship comparison in

illustration 6)

Part of the critical dialogue on tall buildings was framed in terms of choices between the values of

different American cities. Washington was most frequently put up as an exemplar of a city which had

adopted moderately tall buildings yet retained a controlled and humane environment. A. C. Mountain

saw Washington as an ideal compromise

… the streets of this city are especially a source of delight to the traveller. Kept in very fine order, planted with trees and with strips of grassland along parts of the footways, they are assisted by the presence of imposing and elegant residences, many of them being 8 storeys in height. …after the ceaseless hustle smoke and din of manufacturing cities it was a relief to reach one apparently laid out for rest, recreation and the enjoyment of the beautiful.82

This was a fine City Beautiful vision, but the character of Washington’s planning, its mix of residential

use in the city, and its lack of manufacturing, hardly applied to Melbourne’s centre.

Writing on European models for the city is, unfortunately, sparse in Building and the RVIA journals.

The European cities were more familiar and unchanging, and did not provide the novelty value of

America. They were of most interest for their demonstration of the long term results of various regimes

of building regulation. The English speaking cities of the late nineteenth century differed markedly

from their continental counterparts.83 The Londoners indulged in a veritable battle of styles. Donald

Olsen distils the sensibility expressed in the city fabric of London as “less a conscious statement than a

reflection of the aspirations of those of its inhabitants who were in a position to make their presences

felt.”84

Paris, on the other hand, “gives the impression of having known her imperial destiny from the

baking of the very first brick.”85 A building from the 1830s was not incongruous beside one from the

1890s. Parisian building regulations had always contained a mixture of both aesthetic and more

pragmatic considerations. This was made easier by the close association between architects and

government. Height limits had first been related to street width in Paris in 1784. In 1859 permissible

 80 George A Taylor, ‘Town Planning in Australia’, Building, V.14,No.83 (11 July 1914), p.91. F. W. Fitzpatrick refuted this, citing the

example of the Woolworth building in which the top floors were empty because the rent was higher there. (Building, V.15, No.89 (12 January 1915), p.65.)

81 ‘The Possible Dangers of the Skyscraper - A Reply to the Sydney Daily Telegraph’, Building, V.1, No.3 (21 November 1907), p.43.

82 A.C. Mountain, City of Melbourne City Surveyor ‘General Report: Descriptive of Works seen, and Places Visited’, CMCP, 1906-7, p.286+. Mr Cummings also found Washington “… the most beautiful city that he had ever seen.” (‘Modern Architecture - America Leads the Way’, Argus, (27 April 1914), p.14.)

83 Donald J. Olsen, The City as a Work of Art: London Paris Vienna, (New Haven 1986), p.255 84 Donald J. Olsen, 'The City as a Work of Art', in D. Fraser & A. Sutcliffe (Eds), The Pursuit of Urban History, (London 1983), p.273. 85 G. W. Stevens, ‘Glimpses of Three Nations’, 1901, in Donald J. Olsen, 'The City as a Work of Art', in D. Fraser & A. Sutcliffe

(Eds), The Pursuit of Urban History, (London 1983), p.273.

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22

heights in the new wider 20 metre streets had been increased to 20 metres (65 feet) at the cornice line,

allowing an extra storey, with setback dormers allowed behind a 45º line drawn from the cornice.

Because of the building boom resulting from Haussmann’s changes, buildings were built up uniformly

to the new maximum heights. Joseph Starke in 1880 found the “… the qualities of the individual

buildings become … the character of the whole street and of the whole city. Cornices and rooflines,

ranging at nearly uniform elevation, furnish grand perspective lines which are strengthened … by the

uniformity of the stone and roof tints.”86 London too was capable, within its different stylistic

constraints, of such regularity.

It should be noted that these fabled streetscapes were largely composed of apartment blocks which

included a mixture of retail and business uses. An Australian commentator of 1889 makes a

comparison: “There is nothing [in Melbourne] like Regent Street in London or the Rue Rivoli in Paris,

for in the streets [of Melbourne] there has been very little continuous building, or building in a block

upon the plans of a single architect. Subject to certain municipal restrictions [in Melbourne], each man

has built as seemed good in his own eyes or in the eyes of his architect.”87

After the turn of the century the preferred stylistic trends of Paris and London were reversed. The

“muscular originality” of Victorian London superseded by that good manneredness of a classical revival

which later will be mirrored in the Street Architecture Awards in Melbourne. Paris entered a period of

freedom of expression and experimentation which included Art Nouveau. Uniformity was considered

boring. The main proponent of the new Paris regulations in 1902, architect Louis Bonnier, believed that

“… for a nation, aesthetics is not a luxury but a need and a right just as hygiene is.”88 Aside from

greater freedom to sculpt the facade, the controversial new regulations allowed set-back roofs up to

nearly 30 metres (98 feet). The height of cornices could be raised if facades were set back from the

building line, though few developers made use of this. (illustration 9) The form of the areas of Paris

dominated by apartments would remain essentially unchanged until the 1950s.

Olsen enlarges upon this appropriateness to lifestyle of the expression of European city-scapes.

“Parisian architecture can be thought of as a neutral background against which an exuberant street life

takes place; the more sober street life of London and Vienna serves as a neutral foreground for their

dramatic and outspoken architecture.”89 Melbourne had already indulged in a highly expressive and

individualistic architecture in the nineteenth century, yet also aspired to the tastefulness of the Parisian

street. What message did Melbourne wish to communicate?

(Un)real estate

The prevailing logic of real estate and land values would prove fundamental to the negotiations over

height limits in Melbourne. As early as 1887 there was concern about the effects that installation of a

hydraulic power system to propel lifts for tall buildings would have upon the city. At a Government  86 Joseph Starke, 1879, in Donald J. Olsen, The City as a Work of Art: London Paris Vienna, (New Haven 1986), p.266. 87 'Australia's First Century', 1889, in E. E. Morris (Ed.) Cassell's Picturesque Australasia, Sydney, 88 Anthony Sutcliffe, Paris: An Architectural History, (New Haven 1993), pp.112-28 passim. 89 Donald J. Olsen, The City as a Work of Art: London Paris Vienna, p.274.

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investigation a number of questions were asked about the new species of building. Would the great

increase in land value engendered by very large capital expenditure on a few sites force the building of

many tall buildings? Would the concentration of business in the city thus be increased? Would the

suburbs suffer as a consequence?90

The discourse of real estate had in this period (as it still does) a peculiarly strong flavour of natural

necessity. The survival of private enterprise was subject to the same Darwinian necessities as nature.

Only the strongest would survive, and constant progress and growth was essential. As G. A. Taylor

stated, “There is really but one law which makes itself obeyed at all times and by all men, the law of

supply and demand.”91 The majority of the arguments in favour of the skyscraper were tarred with this

discursive brush.

The primary assumption of the arguments for tall buildings was that they were a ‘natural’ and

‘inevitable’ outcome of rising values of city property, which in turn were a ‘natural’ outcome of the

growth of the city. J. Burcham Clamp stated that “The tall building has been the salvation of American

commerce, because it was the direct and satisfying response to a necessity, and the material solution of

an inevitable problem.”92 An Australian paralleled this argument “…if people were to derive fair value

for their land, buildings inevitably must go up.”93 It was also commonly argued that cities such as New

York had no room to expand except upwards (though there actually remained plenty of room to the

north for expansion). The same argument was used for Sydney: “When a city, such as Sydney, arrives at

the stage of having its available building space taxed within the recognised business area, and expansion

is debarred on all sides, the only human alternative is - to build up.”94

Limitation of space was not a sufficient explanation even then, for as A. C. Mountain noted on his

world tour: “Soon imitation followed in other cities (such as Chicago) where no such limitation of area

existed and there was practically room for the city to expand indefinitely in three directions.”95 The

RVIA president in 1910, hoped that this would not apply to his city: “Although the buildings were

magnificent structures, he was glad to say that, because we had plenty of room for extension of the

City, it would never be necessary to build them in Melbourne.”96

Another argument in currency was that the concentration of the inner city activity was actually a

requirement for effective business. “Those who know that concentration means trade would be more  90 ‘Report from the Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly upon the Hydraulic System Bill’, VPP, 1887 V.1, pp.1479-1514,

passim. 91 Building, V.15, No.89 (12 January 1915), p.65. 92 J. Burcham Clamp, ‘The Steel Age No.3: Impressions of a Tour Abroad’, Building, V.13, No.76 (12 December 1913), p.63. 93 ‘Skyscrapers - A paper read by Mr. Harry C. Kemp, FRIBA, before the Institute of Architects, NSW With discussions by Sydney’s

leading architects’, Building, V.3, No.42 (13 March 1911), p.46. See also ‘Profit Problems in Australian Building - No.I - Do Tall Buildings Pay’, Building, V.13, No.76 (12 December 1913), pp.53-6: & ‘Profit Problems in Australian Buildings - No.II - Is the steel frame building cheaper and better?’, Building, V.13, No.78 (12 February 1914), pp.54-6.

94 Burcham Clamp, p.62. A Sydney architect concurred: “The business area of Sydney had its limitations, and its expansion in the commercial sense would necessitate building up, instead of an extension of the actual area, which would inconvenience business transaction.” (‘Skyscrapers - A paper read by Mr. Harry C. Kemp, FRIBA, before the Institute of Architects, NSW With discussions by Sydney’s leading architects’, Building, V.3, No.42 (13 March 1911), p.46.)

95 A. C. Mountain, p.286+. 96 JPRVIA, V.8, No.3 (July 1910), p.189.

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appalled to think that Melbourne, with its wide streets, should be forever inhibited from enjoying the

architectural splendours of the skyscraper.”97

The agency of business in initiating and creating this spatial order is rarely overtly expressed. Rem

Koolhaas has labelled the discourse which rationalises the skyscraper “the culture of congestion”.98

Similarly Thomas Van Leeuwen calls it “the law of scarcity that did not exist.”99 A. C. Mountain seems

to have been aware of this mechanism:

… the idea of concentrating all the business (no matter how congested the traffic thereby became) within a small part of the city by rendering that part able to accommodate such abnormal increase, meant an undoubtedly enormous increase in the land value of that part of the town; hence it has been followed up.100

The city of Chicago was built on a grid. Van Leeuwen describes this feature as a means “not to save

space, but, on the contrary, to control and channel it.” Then “on this matrix of equality, another

structure was superimposed, which acted in opposition to it.” This new structure is a means of creating

an “artificial wilderness”, a focus for human competition, with artificial traps and hazards, and at a fixed

point on the grid. “The piling up of towers in the epicentres of commercial activity had the character of

stage sets, or of instruction models which demonstrated the principles of free trade, laissez faire,

competition and the like.”101 A. C. Mountain recognised something of this artifice when he commented

on Chicago that “in the business part, there are strange contrasts, such as enormous, costly and

elaborate buildings up to 20 storeys in height, facing streets that are in such bad order that if the same

were possible in Melbourne, would mean revolution.”102

The ‘common-sense’ explanations of constriction and of concentration failed to account for the

experience of European cities. Harry C. Kent pointed out that “London, Vienna Paris, and Berlin had

all been able to grow for centuries without the skyscraper; and Glasgow, the busiest Empire city on the

concentrated principle, was not disfigured by the tall building.”103

In purely economic terms, the suitable scale of a tall building was governed primarily by the required

rate of return for the property. Beyond a certain point increased wall thickness had negated benefits

from increased height in the lofty piles. This was not a problem in new steel and concrete framed

buildings. But although each additional storey would cost less than the previous one, there were definite

quantum stages of profitability determined by requirements for additional lifts, which impacted both

upon floor areas and upon costs. Above three storeys one might as well build to seven on a normal

block, as only one lift was required. Above seven storeys, two elevators and other increased services

were required, so that one might as well build to eleven storeys, then on to seventeen and twenty

 97 Building, V.5, No.57 (11 May 1912), p.65. 98 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, (NY 1978), p.103-5. 99 Thomas A. P. van Leeuwen, The Skyward Trend of Thought, (Cambridge Mass. 1986), p.86. 100 Mountain, p.286+. 101 van Leeuwen, pp.82-3. 102 Mountain, p.286+. 103 Harry C. Kent, ‘Skyscrapers’, Building, V.3, No.42 (13 March 1911), p.48.

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one.104 This hiatus between eleven and seventeen storeys may have militated towards acceptance of the

existing ten to twelve storey forms as sufficient, especially in Melbourne’s slow economy.

The profitability of taller buildings was not a certainty even in America. Architect L.C. Cummings, a

Melbourne graduate who had studied and worked in America, stated upon his return to Melbourne that

very tall buildings were not viable even in America: “The ‘skyscraper’ had proved to be a commercial

failure”105 Fitzpatrick asserted that even in the United States, nowhere outside of New York were

buildings of over twenty storeys “justifiable, commendable or… profitable”. Even in New York the

“freak” towers over that height were “… in every way extraordinary buildings, erected as monuments

to (or a sinking fund for) some profitable product, or to flatter the vanity of some individual.”

This promotional aspect of skyscrapers was treated derisively by Australian observers. Taylor’s

‘There’ serial explores the Woolworth building in New York:

The editor: “You will note that only one third of it is occupied, and most of the upper offices are tenantless. I am told that the rule is the higher you rise the higher you rent. Yet the owner can afford to keep the place empty as he only built it as an advertisement. … He wanted ‘the highest building in America, sure’. He realised that every newspaper would talk about it and that this continual advertising of the Woolworth Building would be worth millions of dollars to his shops. …” “Smart,” said the Engineer, “but he’ll lose that advertising value when the next skyscraper overlooks this.” “Then they can reduce the rent,” replied the editor, “but someone is boosting an agitation to limit the height of new structures, and Woolworth is said to be behind it.”106

Such manipulations were not to occur in Melbourne. Investors of the ilk of Mr Woolworth would have

their opportunity in the late 1950s. Melbourne was about to head down another path.

The debate over which model to adopt for the City of Melbourne was complex. The American

skyscraper city could be portrayed as both nightmarish and as a great leap forward. The European city

could be a cradle for mature civilisation, or stultifyingly boring and limited. Australian builders and

construction engineers generally pursued a focused and short term vision of technological progress.

Municipal engineers broadened their vision to factor in social costs in terms of infrastructure and

health. Architects and planners, whilst excited about skyscrapers, were also compelled by the structure

of their profession to consider wider environmental and social costs. The only real common

denominator of impressions gained from nearly all concerned was that some form of restriction was

necessary. These themes of movement and counter-movement over the advance of capital will operate

as an influential background to the negotiations over new building regulations for Melbourne which

followed.

 104 F.W. Fitzpatrick, ‘Up! To what height is a building profitable?’, Building, V.15, No.89 (12 January 1912), pp.65-9. 105 ‘America Leads the Way’, Argus, 27 November 1914, p.14. 106 G. A. Taylor, “There: Being the American Adventures of three Australians during the period of the Great War”, Building, V.17,

No.101, (12 January 1916), p.111.

28  

       

     

Draft Regulations

A new set of Building Regulations for the City of Melbourne containing height limit clauses was

established only after protracted negotiations. The long drawn out process which was initiated by the

Melbourne City Council in 1905, and brought into effect in 1916, is the primary subject of this chapter.

Building heights were embedded in a matrix of issues of control over the development of the changing

inner city which involved government, private enterprise and the building industry professions.

The English model on which Melbourne’s existing regulations were based was primarily concerned with

the pragmatic aspects of protection of property from fire and with public health. Such regulations were

drafted to be unequivocal in interpretation and application. The inclusion of matters which were

normally associated with taste could make them more difficult to administer.

Those who drafted height limit regulations undoubtedly considered the aesthetic effect, but within

the pragmatic discourse which was required for intercourse between the ‘hard headed’ business lobby

and local government, this aesthetic consideration could not figure prominently. There was also a belief

that an aesthetically based regulation could not be successfully enforced or defended. Carol Willis notes

a very similar quality in negotiations of building regulations for New York which were taking place

during the same period:

Although many of the early advocates of zoning also supported the City Beautiful philosophy, zoning itself was not conceived as an aesthetic issue. … in the advisory reports of successive municipal commissions, the influence of zoning was discussed only in the most general terms. The comments of the architects who helped to frame the legislation made clear that while they believed that a code would indeed produce a more attractive city, they had no intention of writing aesthetic guidelines into the law itself.1

Though initially effective, the old Melbourne Building Act regulations were even by the 1880s generally

considered inadequate. The principal difficulties arose from the rising demand for the economies or

advantages to be derived from the use of new building technologies, and new scales of building height

and volume. Along with those technology and scale changes came new dimensions in the fire risk in the

city, at the same times as expectations for fire protection grew. New risks to public health and amenity

 1 Carol Willis (1986), 'Zoning and Zeitgeist: The Skyscraper City in the 1920s', Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, V.55

(March 1986), p.47.

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SETTING THE LIMIT

 

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were introduced, complicated by changing expectations for public health. As the Victorian Institute of

Engineers (VIE) declared in 1907, the old regulations “… were quite obsolete; so much so, that it was

of no use attempting to reform them, and anything they did in connection with the future must be

based on new lines altogether.”2

The Melbourne Building Act did possess one feature which had allowed the flexibility for new

technologies to be employed - a Board of Appeal of two referees who could make special allowances.

The president of the VIE in 1912 describes how this mechanism was still in use:

A loophole had been found in the old (1849) City Act, which enabled the referees to sanction [modern structural] work. The method was indirect, and he did not approve of evasion of the spirit of legislation, but, in this case, had advantage not been taken of this possibility, the rebuilding of Melbourne on modern lines would still have been impossible.3

City Architect and Building Surveyor Morton exploited this flexibility to allow the use of new

technologies, though the process was proving too slow and too clumsy for property owners.4 Another

important consideration in the call for revision was the possibility of abuse of the system. Projects

which were contentious (dangerously flammable or contested by neighbours) might also be pushed

through.5

In 1905 the Melbourne City Council invited the RVIA to make suggestions on suitable amendments

to the Act. The RVIA was of the opinion that

“modernising” … would best be done by embodying the latest regulations of the principal cities of Great Britain and America. Application was made to the municipalities of Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, New York and Chicago for copies of the regulations in force in these cities.6

The Council failed to reply to the draft of the RVIA, who responded in what would become their

typical advocatory role for business, that

…the work of amending should be expedited. As it is impossible to apply modern methods, the work of building in Melbourne is rendered uselessly expensive in cost, and slow in execution, whilst the owner fails to derive the advantages he would get by improved construction in almost any other English-speaking city in the world.7

By April of 1907 the VIE had corresponded with the City Council requesting that it, too, should be

invited to become involved.8

 2 PVIE, V.8 (2 October 1907), p.86. A number of amendments to the schedules of the Act had been made up to 1888, but with

little significant impact for tall buildings or innovative technologies. (H.E. Morton, ‘New Building Regulations for the City of Melbourne’, JPRVIA, V.13,No.4 (Sept.1915), p.157.)

3 PVIE, V.12 (12 July 1911), p.82. 4 Ibid., p.90. It is likely that the ‘loophole’ was provided by Section 8 of the 1849 Act. (City of Melbourne Building Act - An Act for

Regulating Buildings and Party Walls, and Preventing of Mischiefs by Fire in the City of Melbourne, Colony of NSW, Assented to 12 October 1849, R. S. Brain Government Printer, Melbourne, p.4) The referees were called on demand, usually with 3-4 sittings per week. In 1909 the referees were Mr. Marsden (senior architect for public works), and Mr. R,. B. Whittaker (representative of architects), and were paid £1 1s for each hearing. (‘How the Architects Manage now’, Building, V.3, No.19 (12 March 1909), p.23).

5 Accusations of such abuses appear later in the negotiations. 6 JPRVIA March 1906, p.11 & p.16 7 Ibid., p.5, p.16. 8 CMCP, 1906-7, p.230.

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In an influential report on his investigative world trip sponsored by the council in 1906, the City

Surveyor A.C. Mountain distilled his findings on city conditions and regulations. While impressed by

the sheer magnitude and engineering expertise of the American skyscrapers, he saw their shaping of

urban space as unsuitable for Melbourne:

Such buildings could only be possible where there was no restrictive legislation; where the ideas of beauty and symmetry - as contrasted with mere magnitude and magnificence - are more or less crude; and where the sense of personal ownership overshadows all consideration for the rights or conveniences of the public. That this spirit has not spread to other countries is a matter of supreme gratification, and I think in the interests of this city that definite limits should be set to the height of Melbourne buildings, in support of which I may say that at Washington - the one city in America where good taste and moderation seems to be displayed in its architecture - the officer in charge of the Building Regulations names 93 feet as the maximum height which he considers desirable for “fireproof buildings, on residential streets.” Paris, admired universally for its fine and regular architecture, possesses a most scientific table regulating the height of buildings (and the extent of projection of decorative work beyond the alignment) by the width of the street. The outcome of this is that the ultimate height permitted is only 20 metres, or 65.6 feet. This is exclusive of the height of roof, often of mansard type, and containing two additional storeys. Without confining oneself to such a limit, it might well be determined that no building should be allowed to exceed, say, 110 feet high, which would give ample height for seven good floors. Glasgow's limit is 100 feet.9

The 110 foot building height limit was to become the first proposed by the M.C.C. for the wider streets

of the city centre.

In September 1907 the architect Anketell Henderson read a paper on building regulations at the

Annual General Meeting of the VIE.10 He was considered to have “… a more comprehensive

knowledge of the various Building Regulations of the leading cities of the world than any other member

of our Institute.”11 The engineers commended Henderson for being “… on the right lines when he

took those varied results, and putting them into the melting pot, brought out something which perhaps

was a compromise of many of their conditions, but which would suit our requirements.”12

Henderson’s analysis provides a convenient opening onto the main issues that will figure in the

following debate. He began by stressing that the primary purpose of “modern” building regulations,

whether “elaborate ” or containing “short snappy definitions”, was the safety of the public inside and

out.13 As well as seeking to check the spread of fire, they aimed to “… secure proper space for light

and air around buildings.”14

 9 Ibid., p.286. 10 JPRVIA September 1907 p.112. Henderson becomes president of the RVIA. He had trained as an Engineer in Melbourne,

practised as an architect, licensed surveyor and sanitary engineer, had lectured in engineering and continued to lecture in architecture at Melbourne University. (ADB, 1891-1939, p.257-8)

11 JPRVIA, V.7, No.1 (March 1909), p.13. 12 PVIE, V.7 (2 October 1907), p.84. 13 Henderson later qualifies this process: “In framing regulations for securing safety there is always a danger of the official mind

avoiding responsibility by making requirements too severe, especially after times of panic.” PVIE, V.8 (4 September 1907), p.78. 14 Ibid., p.60.

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Henderson outlined the typical hierarchy of use classes - public, commercial and domestic, and

corresponding limitations including height, cubic content and floor area.15 The other main form of

building classification was construction type. The first class in the American system of construction

types was conventional timber and masonry, with no special fire resisting materials, which was allowed

to reach a limit of 55-75 feet. This corresponded to the only type of construction allowed for in the old

Melbourne Building Act. The second main class was ‘mill’ construction of heavy timber framing,

usually applied to warehouses and allowed to reach around eight storeys.

The innovative feature of American regulations was the fireproof class which applied to tall

buildings. One division of this class encompassed steel skeleton frame buildings encased in fireproof

material, with masonry infill and curtain walls. For these, either no limits, or the highest limits were set,

the latter initially on the basis either of street width or building width. The other division allowed for

conventional masonry load-bearing construction, with prescription for fireproofing to lower floors, and

limitations as to the number of upper floors using structural timber. For this type, which corresponded

to most of Melbourne’s ‘lofty piles’, a lower height limit was set. Reinforced concrete was notably

absent from Henderson’s survey. Europe was the leader here, though Melbourne was also innovative in

this regard. The VIE (and particularly John Monash) later lobbied for inclusion of this form of

construction in the new regulations. This division in classes of tall buildings, and corresponding height

limits, was to become the model for Melbourne.

Henderson summarised his perception of the important issues in the overseas debate on height

limitation:

Limits to height are attracting attention all the world over. The increasing darkness of the streets of America in which the light of the many is reduced for the profits of the few; the recent earthquakes and fires;16 the insufficiency of fire appliances for great heights, and the consequent danger to life and property are arguments against height, and the ideal building would be low, but that would reduce the accommodation for goods and habitation, and make rents too high and accommodation too expensive, especially to the working classes who have to live in crowded cities.17

Henderson’s summary was perceptive, but indicated little inclination to lead the argument, except to

indicate that limitation of some form was necessary.

In many large cities in the northern hemisphere the height of buildings was limited to one and a half

times street width. Henderson believed that ratio unnecessary for Melbourne’s wide streets, and unfair

for the narrower lanes. In the Australian climate, and with relatively low levels of smoke from factories

and domestic fires, the 99 foot streets could sustain buildings up to 300 feet without loss of the

amenities of light and fresh air. This argument was a common one. NSW surveyor L. A. Curtis

informed his professional peers that 200 feet in a 100 foot street would be a suitable compromise

 15 Ibid., p.66. On this issue of floor area and cubic content limitations, which applied mostly to warehouses and was promoted by

insurance companies, Henderson began to reveal his anti-restriction streak. He questioned “How far municipal authorities should interfere where life is not at stake is a moot point.”

16 Notably the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 and the Great Fire in Chicago of 1871. 17 Ibid., p.65.

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between the need for light and the need to realise property values.18 Another architect used more

‘scientific’ terms, but was not very logical in his formulation. “They had in Sydney fully 75 per cent.

more light than in England, and 30 per cent. more than in New York; so they could afford to go up 50

per cent higher than in England.”19

In Melbourne’s narrower streets, according to Henderson,

Owners … have given up land for lanes and rights of way leading from these narrow streets. These largely increase the stock of light and air, and the public have use of them without payment. Owners should not be further penalised, and the present averages [of heights of existing buildings] should be increased rather than diminished.20

He supported a 108 foot limit as being suitable for the lanes. This regime of 300 feet for main streets

and 108 feet for lanes was quite radical in terms of the following negotiations up until the passing of the

new By-law.

Henderson finally broached the subject of aesthetics:

Height Limit for the Sake of Architectural Uniformity is extolled by many who have seen it on the Continent, but is it necessary or justifiable? Should there rather not be some “Board of Taste” to check poor designs, or again, should not owners who build higher than their neighbours be compelled to provide some architectural treatment of the side. We might commence the work of the “higher taste” by prohibiting any advertisements.21

Henderson had effectively rejected the Parisian model, and opted for a separation of aesthetic

regulation and building regulation. The options of setbacks on the Parisian model, or setbacks and

towers on the American model, were only obliquely mentioned, and these models, though understood,

did not feature in the negotiations.22

In the meantime Mr Morton, recently appointed to the dual roles of City Architect and Building

Surveyor, had made short work of his own revision of the regulations, submitting them to the Public

Works Committee of the City Council for approval in late 1907.23 Provision was made for the new

forms of construction, steel frame and reinforced concrete, including allowances for “curtain walls”, as

well as height limits and provision for adequate stairways and fire prevention measures.24

Morton had included in his draft a number of regulations pertaining to public buildings, which had

previously been administered by other regulatory bodies such as the Board of Public Health. Inclusion

of such clauses was problematic and controversial, as they were outside the powers of creation of by-

laws by the City Council under the Local Government Act. Inclusion in City Council regulations would

 18 L. A. Curtis, ‘Town Planning from the Surveyors Standpoint, Building, V.13, No.78,(12 February 1913), p.82. 19 ‘Skyscrapers’, Building, V.3, No.42 (13 March 1911), p.46. 20 PVIE, V.8 (4 September 1907), p.65. 21 Ibid. 22 Sydney architect Harry C. Kent, after suggesting limits of one and a half times street width, proposes that “If any greater height

were required it should only be permitted by setting back each such additional storey two thirds of its height, ie. say 8ft. to each 12ft., thus preserving the same angle for sunlight. (‘Skyscrapers’, Building, V.3, No.42 (13 March 1911), p.45)

23 CMCM, V.38, 1906-7, (10 June 1907). Morton had only been in office since June 1907. 24 ADP, V.3, No.11 (October 1907), p.3. “… permission was granted some little time ago to erect four-storeyed premises for Mr

David Mitchell with reinforced concrete almost throughout in Olivers Lane off Little Flinders Street [the first reinforced concrete building in the city].” See also Building, V.1, No.2 (15 October 1907), p.58.

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thus necessitate the travails of separate enactment by Parliament.25 With changing technologies, new

industries, and changing health and safety expectations, the borders of the whole matrix of control

through public health departments, factory acts, and building regulations, were blurring, and new

boundaries were required.

Morton’s revised regulations were understood to be a “…a compilation from the regulations of

London (adopted and rejected), New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Manchester.” The RVIA

president, Mr. E. A. Bates objected because “… they were of a restrictive rather than of a helpful

nature, and he thought that they would have the effect of hindering the development of the city.” He

also objected to “… the too frequent repetition of the phrase ‘to the approval of the Building

Surveyor.’”26 Bates wished to place private sector architects in a position of adjudication between local

government and private enterprise, rather than a government appointed bureaucracy of architects

performing this function.

During much of the period of the negotiations, Morton was acting as referee. He had been actively

supportive of innovation by making use of the loopholes in the Act. Now he tended to make his rulings

on the basis of his new draft which allowed for new methods of construction, rather than the existing

by-laws.27 Despite his pragmatic approach, he was criticised by the architects, who resented this

exercise of power which at times appeared arbitrary, if not “despotic”. “The serious part of the matter

is that one or two men should possess such extreme powers and that professional men should have to

crave consideration from these.”28 This problem with the level of power vested in City bureaucrats is a

constant thread in the negotiations.

The reactions from architects belie the advantages to the profession which came from building

regulations. Though the profession was becoming more lucrative and secure in Europe and America,

the fortunes of architects in Australia had been at a low ebb since the 1890s crash. However, Australian

cities shared the great increase in the number and complexity of building types, and the ensuing call for

increasingly specialised design skills, which strengthened the position of architects.29 Andrew Saint

points to another important factor which relates more closely to our subject of study:

Always tiresome to conform to, and the pride of ingenious architects to evade, bye-laws also require literacy to understand and interpret. [Architects] were therefore well placed to tussle with the increasing complexity of Victorian [era] building law, on behalf both of clients, who naturally lacked the requisite knowledge, and of builders, who often lacked the literacy. This ability to cope with paperwork and to negotiate between client, contractor and the new building bureaucracy,

 25 JPRVIA, V.6, No.1 (March 1908) p.36. 26 Ibid., pp.36-7. 27 Building,, V.3, No.37 (12 September 1910), p.42. This was possible under Section 8 of the Melbourne Building Act 1849: The

same contingency applied in Sydney: “Where modern materials, such as are at present shut out, have been put to their highest use, it has been through the personal influence and enterprise of the Sydney City Architect.” (Building, V.13, No.76 (12 December 1913), p.61.)

28 Building, V.3, No.17 (15 January 1909), p.19. 29 J.M. Freeland, The Making of a Profession: A History of the Growth and Work of the Architectural Institutes in Australia, (Sydney 1972),

p.46.

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helped re-establish the architect as the natural ‘intermediate agent’ (to use Sloane’s phrase) on any job of complexity.30

This increasing complexity militated not only towards increased professionalisation, but also larger and

more specialised office practices.31 Architects’ interest in the negotiation of regulations was motivated

by interest in improvement of their own position as intermediary and expert, as much as by their

interest in the quality of the urban environment.

The RVIA was not invited to be present at the ensuing deliberations of the Public Works

Committee of City Council. The RVIA went public on the behalf of its client groups, with, according to

Building, “…a vigorous fighting spirit that was as unexpected, as it was splendid.”32 A “note of warning”

was sent to the press, and 500 copies were posted to “public institutions and prominent citizens

interested in city properties.” The City Council draft regulations were described as “…combining the

most severe restrictions of the different countries …”33

Public attention was indeed aroused, and a committee of interested representative bodies was

formed under the auspices of the Chamber of Commerce. Ill feeling arose within the committee when

some of the professionals in the committee suggested that only they could handle the technicality of the

issues at hand, and were seen to make little effort to clarify technicalities for the wider audience.34

These differences were patched up, but the delays by the City Council were creating frustration. “…

San Francisco has been destroyed, their building regulations amended, and the city rebuilt on modern

principles, whilst we have been peacefully slumbering.”35 A conference of the various professional and

business interests with the Public Works Committee was organised in September 1908. The pressure

was effective. A committee of these representatives was chosen to regularly attend the Public Works

Committee meetings on building regulations.36

Forces were shifting within the City Council. Councillor Frank Stapley, who later came to

prominence as a champion of town planning, agitated persistently for a special committee on building

regulations.37 This was finally set up in November 1908. Later an ‘expert’ sub-committee including

 30 Andrew Saint, The Image of the Architect, (New Haven 1973), p.66-7. The aspect of literacy crops up later in the Melbourne

deliberations - in the form of requests by Councillors and Members of Parliament for more accessible formulations of technical clauses.

31 Of the American scene Robert Gutman states that: “A similar quest [to that in Britain], sparked by progress in sanitary legislation and the burgeoning of factory, commercial, and institutional building in the decades following the end of the Civil War, underlay the professionalisation of architectural practice in the United States.” (Robert Gutman, Architectural Practice: A Critical Review, (Princeton 1988), p.9).

32 “Those Building Regulations - A Drastic Restriction of Commercial Enterprise”, Building, V.2, No.9 (19 May 1908), p.13. The text of the note is also contained in this article.

33 JPRVIA, V.7, No.1 (March 1909), pp.16-17. 34 “Melbourne’s Building Regulations - A scandalous check to building enterprise.” Building, V.3, No.17 (15 January 1909), p.17. 35 Ibid., p.18. 36 JPRVIA, V.6, No.5 (November 1908), p.129. The standing committee elected to meet with the M.C.C. included representatives

of Warehousemen’s Association, Factory Employers Association, Trustee’s Associations, hotels, clubs, etc., RVIA, VIE, Master Builders Association, Commercial Travellers Association, Estate Agents Association, Hardware Association, Importers Association, Chamber of Commerce, and Chamber of Manufactures.

37 Stapley was a British trained architect who had served with the Melbourne City Surveyors office from 1887-93, and then worked on his own and in partnership on a variety of domestic, commercial and industrial buildings. Stapley had been a

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RVIA and VIE representatives was formed to deal with the more technical material.38 Both committees

met frequently, and by April 1909, with some consensus, some compromise, and a few unresolved

objections, another draft set of regulations was put before the Public Works Committee.39 The draft

contained 622 new by-laws, “a bulky package of technical literature”, according to Building.

Their Main Interest lies in the extreme precautions demanded against fire. Melbourne buildings, in comparison with other cities, are to be very low, and, moreover, are to be largely constructed of fireproof material. Buildings of more than four storeys must contain fire resisting coverings and floors, and the higher storeys must have walls, partitions, and ceilings of these materials. Lift shafts must be as fireproof as possible, and windows less than 20 feet distant from any opening in another building must have solid iron or armoured doors or shutters. Approved means for extinguishing fire must be placed on each floor of a building more than four floors high.40

The article continued on to detail height limits, adding that “on this point strong opposition is

expected”. In the streets of 33 feet width or less, the limit was four times the width of the street, up to a

maximum of 82 foot 6 inches. In streets over 33 feet the maximum was 110 feet.

It was another year before the draft was passed on to the Council for approval, with some acrimony

at the long delay.41 Stapley raised the agenda of changes to the referee clauses in the Building Act, which

were seen as difficult in formulation, and allowing of corruption and ineptitude in application.42 Making

changes to the referee system would be no easy task. Under the normal operation of the Building Act,

changes to regulations could be passed as a by-law by the City Council without reference to State

Parliament. But there were no clauses allowing for review of the referee system, and changes would

involve revoking the old act and a potentially lengthy passage of a Bill through Parliament.

Paralleling revision of the City of Melbourne regulations, the other municipalities were considering

the development of a set of uniform building regulations for the whole State. This would remove the

problems created by differences between their current by-laws, and weakness within current regulations

could be resolved.43 A draft was agreed to by 1910, but the 1903 Local Government Act did not give

sufficient powers for such a change, so a Bill was put to Parliament, in which municipalities could select

sections from the schedules of the act as they required.44 The Bill was rejected because it was seen as

unsuitable to apply to the whole State. A group of representatives and experts, including Morton were

appointed in 1910 to create the desired “uniform, comprehensive and elastic” set of regulations. The

 Councillor since 1901 and would be Mayor in 1917-18. He founded the Town and Country Planning Association in 1914, and in 1926 chaired the Metropolitan Town Planning Commission. (ADB, 1891-1939, p.52-3.)

38 CMCP,1907-8, V.3, No.87, p.117, p.120, p.348; Argus , 27 April 1908, p.8. 39 JPRVIA , V.7, No.1 (March 1909) pp.13-14; PVIE, (6 October 1909), p.135. 40 Building, V.3, No.33 (12 May 1910), p.25. 41 TCCF, 1910, p.65, Letter No.2259. 42 Argus, 27 April 1910, p.8. “The cumbersomeness of the Melbourne Act can be imagined when it is pointed out that whilst the

Sydney Bill contains 17.600 words, the Melbourne Regulations embrace no less than 30,800 words.” (“Editorial Notes”, Building, V.2, No.10 (26 June 1908), p.26.)

43 VPD, Council, 9 August 1910, p.506-7. Regulations on one side of a street could be different from those on the other. This was a real bugbear for the architects, and for real estate interests. Unlike the City Council Building Surveyor, the municipal surveyors had little power during the building process to inspect sites for compliance with regulations.

44 The municipalities involved were Hawthorn, Camberwell, Malvern, Kew and St. Kilda. Argus, 12 October 1907, p.17. VPD , Council, 9 August 1910,p.506; VPD, Council 9 August 1910, p.506-9; VPD, Assembly, 18 August 1910, pp.767-9.

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draft they produced was excessive in size and complexity.45 The Melbourne City Council and some

renegade municipalities foiled the bill, and the matter was not raised again until 1914.46 Though the

whole episode caused further delays in the preparation of the City of Melbourne regulations, it

reinforced the City Council’s resolve to prepare regulations for their own special requirements as the

centre of a capital city.

Into the Narrows

Buildings in Melbourne’s 33 foot streets, alleys and lanes would never directly dominate the skyline

of the city, but they assumed major importance for the negotiation of height limits.47 The problems

requiring regulation in these shadowy recesses were primarily matters of public health and of fire risk.

The aesthetic ambience expected in these spaces was utilitarian and functional (though they were

viewed more picturesquely at a later date (illustration 16)). The smaller alleys and lanes of less than 33

feet in width were a truly local condition, resulting from the unusually deep blocks of the Melbourne

grid. Soon after their original sale, blocks had been subdivided along their length, and the resulting

allotments provided with ten to twelve foot passages leading from the 33 foot rights of way. These

smaller passages evolved from negotiations for access and right of way between property owners, and

were only later in some cases given official status.

In the boom period of the 1880s the frontages of the major streets were over-stocked with high

quality buildings. Real estate interest and building activity in the slow economy of the early twentieth

century gravitated towards the lower value areas of the narrow streets, which were in close proximity to

the centres of activity on the main streets. Distinct precincts had evolved. The centre of Flinders lane

was dominated by the enterprises concerned with the softgoods trade, including warehousing, factories

and import houses.

Something like an organised effort has been made to give the premier position in the soft-goods trade to the section of Flinders Lane between Elizabeth Street and Queen’s Street. Several large new warehouses have here been built and more are planned. But the demands of the soft-goods trade for “Lane” property is so acute and sustained that the whole length of the Street from King Street to the Treasury Gardens is being pressed into service, and the values have advanced in every section.48

These lanes were also areas for expansion, by building on extensions, of businesses facing on to the

main streets, as a number of properties extended right through from wide street to lane.

 45 PVIE, V.11 (7 September 1910), p.148-9; V.12 (15 March 1911), p.5. 46 CMCP, 1910, Meeting 10 October 1910; TCCF, 1910, p.69, File No.5667;PVIE, V.12 (12 July 1911), pp.82-92; JPRVIA, V.12, No.2

(May 1914) 47 The 33 foot streets were the ‘little’ streets running from east to west and bisecting the blocks between the main east west

streets. Alleys, lanes and rights of way ran off the little streets, or off each other. In the common definition of the period, lanes were smaller passages carrying vehicular traffic. Alleys were principally for foot traffic, or else carriages could not pass. In the 1849 regulations definition any alley had to have two entrances, and was principally for foot traffic, or could not carry passing carriages. Rights of way generally gave access through private land by agreement to other properties. Mews were arrangements of stables or yards around an open yard or bordering on an alley.

48 Real Property Annual, 1913, “City Sales: Record for the Year 1912-13”, p.30. See also Building, V.6, No.68 (12 April 1913), p.48. “All around this quarter (Flinders Lane, Eastern Section) the soft goods man is making his prosperous presence felt and seen”. See also Argus, 4 October 1927, p.11.

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Low quality residential use was concentrated into particular parts of the network of smaller streets,

some “embarrassingly” close to Parliament House. These were now increasingly being considered as

slums to be eradicated by means of replacement by other activities, condemning of buildings by

Council, and strict policing.49 Building stock was of lower quality and greater flammability than in the

main streets. As the RVIA Journal of Proceedings described, “When in the early days, rents were

exorbitant, there was a great demand for these small properties, in which the economies of building

were practised to their fullest extent.”50

The more commercially active areas of 33 foot streets already had buildings rising to around 60 feet,

sometimes up to 80 feet (illustration 11).51 Building noted a proposal for the erection of an eight storey

warehouse of brick with timber flooring rising over 100 feet in Flinders Lane in 1913, adding that:

Several of the old warehouses, in anticipation of a height limit bye-law being born some day, have added storeys to altitudes far in excess of the proposed limitation. In fact, there is a general tendency on such jobs as are progressing, to soar skywards before the regulation arrives.52

Warehouses of up to twelve storeys (around 140 feet) were being contemplated in Sydney.53

The object lessons of recent fires, the success of the sprinkler fitted Mutual Building in the 1897

Craig & Williamson’s fire, and anticipation of the new regulations, persuaded some owners to invest in

active fire prevention measures and fire resisting construction. Readily available measures included

sprinkler systems, fire-proof compartmentation, terracotta lumber or heavy corrugated iron supported

concrete flooring, and ironbark joists and flooring rather than the usual oregon and pine. According to

the Real Property Annual of 1913, “A remarkable propaganda of rebuilding is in progress along the whole

length of the (Flinders) Lane, and a gratifying new feature is that the new structures are well nigh as

non-inflammable as human ingenuity can make them.”54 Unfortunately, this was far form being the

general rule.

The vigour with which Henderson and others fought for the acceptance of tall buildings in the alleys

and lanes could easily be interpreted as serving the immediate interests of Henderson’s property owner

clients. But it may also be possible that a broader perception of the exigencies of the city economy ,and

its effect on the built city, informed their actions. A certain critical density was required within a

Melbourne block to achieve the real estate vigour required to encourage high buildings on the main

streets. After all, because the 33 foot cross streets were so narrow, there was a low percentage of wide

street frontage compared to most other cities. This problem was expressed in calls for widening of the

33 foot streets before and after this period. (See chapters 1 & 2) Calls to allow taller buildings in the

 49 Lewis, p.93. 50 JPRVIA, V.13 No.4 (September 1915), p.169. 51 PVIE, V.12 (1 November 1911), p.169. 52 ‘New Melbourne Warehouses’, Building, V.6, No.68 (12 April 1913), p.48. 53 ‘Four Great Warehouses designed by Architect Rosenthal, of Sydney’, illust., Building, (12 December 1910), p.92. 54 Real Property Annual, 1913, p.30. The “remarkable” extent of these developments was perhaps a propaganda of the real estate

interests. One such building was the Australian Estates’ Co. store in Flinders Lane in reinforced concrete. (“Victoria”, Building, V.6, No.70 (12 June 1913), p.31).

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narrow streets at the acknowledged expense of some amenity, were perhaps an attempt to maintain or

even augment that critical density.

Lee’s Ladder

There was a common belief, both in Melbourne and Sydney, that the principal determinant of the

maximum height limit was the maximum reach of the extension ladders of the fire brigade.55 The idea,

which was especially prevalent in newspapers and journals around 1908, rose almost to mythical status,

and has since on occasions been accepted as sufficient explanation for the imposition of height limits.

Accessibility from ladders was indeed a consideration, as Chief Officer of the Melbourne Metropolitan

Fire Brigade Harrie B. Lee explained:

… speaking as a fireman, 120 feet was too high for safety. He could not undertake to stop a fire in such a structure, and as a matter of fact, if a fire started on top, it would have to burn down to a level at which his men could tackle it. From a fireman’s point of view, 90 feet was quite high enough, in fact, too high for rescue purposes. The plant his brigade would have in a couple of months would be as good as any plant of any fire brigade in the world, yet there was a limit to its powers. It was known to be impossible to construct a portable ladder over 90 feet high. The citizens should be satisfied if regulations were adopted which would have the effect of preventing disaster. The regulations should be made drastic in that direction.56

Ladders were used as water towers, for access and for rescue. The Melbourne City brigade had acquired

a Hayes extension ladder in 1892, and the more manoeuvrable Shand Mason ladder shortly before the

Craig and Williamsons fire of 1897 (illustration 10). Extension ladders were generally prone to

collapse.57 Neither type could be used safely in the narrow alleys. For this purpose the brigade

employed the “Merrywether combination fire escape and hose carriage” which had only two wheels,

and could be towed at the back of a carriage to the scene and man-handled into the narrow alleys.58

References to Lee’s Ladder were used as ammunition for the arguments of the architects and their

clients the property owners against the scale of the building height limits in the lanes. Most of the

players realised that many more issues were involved, but the simplification added a satirical flourish in

the press. This usage is exemplified in a letter to the editor of Argus by architect Nahum Barnet in 1912:

“… the Council will debate the question of whether buildings in the future should be built down to the

level of Chief Officer Lee’s fire ladder.”59 The implication was that the civil authorities were short

sighted, arbitrary, and out of touch with the commercial imperatives which drove the city. Building was

less restrained, betraying some of its less savoury editorial colours:

The Institute of Architects … believe they know how to build a few feet above 110 feet with safety and that the brigade’s ladder is out of date. There is not another city in the world where

 55 The assertion about ladders was current in Sydney as well: “The reasons for these ridiculous limitations in Australia appears to

be that the fire-fighting apparatus of the Sydney and Melbourne Fire Brigades can only reach a certain height.” (‘Tall Buildings: Unfair Restrictions on Australian Endeavour - What the World is Doing and How Australia is to Be Hampered’, Building, (15 October 1908), p.49).

56 ‘City Building Regulations - A Deputation of Protest’, Age, 24 September 1908, p.8. 57 An extension ladder collapsed “tragically” in a Sydney fire in 1922, provoking a cross border investigation by Mr. Lee. (‘Fire

Brigade at Home - Demonstration for Engineers’, Age, 31 August 22. p.15). 58 Sally Wilde, Life Under the Bells: A History of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, Melbourne 1891-1991, (Melbourne 1991), pp.64-5.

Similar appliances are still in use in the 1990s. 59 Argus, 31 January 1912, p.14 (Letter).

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architectural development is dependent upon a single 82 foot ladder possessed by the fire brigade. In fact ladders don’t count except in Negro rural villages of the United States. But Melbourne has a mind to measure its progress by an 82 foot ladder and the RVIA need not feel shy in entering its protest against the ancient fetish.60

Actually, the fire brigade was not opposed to tall buildings per se. Wilkins, Lee’s second in command,

made this quite clear in a lecture to the VIE:

There appears to me to be no reason against a properly constructed building being carried to any reasonable height. … should such be allowed, there is no reason why, with proper regulations and supervision, they should not be rendered reasonably safe from a fire protection point of view.61

Unfortunately, many of the existing, and pending, tall buildings in Melbourne were far from safe.

The fire brigade certainly was opposed to the erection of tall non fire-protected buildings, especially

when conglomerated in narrow streets. There the warehouses and factories often contained large

amounts of highly flammable goods, which would burn even when fire-resistant construction was used.

Then there was an understorey of very flammable buildings with oregon floor framing, thin timber

ceilings, wooden partitions, and open lift wells. As ladders were difficult to use in the narrows, the

brigade had to adopt the dangerous strategy of fighting fires from inside the buildings.62 A fire in Little

Collins Street and Howey Lane in 1914 which damaged factories and shops provoked this “criticism”

from Chief Fire Office Lee at the scene:

It was a lucky save. … This is another of those many places I am always complaining of. Buildings crammed together, with unprotected windows opening right against each other, inviting fire, so to speak, to spread as it likes. If there were not a more stringent building law put into force here soon something disastrous will happen.63

No amount of equipment could solve the problem of fighting fires in these conditions.

Lee was an active campaigner over building regulations, and particularly for more effective and

stringent requirements for fire prevention and protection measures. He believed education and, if

necessary, enforcement of prevention to be as important an aspect of the Fire Brigade’s role as

extinction. He was fond of the truism that “most big fires start off as little fires”.64 Such an approach

pushed responsibilities, and hence costs, on to the property owner.

Many property owners would not accept these greater expenses, preferring to allay the risk with

insurance.65 Anketell Henderson made light of insurance and the value of fire after a lecture by Chief

Officer Lee. “He had described what they always called the Architect’s enemy - the car that carried

those cylinders [the fire-engine] which despoiled them of so much work. He had often heard Architects

 60 ‘In the Southern State - Height Limit’, Building, V.5, No.54 (12 February 1912), p.59. 61 “Fire Prevention and Extinction”, PVIE, V.11, No.6 (January 1914), p.288. 62 The Metropolitan Fire Brigade still maintains some of its old hand carts for use in the narrowest accesses. The 87 foot maximum

height extension ladder of the period required two horses for locomotion. (Lecture by J. T. Wilkins Deputy Chief Fire Officer MFB in JPRVIA V.11, No.6 (January 1914), p287-8.)

63 Argus, 14 November 1912, p.12. 64 Sally Wilde, p.211-12. 65 PVIE, V.14 (6 November 1913), p.164.

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who confessed that they thought such and such a building ought to be burned down.”66 A Bill had

been read in Federal Parliament in 1907 which attempted to make insurance payable on the full value of

the insured property at the time the policy was taken out. The insurers were worried that there would

be a “… rush to redeem destructible property” by means of incendiarism.67 This seamier side to the

problem was endemic, according to F. W. Fitzgerald. “There is too much apathy in this fire matter, and

the authorities who know what it really means are fearful of applying the restrictions that are needed,

because, forsooth, some of these might too nearly touch powerful constituents or friends.”68

In Fitzpatrick’s liberal analysis, the experts should have played a far more responsible role than that

being demonstrated by professionals in Melbourne:

The community-organisation is ever fearful of offending that spirit and therefore only compels to the least possible extent, and to make that organisation take hold of things and do more compelling, it, in turn, has to be compelled to act by the power of the small progressive element in that community, whipped into it, so to speak, and kept there, held by the nape of the neck while it rears and plunges and otherwise vehemently protests.

Drawing attention to the hundreds of cities which had already passed “brand new and strict” building

ordinances, he concluded that “Inside of ten years the man who shows any symptoms of even wanting

to build a fire-trap will be put in an asylum, that notion will be taken as prima-facie evidence of

insanity.” He suggested conspicuously labelling buildings “fireproof, ordinary or dangerous,” and

introducing the European principle of “neighbouring liability” in which the owner would be liable for

fire damage to others’ property if the fire was due to negligence or carelessness.69

Light and Air

The principal of a height limit had been generally accepted and discussion turned to how it should

be defined. The matrix for discussion of the maximum height limits was the division of the city

structure into three vertical regions with a descending order of maximum height - the 99 foot streets

which defined the main blocks, the 33 foot lanes which bisected these, and the narrower lanes alleys

which penetrated throughout. For the 99 foot and 33 foot streets maximum permissible heights were to

be nominated. For the narrower lanes and alleys the limit was to be determined by a multiple of street

width.

An important variable for determination of limit figures derived from consideration of the rights of

citizens to the light and air conditions required for healthy work and living. The loss of this amenity due

to tall buildings was widely recognised. Sydney architect Harry C. Kent, an avowed critic of skyscrapers,

made a typical assessment:

 66 Discussion of Mr. Wilkins Lecture, PVIE, V.14 (8 October 1913), p.149. 67 M. Cowan, ‘Responsibilities Regarding Fire Prevention’, Building, V.1, No.3 (21 November 1907), pp.42-3. 68 F.W. Fitzpatrick, “Why Fireproof Construction”, Building, V.3No.38, (12 October 1910), pp.9-15, passim. 69 Ibid., pp.9-15, passim. This problem of “…people who build fire stacks near valuable property” had come to attention after a

1914 warehouse fire in Prahan where adjacent property had been damaged. The regulations concerning fire-proof walls, doors and other measures had been relaxed by local authorities to encourage enterprise. (‘Profit Problems in Australian Buildings - No.II’, Building, V.13, No.78 (12 February 1914), pp.55-6).

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I object to them on humanitarian grounds, for streets of skyscrapers must mean that the occupants of the lower storeys of such buildings must be working by artificial light, and though it may be necessary for a certain proportion of humanity to work all their daylight hours by artificial light in mines and the dark places of the earth, I cannot believe that it is desirable for us to so multiply that number by adding to it the great multitude who must work in the lower storeys of our city buildings.70

In the lanes of Melbourne, a large number of existing dwellings and workplaces had very poor

access to sunlight, especially at ground floor or basement level. Inadequate light access to lower floors

also affected rentability. In many of the major cities of the world these were subject to regulation. As a

surveyor explained:

Space and light should be the subject of legislation because it should not be left to the will of any employer or builder to regulate the conditions under which the population is going to perform its daily routine of duties when it has such an important bearing upon the general health of the community. Sunlight and air are also dependent in the width of the streets and the heights of buildings as well as their orientation.71

In the new draft regulations, height limits contributed to these ends, and were augmented by

requirements for light courts, and for minimum window to floor area ratios.72 Previously, natural light

had been required for basements, but under the new draft they could go without any daylight as long as

they had adequate electric lighting and mechanical ventilation.73

The earliest limit proposals for the narrower thoroughfares were derived from international

precedents designed to maintain access to light and air, and based on a ratio of street width to height

which provide suitable light penetration. A limit of twice the width of the street for streets up to 33 feet

had been proposed by the City Council as early as January 1908. On 33 foot streets this would permit a

maximum height of 66 feet, which was equivalent to four storeys in standard ceiling heights, but

awkwardly less than four at warehouse use ceiling heights. In some important narrower streets, such as

Collins Place, Degraves Street and Bank Place, only three or less “poor” floors would be possible,

according to the critics. This would be too limiting for viable warehousing in those locations, as even

four storeys would not be profitable.

The RVIA eventually put forward an upper limit of 82 foot 6 inches in 33 foot streets, which was

two and a half times the width of the street, and sufficient for five “good” storeys and a basement. This

 70 ‘Skyscrapers’, Building, V.3, No.42 (13 March 1911), p.45. 71 L. A. Curtis, ‘Town Planning from the Surveyors Standpoint, Building, V.13, No.78 (12February 1913), p.82. 72 Under the new draft regulations, where light courts were enclosed on three sides the height of the building could be four times

the width of the court above the sill of the lowest window. Thus if the light court were 12 feet wide it would be possible to build up 48’ from the window sill. For fully enclosed courts the limit was to be three and a half times the width of the court. These measures were intended to assure day-lighting to ground floors. Saunders mentions the “…good standard of light insisted upon in those earlier offices, to which some impressively large light wells stand testimony.” (David Saunders, 'Office Blocks in Melbourne', Architecture in Australia, (June 1959), p.90.)

73 ‘New Building Regulations - Ready For Adoption’, Argus, 22 July 1915, p.5. Such concessions were in line with trends overseas, especially in New York, where basements even in public buildings were frequently several floors deep.

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was exactly the height already reached by Sargoods warehouse and two adjoining warehouses in

Flinders Lane, which was considered a fitting precedent.74

Argument

In early May 1910 the Council approved a newly revised set of draft regulations. The proposed

limits in streets 99 feet wide was 110 feet, and in streets 33 feet wide was 86 feet. These figures were

begrudgingly accepted, though still considered too low, but the height limit in the lanes and alleys of

less than 33 feet met with more resistance from property owners and experts. Here a height of four

times the gazetted width of the thoroughfare, before buildings were set back for light access, was

stipulated. City Architect and Surveyor Morton was still agitating for a three times limit, to allow light to

ground floor windows all year round.75 RVIA representative Anketell Henderson argued that “The

restrictions as to lighting were too drastic. They would prevent the use of cellars in Melbourne except

for storage purposes.” The owners and experts lobbied for a maximum height of five times the street

width.76

Various concerned parties had successfully opposed the passing of the Municipal Building

Regulations Bill drafted for the whole city on the grounds that citizens should be “unrestricted as to the

height, fire, light and air provisions of proposed buildings.” Now some property owners were making

plans to build up to 140 feet on the 33 feet streets. City Council reacted by moving to pass emergency

bye-laws prohibiting such heights. As the VIE president observed, “… the actual erection of such a

building would do much to settle matters as to which there had been differences of opinion.”77 The

trial by example did not eventuate.

The limit proposals were the subject of a vigorous correspondence between property owners in the

lanes and City Council in late 1911, an exchange which illuminates the complexity of the issues

involved. In one case, a proposed 130 foot building at the east corner of Flinders Lane and Manchester

Lane was objected to by neighbouring property owners who believed that their buildings would be

“seriously affected” in terms of access to light, and ultimately in terms of property or rental value.78

Council wished at all costs to avoid a precedent being set, but the Municipal Building Regulations Act

was currently stagnating in Parliament, which in turn was delaying the City Council from passing its  74 JPRVIA V.6, No.1 (March 1908), p.39. As a writer for Argus stated when the Sargood’s property came up for sale in 1927, “…

this property is almost exactly in the centre of the old warehouse trade, and the business itself is identified with the history of wholesale trading in Melbourne from the early days.” (Argus , 4 October 1927, p.11).

75 Argus, 6 May 1910, p.5; 19 May 1910 p.6. Morton later mentions that the narrow streets remained constantly damp as well as dark. (JPRVIA, V.13, No.4 (September 1915), p.163.)

76 ‘Building Regulations - Condemned by Architect’, Argus, 26 May 1911, p.8. Representatives in the deputation to the Public Works Committee of the City Council in 1908 had also expressed indignation at these lighting limitations. (‘City Building Regulations - A Deputation of Protest’, The Age, 24 September 1908, p.8). Requirements for day-lighting and ventilation for some individual buildings had been relaxed, but had not been extended to commercial uses generally. They were still “… being restricted in use by provisions for light, which might have been right in the days of the tallow dip, but are ridiculous in these days of electric and modern gas lighting.” (Anketell Henderson, ‘Municipal Building Regulations Bill’ JPRVIA, (May 1911). p.15).

77 PVIE, V.12 (1 November 11), p.169. 78 Argus 31 October 1911 p.5; TCCF, 1911, File No.7368. Messrs Banks & Co (No.7065) and David Syme & Co. (No.7009) also

objected to the height of this building. Others to ask for height limits to be expedited were Makower McBeath & Co. P/L (No.6848), W. H. Rocke & Co. (No.6913), C. & E. Millar (No.7089).

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own new regulations. So it passed a one off by-law, under its fire prevention powers, to keep down the

height to 82 feet.79

Another owner wrote to protest against the proposed by laws, as their planned eight storey

warehouse in a lane, which had been previously approved by the Council Building Referees, would not

be permitted. Another owner claimed compensation because they had built in Flinders Lane, in

fireproof construction, in anticipation of adding more floors, which would under the new regulations

not be permitted. They argued that unfair advantage would accrue to those who were already built over

the proposed limits. In addition, “The result of such a by-law would be to insure that except in so far as

some may have been sufficiently fortunate to have already built as high as they shall ever want to go,

the City of Melbourne must ever remain a city of comparatively squat buildings.”80 A committee of

owners presented a petition to Council voicing similar concerns.81

The level of conflict with the City Council escalated. Prominent architect Nahum Barnet set the

tone of the argument in a letter to Argus:

If the City Council insists upon the restriction principle, then a most retrograde step will be taken, that will have a crushing effect upon city building enterprise, hampered as it is already by the incidence of taxes and other drawbacks. A high building in Melbourne, erected at the present time, equipped with modern elevators, is a gilt edged investment, while, on the other hand, one of stunted proportions, erected on the same area as the high building, will prove a disastrous financial failure.82

By 1912 the RVIA and Chamber of Commerce were planning to call for a Royal Commission, in the

hope that “… if Parliament appoints a body of impartial men to deal with the subject of building

regulations many of our objections to the new draft building regulations will be sustained.” But

Parliament was dissolved and the new Parliament did not take up the matter.83

Stimulated by the increased availability, knowledge and experience of new technologies and fire

prevention methods, as well as increased calls for higher limits, in early 1912 the Council and its

committees and expert advisers considered a new regime for the upper limits. Henderson had explained

in 1907 the operation of regulations in several cities in the United States whereby all buildings over a

certain height were required to be of fully fireproof construction.

To this end two categories of limit were now created. The taller fireproof category was required to

be equipped with rising water mains of greater than three inch diameter, to which the fire brigade could

attach mains supply at ground level and hoses at a connection at each floor, as well as other appliances  79 Building, V.5, No.51 (11 November 1911), p.88. Building questioned the legality of this move. 80 TCCF 1912 File No.6220 and previous. Ironically, the Council found upon examination of its files that the owners had already

been give a special concession of reduced wall thickness because of the use of cement mortar and fireproof floors - in which case addition of extra floors would be structurally unsound. The owners had prior to this enquiry been given a favourable decision by the referees.

81 CMCP 1911-12, 26 February 1912. D. & W. Murray (TCCF 1912 No.6652na) and G. H. Jury (CMCP 30 October 1911) also wrote to protest against the limits.

82 Nahum Barnet, Letter to the Editor of the Argus, Argus, 1 February 1912, p.9. 83 Experience with other Royal Commissions had shown that this more open hearing allowed a louder voice for private enterprise

representatives than representation through the normal channels. JPRVIA, V.10, No.1 (March 1912), p.12. The Municipal Buildings Regulations Bill had “disappeared” around the same time. (PVIE, V.12 (12 July 1911), p.83.)

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as determined by the Fire Brigade. The main supporting structure was required to be of fire-resisting

materials - either a fire-insulated steel frame or reinforced concrete construction, and with fire-resistant

flooring, such as terracotta lumber.

Buildings of this type in the 99 foot streets could be taken to a height of one and a third times the

street width, or 132 feet. The ‘lofty piles’ of the nineteenth century on the main streets had commonly

been built to around this height.84 Buildings of this class in the streets of 33 feet width or less could be

taken up to a height of four times the street width, up to a maximum of 99 feet.85 The role of the

ladder as the source of the limit was now largely usurped. The new regime of two maximum limit

classes for the same street front, established on the basis of fireproof construction and light and air

requirements, could hardly be recognised as a move towards the creation of a strictly uniform height

street wall.

The draft regulations now incorporated a variety of fire preventative requirements, which would also

contribute to the safety of tall buildings. These included the provision of hose reels and extinguishers

on site; installation of fire doors; isolation of lift wells and stairwells; and limitation of volume or area

for each fire-isolated section of a buildings. In addition property owners were required to undertake

additional measures which protected adjacent buildings, including use of wire reinforced glazing,

minimum distances of windows from adjacent buildings and from each other between floors, and use

of fire-proof materials between external openings.86

A regulation calling for flat or low pitch roofs on buildings over three fourths of the maximum

allowable height, to facilitate fighting fires from that position, and as a base for attack on other

buildings, had been included in the draft since 1910.87 The efficacy of this move was demonstrated in

several fires in the following years.88 Asphalt roofing was coming into vogue. Flat roofs had a

considerable impact on the profile of the street wall, anticipating the predilection for flat roofs of the

modernists.

Buildings and Streets

The property owners now built up to the anticipated limits. They explained this strategy as a

necessity caused by frustration:

Architects and Builders view the existing state of affairs with much dissatisfaction. Many of them have for some time taken matters into their own hands, and worked according to the proposed new rules, in so far as there was no question of their becoming law. Others, in their doubts as to

 84 Looking back from the 1930s, Architect M. R. Barlow saw that “When fixing the limit in our main streets, the method adopted

was to measure two buildings which were considered high enough (these were built in 1890), the regulation having been made accordingly.” (Mr. M. R. Barlow, ‘Building Regulations and the Desirability of Increasing the Heights of Buildings in Melbourne’, JRVIA, V.29, No.1 (March 1931), p.17).

85 CMCP, 1914-15, p.63; Argus, 25 July 1912, p.15. 86 ‘New Building Regulations - Prevention of Fire Risks’, Argus, 24 November 1914, p.9; ‘New Building Regulations - Ready for

Adoption - Many Drastic Alterations’, Argus, 22 July 1915, p.5. 87 ‘Report of Public Works Committee No.47, 26 May 1910, CMCP, 1909-10. 88 ‘Flat Roofs and Fire Fighting,’, Building, V.4, No.47 (12 July 1911), p.88; Little Collins Street fire, Building, V.5 No.55 (12 March

1912), p.58.

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how far they might go in taking advantage of the draft, have had to appeal continually to Mr. Morton.89

The technical aspects of the regulations were, indeed, to change little before their passing as a by-law,

but the appeal process was to provide a stumbling block and cause of further delay.

Building activity in the city centre had picked up from 1911 on, with numerous additions of storeys

and replacements with taller buildings. The more established inner city building firms, though greatly

reduced in scale, had weathered the 1890s better than their less secure speculative brethren in the

suburbs, taking small contracts and working in the country.90 They recommenced their work:

In the past twelve months a surprising number of little old two storey shops - relics of dead colonial days - have vanished, and in their places today appear mighty modern monoliths of steel and concrete. The heart of the metropolis has been revived, for this is the triumph of the constructor, that he can revive the vitality of cities through the ages.91

The new Federal and State Land Taxes which were a response to the continuing weakness of the

public coffers, were a major stimulus to building activity.92 Owners of old properties which had been

returning a small but steady income for many years were forced to either rebuild, or sell out to more

enterprising investors who would erect new and more profitable buildings. One common response was

to add storeys to existing office buildings.93

The redevelopment of the lanes was now being moulded by the expectation of the new regulations,

including some attempts to subvert it. “Several of the old warehouses, in anticipation of a height limit

bye-law being born someday, have added storeys to altitudes far in excess of the proposed limitation. In

fact, there is a general tendency on such jobs as are progressing, to soar skywards before the regulation

arrives.”94

On the main streets, “… owners are building taller and statelier, and as each new feature arises,

values advance.”95 Among the substantial new buildings were some which, in their successful use of

new technologies, could have paved the way for much taller buildings. The RVIA president praised this

achievement:

Concerning the building operations of the past year in the City of Melbourne, many fine structures have been erected. The “Centre Way” was being built where dilapidated property had previously stood, whilst that building and “Collins House” had features of construction of the most modern type, the weight being carried directly by piers to the foundations, the walls simply

 89 ‘City Building regulations - Final Draft - Important Recommendation’, Argus, 25 July 1912, p.15. 90 Graeme Davison, The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, (Melbourne 1978), p.90 & p.94. See also Mary Turner Shaw, Builders

of Melbourne: The Cockrams and their Contemporaries, 1853-1972, (Melbourne 1973). 91 R. J. Moorhead, ‘The Victorian Outlook’, Building, V.6, No.65 (11 January 1912), p.52. 92 The building societies, however, which had been so hard hit in the 1890s, were hit again as they were now taxed on the

aggregate value of their properties, rather than individually. They were unable to develop their sites and in some cases compelled to sell. (Building, V.6, No.65 (11 January 130, p.54.)

93 Building, V.5, No.52 (12 December 1912), p.48. Or one could add bays as in National Mutual building addition of 1908. 94 ‘New Melbourne Warehouses’, Building, V.6, No.68 (12 May 1913), p.48. 95 ‘City Sales: Record for Year 1912-13’, Real Property Annual, (1913), p.30.

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being curtained to keep out the weather. The area of valuable wall space saved gave a large increase to the floor area, thereby giving a better return for the capital invested.96

The exemplary Commercial Travellers Association (CTA) building on Flinders Street was planned in

1912 to reach 132 feet just as the draft maximum limit was increased to that height. The “brick and

steel frame clubhouse on American lines”, with American style facilities planned inside, was to be “The

best home for lonely men in Australia”. Lighting to the upper floor bedrooms was provided by

generous light-wells on either side of the building. 97 In the same year the National Mutual Building

(now Goode House), one of the ‘lofty plies’, was “duplicated” down Queen Street.98 By 1913, building

of tall structures tailed off as the new building stock came into use.99

Though conventional construction was giving way to steel frame and reinforced concrete, owners

who were pressed for time, and having trouble finding suitably qualified builders and materials to make

use of the new technologies, resorted to conventional masonry construction, especially for

warehouses.100

The ‘gap-tooth comb’ metaphor called up by Waldemar Bannow was now less prominent, as many

buildings reached four to five storeys. The most consistent street-walls of this era were not particularly

tall - the Rialto group is the best surviving example. The Paris feel at the eastern end of Collins Street

was perhaps more due to a combination of similar four to five storey consistency, reinforced by the

uniformity of street architecture and trees, than to any formation of a recognisably Parisian architecture

d’accompagnement. (illustration 12).

By-laws and Referees

By mid 1912 the Building Regulations Committee (which was a subcommittee of the Public Works

Committee) had appointed a subcommittee of experts including Stapley and Morton, and VIE and

RVIA representatives, to work on those details of the draft which were too technically difficult for the

lay members of the Regulations Committee. The RVIA, in its self titled role as representative of the

ratepayers, was working closely with the Chamber of Commerce, who were “Anxious to adopt the best

methods of construction, dealing with problems from a practical, rather than a theoretical

standpoint.”101

 96 Presidential Address, JPRVIA, V.10, No.1 (March 1912), pp.8-9. The first fully self supporting steel frame building in Australia was

Nelson House in Clarence St Sydney. (Freeland, Architecture in Australia: p.249). 97 Building,, V.5, No.55 (12 March 1912) p.59; Lewis, pp. 104-5. The architect Tompkins had just visited America. The building was

finished in 1913. 98 Ibid. 99 ‘City Sales: Transactions Limited’, Real Property Annual, (1914), p.36. 100 ‘New Melbourne Warehouses’, Building, V.6, No.68 (12 May 1913), p.48. There were insufficient skilled practitioners in the new

techniques of reinforced concrete construction to fulfil demand, and insufficient supplies of steel, nearly all of which was imported in this period (Lewis, p.100). Australia’s highest building in 1912, the fifteen storey Culwalla Chambers in Sydney was the swan-song of the ‘lofty piles of bricks’ in load-bearing masonry construction. (‘A Race to the Sky - The Building of Australia’s Largest Structure’, Building, V.6, No.62 (12 October 1912,) p.57-9).

101 JPRVIA, V.11, No.1 (March 1913), p.16.

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By September 1913 a final draft of the revision was proffered by the Regulations Committee to

Council for review. Copies were sent to the professional organisations and representative bodies, who

were outraged at the attempted coup implied by the previously unannounced removal of all the referee

clauses. All along, the building industry professions and other concerned organisations had only

acquiesced to the “great powers” of the building surveyor in the new regulations, on the assumption

that they could be balanced by the right of appeal through the referee system. The regulations for the

proposed state-wide Municipal Regulations, which were now in a Bill before Parliament, had

incorporated the referee system as a necessary safeguard. The architects saw this as a threat to their

professional autonomy as well as to progress and innovation in the industry, and conflated this with

their concurrent discussion on professional registration and examination. “We recognise that some of

the government officers are business experts of high professional calibre. Some are even clerical

officers who have not advanced in their ideas. We would not ask for a reference from decisions of the

former, but self preservation would compel a reference from the opinions of the latter.”102

In the meantime, the draft regulations had been passed on to the City Solicitor, and his special

appointee Barrister Mr. H.E. Starke, “for necessary legal revision”, and for advice on whether the

regulations pertaining to the referee system could be changed from within the Local Government

Act.103 The RVIA was dubious of the need for this, especially considering the further delay it entailed.

The regulations would be out of date before they came into effect, yet another argument for retention

of the referee system to allow the flexibility for innovation. 104 Starke argued, to the chagrin of Stapley

and others in Council, that many of the matters, such as floor loadings, now the subject of regulation

were really a matter for specification by the appropriate professional experts. The shape of the city

might have been very different if that logic had been applied to building heights. In July 1915 the

regulations were finally adopted by Council as “By-law 131”105 Shortly after, the Building Regulation

Committee lapsed, and formal thanks were made to the expert advisers, Henderson and Bates of the

RVIA, and Smith of the VIE.106 Proceedings had slowed to a crawl, largely because of the war in

Europe. Building activity too had almost halted.107

In late 1915 the professionals and business organisations mobilised, bypassing City Council, and

carried a petition for the retention of the referee system to the Minister for Public Works. Council

defended their position, arguing that the system was no longer necessary, as the new regulations were

 102 Ibid., p.15. 103 CMCP, 1912-13, 27 October 1913, 47ood, p.187 & p.360; Argus , 24 November 1914, p.9; Argus, 22 July 1915, p.5. 104 ‘President’s Address’, JPRVIA, V.13, No.1 (March 1915), p.11. 105 ‘New Building Regulations - Ready for Adoption - Many Drastic Alterations’, Argus, 22 July 1915, p.5; CMCP, 1914-15, 5 July

1915 p.142 & 20 September 1915, 15ood, p.189. The regulations by now included a clause which prohibited the construction of dwellings in lanes less than 30 feet wide. Although this later facilitated slum clearance, it originally related to allowance in these areas of a building height of four times the width of the street, giving conditions considered unsuitable for residential purposes. This was resented by residents, and by ratepayers, who called for compensation. (CMCP, 23 July 1915, p.163).

106 CMCP, 6 September 1915, p.363. 107 Several of the professionals involved in the height limit deliberations, among them John Monash, were in active military service.

Mayor Hennesy who held office from 1912-17, “… distinguished himself as a ‘super-patriot’ appearing regularly on recruiting platforms” in Melbourne. (ADB 1891-1939, p.263.)

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comprehensive. They argued that the regulations must be expedited to bring into operation the clauses

that could deal with the pressing (and politically sensitive) issue of slums. The Assistant Minister who

heard the petition was unmoved by City Council’s arguments, and suggested that the referee clauses

could be attached to the Amended Local Government Bill currently before Parliament.108

By-law 131 was submitted by City Council to the Governor in Council for approval in late 1915, but

was held over pending passing of the Amended Local Government Bill which contained the provision

for appointment of official referees.109 The Bill passed the Legislative Council, but was “lost among the

‘slaughter of the innocents’ in the Assembly at the end of the session.”110 Between sessions of

Parliament the Governor in Council finally approved By-law 131 on condition that the old referees

stayed in office until the Bill was passed.111 Thus, the By-laws, including the height limits, came into

effect on the 24th of February, 1916.112

The New York Building regulations, which had been under negotiation for over ten years, were

introduced shortly after the Melbourne version. It was reported in the RVIA journal that:

Under the new [New York] building regulations it will be impossible in future to erect any building to a greater height than 200 feet from the pavement line. This will prevent the outrageous stealing of neighbours’ light and air, which has become so prevalent since the advent of skyscrapers and will make for improved sanitation in the congested city. A “tower” must not cover more than one quarter of the site, but may be taken up to any height.113

The author focused on those aspects of the New York system which were similar to the new

Melbourne regulations. He did not dwell upon the zoned setback system above the 200 foot level, New

York’s workable compromise between the generalising of form for the sake of enclosing urban

volumes, and the expression of individuality in the architectural skyline.114

In the next session of Parliament, the referee clauses were reintroduced as the Melbourne Building

By-laws Bill. The Bill was debated at some length in both houses of Parliament, against a background of

bitter disputes between Morton and the existing referees.115 Concern was expressed in Parliament over

the excessive control given to City Council, and the bill was amended to give access to more

independence in appointments and in the umpiring process.116 The bill finally passed before the end of

the 1916-17 session.

 108 JPRVIA, V.13, No.5 (November 1915), pp. 207-9. 109 CMCP, 1915-16, 20 December 1915, 37ood, p.29. 110 VPD, 22 August 1916, pp.870-4. 111 CMCP, 1915-16, 24 January 1916, p.37; & 14 February 1916, p.52. 112 CMCP, 1915-16, 13 March 1916, 11ood, p.72. 113 JPRVIA , V.14, No.4 (September 1916), p.412. 114 Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped : Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History, (London 1991), p.330. 115 ‘New Building Regulations’, Argus, 14 March 1916, p.4; ‘Building Referees - Quarrel with a Surveyor’, Argus, 26 August 1916; K. A.

Henderson letter to editor, Argus, 29 August 1916, p.4. 116 VPD, V.142, Council, 22 August 1916, pp.870-4; V.144, Assembly, 31 October 1916, pp.2091-3; V.144 Assembly 1 November

1916, pp.2108-16; V.144 Council 21 November 1916, p.2556. passim. Morton had raised hackles in many places - he was referred to in Parliament as “an aggressive man who wants to ride roughshod over everyone” and “a very autocratic person”. References to Mr Morton’s espousing of strict regulations and strong council control had been made earlier. (Building, V.6, No.71 (12 July 1913), p.51 & V.2, No.9 (19 May 1908), p.15). Others admired his broadmindedness and willingness to encourage new techniques. (Building, V.3, No.37 (12 September 1910), p.42, & 11 November 1911, p.88; Argus, 27 April 1910).

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The Greater Melbourne Bill had been dropped in the 1915 session of Parliament, and with it for a

time went the unified Municipal Building Regulations Bill, and hopes for a system of unified building

regulations for the State.117

The Artful City

These prolonged negotiations had been largely conducted in terms of the four elements of

economy, air, light and fire, yet aesthetic considerations had underlain much of the debate. A more

overt discourse of aesthetic control of the urban environment was occurring on a variety of other

fronts during the decade just discussed. Miles Lewis separates three strands influencing thought about

the city in these years. Town planning, influenced by the British Garden City movement, was more

relevant to expansion such as was going on in Melbourne outside the central city. The crusade against

slums, and the City Beautiful movement were more pertinent to the central city.118 Graeme Davison

characterises the 1910s and 1940s as “periods of dreaming … when utopian planning seems to

flourish”.119 There is certainly no shortage of manifestos for Melbourne’s future in the journals and

press in the 1910s. The writers often combined elements of all three of these movements in various

proportions, but they are unified in the utopian nature of their programmes.

The slum campaigners of this period were a part of a wider ‘progressive’ movement which sought to

remove those negative conditions of industrial civilization which laissez-faire solutions had failed to

assuage. Stuart Macintyre notes that the movement was largely non-political, made up of administrators

and publicists, who sought environmental120 solutions to social problems through the use of altruistic

professional expertise.121 Little change was achieved in this area until slum abolition in the 1930s.

Town planning advocate George A. Taylor broached such ideals in an address entitled ‘The Healthy

City’: “The healthy city must be free of congested quarters. Congestion means darkness, dirt and

disease. It means darkness in body and spirit.”122 Morton’s approach to the narrow streets owes much

to these ideals.

William Wilson finds that the City Beautiful movement in America, which was freely traversing the

Atlantic, operated within a kind of aesthetic environmentalism. It sought to transform the city into a

“beautiful rationalised entity”:

City Beautiful advocates were committed to a liberal-capitalist, commercial industrial society and to the concept of private property. They recognised society’s abuses, but they posited a smooth

 117 ‘Institute of Architects - Diverse Building Regulations’, Argus, 1 March 1916, p.13. 118 Lewis, p.93 & 95. 119 Graeme Davison, 'Melbourne’s That Might Have Been: Three Dreams of the Future City', Victorian Historical Journal, V.63

Nos2&3 (1992), p.169. 120 Earlier in the century the word environmentalism was quite unrelated to the current implication of concern with the ‘natural’

environment. The meaning of environmentalism as understood by the Progressives and the City Beautiful movement is still reflected in dictionary definitions The environment is defined as “circumstances of life of person or society’, and the environmentalist as “one who considers that the environment has primary influence on person’s or group’s development”. (Concise Oxford Dictionary, Seventh Edition, (London 1982))

121 Stuart Macintyre , The Oxford History of Australia Volume IV The Succeeding Age 1901-1942, (Melbourne 1986), p.108. 122 George A. Taylor, ‘The Healthy City’, Building, V.21, No.121 (12 September 1917), p.82.

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transition to a better urban world. City beautiful proponents were, therefore, reformist and meliorative, not radical or revolutionary.123

The movement was based on a Darwinist vision which embraced the city as an evolving form of

human endeavour. The City Beautiful proponents “believed less in the Olmsteadian view of beauty’s

restorative power and more in the shaping influence of beauty.”124 In Australia the distinction between

those ideologies was often blurred.

Mayor and ‘modern’ town planner Frank Stapley was inspired by City Beautiful ideals, and separates

them from the ideas that informed the regulation negotiations:

The whole of our existing regulations has been framed entirely on utilitarian lines, designed purely for the safety, health and comfort of citizens. One of the essentially novel features in modern town planning, is the desire to develop the beautiful; it is clear that you cannot estimate the value of living in beautiful surroundings, and the suggestion has been made that it is desirable to establish some architectural standard.125

George A. Taylor expanded on this view: “So the Town Planner is developing as the product of the

age. He is bringing soul into the material. He is the imaginative material in this Materialistic age.”126

The City Beautiful proponents had only modest impact on the ground, largely in terms of street

trees, parks, street furniture, and playgrounds. In Melbourne few public buildings were built in these

years which could have been part of a City Beautiful ensemble.

The ‘crusade against ugliness’ also sought to target the buildings of private enterprise. As Stapley put

it, “it is the buildings that make the city, and it may be said that they reflect the artistic attainments of

the inhabitants.”127 The usual proposed avenue for achieving such aspirations was the ‘City Art

Commission’ or ‘Board of Taste’, in which suitably qualified experts could make aesthetic judgements

to protect the public. Building put forward the argument rather bluntly:

It is strange that in every well organised community the police can take instant action against people or things that offend the sense of smell or that of hearing, but, the sense of sight can be afflicted with hideous apparition without any restriction. Much public money is spent in beautifying cities by means of proper town planning and tree planting, but these attempts at beautification can be nullified by an architectural monstrosity.128

The correspondent likened the process to the exposure of Spartan babies on the hillside. Architects

would submit their plans for scrutiny before they were built, and only the strong and good would

survive. It is an appropriate metaphor for the Darwinian strand of environmentalism.

Such organs already existed for judging public buildings and public works in a number of cities the

United States, including Washington. W. Fitzgerald suggested how private enterprise could be regulated

by these means:

 123 William Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement, (Baltimore 1989), p.78. 124 Ibid., p.80. 125 ‘Town Planning and its Local Application’, Building, V.20, No.120 (11 August 1917), p.71. 126 George A. Taylor (1913), ‘The Town Planner and His Mission’, Building, V.13, No.75 (12 November 1913), p.61. 127 Frank Stapley, ‘Town Planning and its Local Application’, Building, V.20, No.120 (11 August 1917), p.72. 128 ‘Wanted at Once: Authority to Control Exterior Designs of Buildings in Australian Cities’, Building, V.20, No.112 (12 December

1916), pp.59-60.

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The City Art Commissions … cooperate with the Building Departments and pass on all plans for buildings, private as well as public. Not that I’m clamouring for a certain style of architecture, or that greater expense and elaboration be insisted upon in private buildings. All I want is that our eyes should not be abused, offended, murdered, any more than we permit our ears and noses to be. Buildings on any one block should conform to certain major lines, they should not be allowed to scream at each other, there should be a certain harmony of colour and material, an effort made towards the really artistic.129

There was a potential here to obviate the need for height limit regulations. Yet most of the American

cities concerned also enforced height limits systems by regulation.

Frank Stapley perceived a tension between the dangers of allowing individual expression in city

buildings, and the possibility of monotony and failure in a uniform street architecture. He believed that

an accommodation could be achieved through appointing a ‘board of experts’ to oversee designs in

principle streets and main avenues and for all manner of public buildings and features.130 The danger of

a beautiful building being marred by a poor neighbour could also be avoided. G. S. Jones, president of

the NSW Institute of Architects, suggested a “Board to Control Civic Art” with a charter to “exercise

more control over the general lines of building which has adjacent to it permanent well designed

buildings of monumental character.”131 Anketell Henderson, too, had proposed a ‘Board of Taste’ of

professionals in his 1907 address on building regulations, under which tall buildings which were

deemed suitable would be permitted.132 The ‘Board of Taste’ was both a protection against ugliness,

and an alternative to the evils of restriction

American Professor Paedelford, quoted in Building, was one of the few to make specific proposals. A

‘City Architect’ who was to be selected on a merit basis by the profession and provided with generous

remuneration, would head a council of architects, also chosen on merit, to veto proposals “unworthy”

of the city. “Of course, the architect and his council would not use their office to promote any

particular styles of architecture, but would welcome individuality in so far as it was in accord with the

correct principles of art.”133 Paedelford suggests prizes for suitable city buildings as part of the system.

This at least was approximated in the RVIA Street Architecture Awards of the 1920s and 30s. Few

other concrete suggestions were made as to how such bodies could successfully operate, and none of

them were realised. There was never much more than a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ to build the ‘City

Beautiful’.

The aesthetic discourse was subject to a different set of restrictions from the pragmatic one. Here

was a realm where ‘art’ was largely divorced from mere economic considerations. ‘Art’ could only be

controlled by those suitable to the task, Wilson observes. “The beauty sought by the City Beautiful

advocates was scarcely ever specifically defined, except by such supplementary nouns as proportion,

 129 F. W. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Religion of Beauty’, Building, V.21, No.121 (12 September 1917), p.17. 130 Frank Stapley, p73. 131 G. S. Jones, Building, V.6, no.68 (12 April 1913), p.60. 132 Anketell Henderson, ‘Building Regulations’, PVIE, V.8 (4 September 1907), p.65. More detail earlier in this chapter. 133 ‘The Municipal Supervision of Architects’, Building, V.3, No.7 (15 January 1909), p.55.

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harmony, symmetry and scale. … They knew - by intelligence, breeding, and training - what was

beautiful and what was not…”134 Thus the cultural capital of the professional elite is protected.

The height limits were derived from of a mixed bag of precedents from the regulations of other

cities. They were intended to simultaneously regulate a number of variables in the city, including fire,

light and air. They were tailored by negotiation with property owners and insurers to the point where

they were palatable. Though aesthetic ends were not a major component of the negotiations, the height

limit was nonetheless one of the few measures impacting upon the form of the private enterprise city

which was enforceable. Though the regime of the limits should not be located in the same league as the

great city visions produced by organic synthesis or single minded vision, that underlying structure

would give the regulations a surprising resilience.

 134 William Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement, p.79.

54  

       

     

Interlude 1916 - 1930

The City of Melbourne’s height limit system was to remain in place for another four decades.

During this period three bursts of increased building activity governed by the height limits were

separated by the Depression and the World War. During each minor boom period the need for height

limit regulations was questioned. Paralleling this activity were shifts in the power and responsibility for

building regulations and for the planning of the city.

By 1918 complaints were already being made about the new regulations. A city councillor asserted

that “… the restrictions were driving trade out of the city”, but Stapley, now Mayor, promptly ruled the

discussion out of order.1 One area of contention was centred on the inadequacy of fire escapes in older

office, public and residential buildings. In the case of a fire in one such building with only a single

central staircase, Mr Morton said, “between 100 and 200 residents would be roasted to death without a

chance of escape”.2 Owners were slow to conform to the new regulations, and the City Council could

not enforce them retrospectively. City Engineer Morton and the Commission of Public Health

campaigned for concessions on the required level of compliance to encourage property owners to make

improvements, as well as for powers to compel owners to comply.3 The City regulations were revised

in 1923 and notices were served on owners to carry out remedial fire escape works in their buildings.4

The campaign for uniform building regulations to apply state-wide continued, and the new City of

Melbourne regulations, which were considered suitably comprehensive, were touted as a model.5

Between 1910 and 1920 slum abolition was prominent on the agenda for wider metropolitan reform,

though little was achieved until the 1930s. Town planning conferences and visits from overseas experts

had been frequent in the teens; the Victorian Town and Country Planning Association had been

established in 1914. In the 1920s town planning became the fashion.6

 1 ‘City Building Regulations - Driving Trade Out’, Argus, 13 August 1918, p.4. 2 ‘City Fire Escapes - Large Buildings Unprovided’, Argus, 18 May 1921, p.10. 3 ‘City Building Regulations’, Argus, 30 June 1921, p.6; ‘New Building Regulations - Health Commission’s Proposals’, Argus, 19

August 1921, p.5; ‘Fire Escapes in City - Retrospective Regulation Drafted’, Argus, 21 November 1921, p.7. 4 ‘City Council - Fire Escapes’, Argus, 27 May 1924, p.18. 5 Robert B. Hamilton, ‘Building Regulations’, Letter to Editor, Argus, 14 November 1925, p.13; ‘Building Regulations - Need for

Uniformity’, Argus, 4 March 1925, p.25. 6 Lewis, p.93.

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In 1920, at the instigation of Councillor Stapley, a conference of representatives of metropolitan

municipalities was called to “consider schemes for the scientific development of the metropolis.”7

American ‘City Functional’ planning models which involved comprehensive city plans appealed to

Australian planners, including Stapley. They were frustrated that only slow incremental progress was

possible due to the fragmentation of responsibilities in Australian city management, and the

“dysfunctions” of private development. They saw that the British Garden City models were difficult to

apply to an established city. The conference called for preparation of a comprehensive plan for

Melbourne for the next 30 to 40 years.8

Among the ideas put forward was ‘zoning’ on the American mono-functional model to achieve

“orderliness in community development”. As well as building use, the zoning system would regulate

building height and floor area. The State Government appointed the City Planning Commission in

1922, with Stapley at the helm.9 The 1929 report had little immediate impact on the ground, largely

because of the preponderance of civic-bureaucratic interests on the Commission, and its resulting lack

of connection to powerful business interests in the city. Australian business interests lacked the

“patriotic-philanthropic” tradition of their American counterparts.10 The zoning system would not be

introduced until the 1940s.

In the central city, debate continued over the height limit. In 1925 some RVIA members suggested

that a 300 foot limit would be reasonable, considering the opportunities and safety of new building

technology, and the need for big returns on expensive city properties. After all, Chief Fire Officer

Harrie B. Lee had recently stated that “if proper safeguards against fire were installed in newly erected

buildings he did not care if they were 1000 feet high.” Other architects, the newly appointed Town

Planning Commission, and City Engineer Morton considered imposing more rigorous limits to cope

with the spectre of traffic congestion. London, and some American cities had recently introduced more

stringent limits for this reason. Melbourne would be better off to expand outwards, and improve its

transport and communications appropriately. The advocates for relaxation of limits countered that with

more efficient transport, including “a ring of [train] stations around the city”, congestion would not be

a problem.11

A list of Melbourne’s tallest buildings prepared in 1921 counted 21 buildings over 100 feet from

pavement to top ceiling level. A good proportion of these were survivors of the last century, but by

1924 there was a minor boom in building in the city centre. The value of building plans submitted to

 7 ‘Planning City Development - Conference Convened’, Argus, 11 August 1920, p.8; Planning the City’s Growth - Aim of Planning

Conference’, Argus, 11 September 1920, p.8; ‘City Development - Planning Scheme Advocated - Municipalities Take Action’, Argus, 2 October 1920, p.19; ‘Developing the Metropolis - Suggested City Commission - Comprehensive Personnel’, Argus, 28 October 1920, p.6; Frank Stapley, ‘City Planning Conference’, Letter to Editor, Argus, 23 February, 1921, p.10.

8 Robert Freestone, ‘"What Has Been Done For Newark": The Melbourne Metropolitan Town Planning Commission 1922-1930’, In Freestone, R. (Ed.), Urban History Planning History Conference, V.2, (Canberra 1995), p.18.

9 ‘This Planless City - Danger of Chaos’, Argus, 15 February 1940, p.6. 10 Freestone, p.21; Lewis p.92 & 115. 11 ‘Height of Buildings - Restrictions Too Severe’, Argus, 29 July 1925, p.13; .’Higher Buildings - Erection Not Favoured’, Argus, 30

July 1925, p.13; Robert B. Hamilton, Letter to Editor, Argus, 30 July 1925, p.13; Marcus R Barlow, letter to Editor, Argus, 1 August 1930, p.28.

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Council in that year was the highest since the nineteenth century land boom days.12 Large financial

institutions continued to build large and lavish office blocks specifically as investments.13

The T&G building of 1928 was a considerable investment, and appropriately established a new

dominance on the skyline, especially in the view from across the Yarra, with its exceptionally large mass

and its twin towers. Among other major limit height additions were the reinforced concrete Electricity

Commission, the Herald & Weekly Times in Flinders Street of 1921, the Chicago School influenced

Capitol Building in Swanston Street finished in 1924, and three palazzo style buildings - Temple Court in

Collins Street of 1925, Nicholas Building in Swanston Street of 1926, and National Bank Building in

Collins Street of 1927.

Office buildings in the city were becoming increasingly specialised. Conrad Hamann describes how

writing on city buildings in the 1920s “… centred on the considerable technical difficulties …, and on

details of their structure and services”.14 The 132 foot Perpetual Executors and Trustees office

building in Queen Street of 1924 “embodie[d] the latest improvements”. The reinforced concrete

structure was “so far as a building can be, fireproof.” The “curtain” walls “serve[d] simply to keep out

the ‘weather’”. The building contained special ducts for postal distribution, and detachable picture rails

which gave easy access to “miles” of electrical and telephone wiring.15 Communication technologies

played a central role in creating the growth of the office function and its separation from production.

Architects’ representations of their buildings have nearly always emphasised the individual building

at the expense of the ensemble. The photographic essays which began to appear around 1930 are more

revealing documents both for their documentation of the skyline and streetscape, as well as for the

clues which their interpretations give to the wider populace’s image of the city. Graeme Davison

explains that “… conventional views of the city are helpful to citizens as well as to visitors, for they

help to crystallise a sense of belonging and to symbolise the city’s special character or image.”16

A photographic essay published in 1931 entitled The Melbourne Book contains a series of startlingly

detailed angled aerial photographs of the city which echo contemporaneous aerial views of the ever

extending grid of Chicago. While every building in the immobilised city below is identifiable, as in the

detailed birds eye view pictures of the previous century, a distinct repetitive topography can be seen in

the central city blocks, with their taller but interrupted wide street edges and collapsing soufflé interiors.

Other images explore the nostalgic elements in the long view and the streetscape - conjuring a timeless

medieval city and a tranquil blend of the pastoral and the urban.17 (illustrations 13, 14, 15, 16)

 12 ‘Progress of Melbourne - Record Year Established’, Argus, 9 February 1924, p.36; Business Man’s Warning - Is Building

Overdone’, Argus, 30 July 1924, p.14. 13 David Saunders, 'Office Blocks in Melbourne', Architecture in Australia, (June 1959), p.91. 14 Conrad Hamann, 'Against the Mainstream: The Inclusive Tendency in Victoria's Architecture, 1890 -1984', in A.G.L. Shaw (Ed.)

Victoria's Heritage , (Sydney 1984), p.154. The format of emerging architectural journals reflected this in the standard building description and photograph format.

15 ‘Modern Office Building - Perpetual Trustee’s New Quarters’, Argus, 19 December 1924, p.15. 16 Graeme Davison, 'The Picture of Melbourne 1835-1985', in A.G.L. Shaw (Ed.) Victoria's Heritage , (Sydney 1986), p.12. 17 Kauffman, Eaton, Esterens & Howieson, The Melbourne Book, (Sydney 1931).

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Though residential building halted in late 1930, building activity in the city centre maintained some

momentum, giving the illusion of continued vitality. An Age reporter describes how a new scale was

coming to the street wall:

To the casual observer, whose business confined him to the city blocks, building activity, notably in Collins Street, suggests that Melbourne is moving ahead in fine style. In his proudest moment he may even agree that the maximum building height regulation of 132 feet, which has operated since 1916, is far too low, and that the restriction in by-streets like Little Collins street to 99 feet is a relic of the Lilliputian mind. He sees the AMP, Howey Court, Bank of Australasia, Alcaston Flats and T. M. Burke’s Buildings completed or in operation, and admits that he has never seen Collins street looking so enterprising. The Harbour Trust building, the APA and Hicks, Atkinson’s remodellings, and the Bank of New South Wales structure in Bourke street, near Russell street, indicate healthy life in real estate. But these are front-door views, demonstrating that enterprising firms and individuals realise that this is the time to erect a building that is to be utilised.”18

The near completion of the Empire State Building was announced in the same month. Where New

York had once represented a possible future for Melbourne, it now represented another world.19

Consolidation 1929 -1942

Revisions to the City Building Regulations were discussed by Council and the RVIA in 1929, though

only a one storey extension of the limit to 150 feet, in line with Sydney, was on the agenda. “Zoned

back” (setback) increases in height above the 99 foot limit were proposed for the 33 foot streets.20 As

before, there were interminable delays before agreement could be reached. Councillor Kane remarked

that “Everyone but the League of Nations has had a go at them.”21 Despite these lengthy negotiation

processes and broad consultation, complaints of excessive restriction continued. Architect L. F. Irwin

expressed the sentiment behind this position:

I am trying to pick out the things which influence us to-day vitally, and that is one of them, the “Lack of Initiative,” following which we get “Restriction”; restriction in regulations; always conservative; always behind the times; the defence of the uneducated, the stumbler and the underdog, a necessity but a nuisance. As examples, one sees the pedestrian and the motor car, the payment of award rates to the unemployed, and buildings being restricted to a height limit. The more progressive the community the less restrictive the regulations. The inevitable commonsense of the people, will, I think, provide safeguards.22

No mention is made of the restrictive effects upon the populace of the particular ‘commonsense’ of

unrestricted capital. This rhetoric of ‘logic’ and ‘commonsense’ set up against the ‘arbitrary’ and

‘restrictive’ height limits was increasingly popular.

 18 ‘Slump in Building - Figures for 1930 - Fewer City Structures’, Age, 30 December 1930, p.5. 19 ‘World’s Tallest Building’, Age, 30 December 1930, p.3. 20 JRVIA, V.27, No.4 (September 1929), p.89; ‘Institute Question night’, JRVIA, V.27 No.2 (May 1929), p.33. An interesting

compromise proposal, though difficult to implement, was made in 1930 by RVIA member Mr. R. B. Hamilton: “My suggestion is that a logical and reasonable way of dealing with the case in Melbourne would be to have a uniform skyline for the main facades, taking a block from Collins Street to Bourke Street, or from Swanston Street to Elizabeth Street, but extending the limit for a certain distance along the main streets at the corners. I think that in a way a fine effect could be obtained, possibly better than anything in Paris” (‘Question Time, AGM’, JRVIA, v.28, No.2 (September 1930), p.102.). The later corner towers of the Manchester Unity building and National Mutual Life and Citizen’s Buildings, if followed on their facing corners, might have accomplished some of this vision.

21 ‘City Building Regulations - New Draft Considered’, Age, 19 December 1933, p.10. 22 L. F. Irwin, ‘The Trend of Design as Shown in Modern Architecture’, JRVIA, V.28, No.3 (July 1930), p.70.

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Architect Marcus Barlow addressed the RVIA on height limits in 1931 while his skyscraper Gothic

inspired Manchester Unity building was still on the drawing board. “…any regulation which governs so

important a factor as height in our buildings, and which so vitally effects every inhabitant, should be

framed scientifically and only adopted after careful study of every condition that is involved.” He

labelled the 1916 system illogical, in that different width to height ratios applied to the narrow and wide

streets. To Barlow, the skyscraper was a “necessity, for business in most modern cities has become a

tremendous machine with each trade and profession zoned to certain areas, giving greater efficiency

and convenience.” Besides relieving the depression, Barlow’s version (or vision) of the modern

skyscraper was able to harden land values, reduce traffic congestion, lessen the danger of fire, reduce

the cost of insurance, and finally improve the health of the populace.23 Only a few years before, it had

been feared that the skyscraper would compromise all of these values.

Other architects, builders and owners were content to make good use of the new building

technologies on height limit buildings. “In their straight clear lines and ample use of glass the new

modest sized skyscrapers provide a maximum utilisation of available space with a maximum of

convenience and comfort.”24 While this cosy accommodation of the ‘modern’ within the practice of the

limited height continued, there was little real incentive to change the limit system.

The amended regulations came into force in 1934, with no changes to the clauses relating to height

limits.25 While height limits had almost exclusively been discussed in terms of maximums in the past,

minimum limits were also considered as a way of shaping the urban structure. The chairman of the

Traffic and Building Regulations Committee, Councillor A. E. Kane, moved a motion in 1933 that

Council consider a 100 foot minimum height for all city buildings. Though he considered that such a

limit “would not be too much to expect in a city of the greatness of Melbourne”, other committee

members suggested half that height or none at all.26 Shortly after, Morton (a Councillor by this time),

proposed a ban on one storey buildings in the city, along with a stipulation that new buildings reach “a

certain architectural standard.” Another Council member thought that three or four stories should be

mandatory in certain areas, as occurred elsewhere in the world. Objectors to Morton’s scheme

(including Stapley) believed it would be unenforceable, and that it would cause old buildings of poor

quality to remain for ever. “The question of beauty was one that differed with every eye.” The idea was

dropped.27

This lack of consistency over city blocks led to a suggestion by members of the Health Commission

that all buildings in the city area should reach 132 feet, before raising of the limit to 150 feet was

considered. Even then, the extension of the city area and development of outlying blocks would be

more the “logical” approach. After all, in the area bounded by Flinders, Lonsdale, Russell and William  23 M. R. Barlow, ‘Building Regulations and the Desirability of Increasing the heights of buildings in Melbourne’, JRVIA, V.29, No.1

(March 1931), pp.17-19 passim. 24 ‘Building - a Key Industry - Healthy Expansion - New Level of Activity’, Age, 23 June 1938, p.7. 25 ‘City Building Laws - Importance to Community’, Age 22 August 1934, p.11; ‘Expert Scrutiny of By-laws’, Age, 4 September

1934, p.7. 26 ‘Alterations to Building Regulations’, Age, 12 September 1933, p.8. Minimum heights had been canvassed in 1890. 27 ‘Minimum Height of Buildings’, Age, 23 January 1934, p.8

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Streets, the average height of buildings was “little more than three stories”. It was necessary to dispel

the idea that “beyond Lonsdale Street was the backblocks of the city.”28 These calls for a minimum

height amount, at least, to a recognition that the height limit alone was not a sufficient exercise of the

collective will to create a coherent limited height city.

In the late thirties and early forties the perennial call for revision of the city building regulations rose

again, strengthened by new alliances within the building industry and among city business and property

owners.29 The Building Industry Congress (BIC), the Standards Association of Australia and the

Municipal Association had been working on a set of Standard Building By-laws for the State since

1933.30 Architect Leslie Perrott who had travelled overseas and studied 100 building codes, stated that

“The [City of Melbourne] code caused the investing public to waste annually vast sums of money in

complying with out-of-date requirements.” A new code should combine in one package the regulations

now administered by a large number of different state and local government bodies. It should also be

adopted city wide to avoid conflicts on boundaries, and confusion of practitioners.31

Conflict over the distribution of power over building activity within the central city also resurfaced.

The RVIA and BIC called for the replacement of the bureaucratic appointees of the City Council’s

Building Regulations Committee by a commission of experts, comprising an architect, engineer and

builder.32 The Council pointed to “the difficulty of delegating authority to representatives of outside

organisations who would share no responsibility” and rejected the proposal.33

The RVIA put forward 35 draft regulation changes to Council in August 1939. It was proposed that

the limit 132 foot limit be replaced by a “scientific” zoning system with setbacks for additional height in

order to maintain existing light angles. It was hoped that this would make it economical to amalgamate

small sites, and that it would stimulate the creation more imposing buildings. As a fallback, a 150 foot

maximum should at least be allowed on corner sites, and 132 feet allowed in the 33 foot streets, with a

setback system to maintain lighting angles. Requirements for natural light to reach ground floor internal

spaces should also be relaxed.34

 28 ‘City Building Regulations - Melbourne Should Expand Out, Not Up, Say Health Officers’, Herald, 21 August 1939, p.8. 29 ‘Building Regulations’, Age, 25 May 1937, p.19; ‘Building Regulations’, Age, 9 August 1938; ‘Building Laws Revision’, Age , 30

September 1939, p.22; ‘City Building Code Obsolete’, Age, 8 March 1940, p.11; ‘City Building Code - Defended by Councillor’, Age, 9 March 1940, p.31.

30 ‘Building Industry’, Diverse Regulations’, Argus, 11 May 1933, p.5. The Building Industry Congress was formed in 1931 to look after the common ends of architects, builders, manufacturers, merchants and subcontractors, as well as to contribute its expert knowledge and technical ability in “public service”. The BIC constitution provided for “the appointment of a number of general community representatives, whose job it is to see that the owners of buildings and the public generally are fully considered by the congress.”(‘Building Industry Congress Has Done Great Work’, Herald, 8 August 1934, p.15.)

31 ‘Building Code Attacked - “Worse than Obsolete”’, Argus, 8 March 1940, p.4; ‘City Building Regulations - Town Clerk’s Reply’, Argus, 11 March 1940, p.4;

32 ‘Building Code Obsolete - Commission Urged’, Age, 29 March 1940, p.10; The Building Industry Congress (BIC) had called a committee of similar kind, with the aim of closer relations with the council, as early as 1935. (‘City Building Regulations’ Age, 12 November 1935, p.16).

33 ‘City Building Regulations - To Be Revised After Thursday’s Election’, Herald, 21 August 1939, p.8. 34 ‘Seeking Up-to-Date Building Regulations For City - Architects Proposals to City - Reasons for Recommendations’, Herald, 19

August 1939, p.18.

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Several tall buildings outside the city centre were planned or under way in the late thirties. Prince

Henry’s Hospital in St Kilda Road, heralded as “Victoria’s Tallest Building”, was to reach 165 feet.35 A

twelve storey, £350,000 hotel was proposed for East Melbourne.36 The RVIA urged the extension of

the 132 foot limit into the suburbs, especially for residential development along St. Kilda road, where it

would improve property values. The Council demurred, arguing that “a few towering buildings would

destroy the character of one of the most important and beautiful of the city’s thoroughfares,” in a

rejection of the American model of tall residential development.37

Warehousing became less viable in the central portions of the 33 foot streets in the late twenties,

and many owners had relocated to the periphery of the grid or to the suburbs. Sargood’s, which had

been at the centre of the soft goods warehousing precinct, was auctioned in 1927. Retailing in arcades

was taking over at ground level, with offices above. The increasing building density and increased

vehicle and pedestrian usage in the lanes was causing congestion.38

In the late thirties Council had been making tentative moves towards widening these streets by

acquiring corner properties, and had widened footpaths. Councillor Morton proposed widening to at

least 50 feet, up to as much as 66 feet.39 Property owners would be compensated for setbacks by

concession of increased building height. Though major works of this type were under way in Sydney,

the Council decided that since Melbourne’s lanes were not used for through traffic as were Sydney’s,

the congestion would not worsen. The gains from increased building heights would not justify loss of

building footprint. The initiative was dropped.40All these deliberations had little effect upon the

practice of building within the limit regulations. A new pulse of building activity in the central city was

getting under way after the Depression. The activity of wreckers became the subject of some interest in

the mid 1930s as a portend of the changing city structure. 41 The demolition of the Palace Hotel, Bijou

Theatre and Roxy complex in Bourke Street in 1934 was the largest ever undertaken in the city.42 Some

welcomed this as progress: “The casual observer of Melbourne’s skyline can see the development of the

city reflected in building development as more and more uneconomic picturesque old buildings are

demolished to be replaced by modern structures towering to the limit height.”43 Others were less

enthusiastic, and reversed the sentiment: “The process of pulling down old and beautiful buildings and

erecting large utility buildings in their place has been going on in Melbourne with no regard for the fact

that Beauty itself could be useful.”44

 35 ‘Victoria’s Tallest building’, Age, 28 March 1939, p.7. 36 ‘Hotel on New Lines’, Age, 22 February 1938, p.7. 37 ‘Surveyors Report - City Council’s Building Regulations’, Age, 22 August 1939, p.6. 38 ‘Flinders Lane - Warehouse Exodus’, Argus, 4 October 1927, p.11. Sargoods moved to the Eastern end of Flinders Lane. 39 ‘Widening City Streets - Proper Plan Wanted’, Age, 12 August 1939, p.24. 40 ‘Street Widening - Town Clerk Visit to Sydney’, Age, 29 March 1940, p.8; ‘Widening Little Streets - Adverse Report’, Age, 27

April 1940, p.22. 41 ‘Building & Architecture: Building Wreckers in the City’, Age, 6 February 1934, p.12. 42 Demolition and Building Activities in the City’, Age, 4 April 1934, p.11. The demolition of theatres is related to stiffer

enforcement of fire escape regulations introduced in the 1920s. 43 ‘Building a Key Industry - Healthy expansion - New Level of Activity’, Age, 23 June 1938, p.7. 44 ‘Collins Street Now Monotonous - Criticism by Artist’, Herald, 1 June 1938, p.10.

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Along with the resurgence in new buildings came renewed calls for a committee of taste, typically

spurred on by contentious building projects. The RVIA and Town Planning Association called for a

committee of taste under control of the City Council, comprised of architects, engineers, planners, and

representatives of the business community. There were a number of American precedents, which had

been set up to ban “bizarre or incongruous designs”.45 An effective organ of this type might have been

able to regulate height and massiveness as aesthetic variables, and in a more flexible manner than the

limit regulation. But it was not possible in the political climate of the city.

The Victorian Street Architecture Medal award, initiated by the RVIA in 1928, was a move towards

educating taste, rather than enforcing it. The medal was to be given yearly to a new building which

“notably contribute[ed] to the civic beauty and architecture of the cities of this State.” Through this

exclusively aesthetic charter it was hoped that “a widespread sense of civic responsibility may be

developed and fostered in the architects and citizens of our State, and in those who father or direct our

building projects.” Indeed, the award was featured prominently each year in Argus and The Age.

Attributes looked for by the jury were “… suitability to the site, good scale and proportions in the

mass, sincerity in purpose and materials, the display of good taste and scholarship in the design,

mouldings and ornament, colour and texture and finally, the achieving of the elusive quality of dignity

and individuality in the ensemble.” The building had to front onto a street, road, square or court to

which the public had access, and a plaque identifying the architect was to be fixed to the street front of

the building.46 In the 1934 award it was decided to focus more specifically upon “… street work, on

facades along public thoroughfares and squares.”47

The first winner , the five storey Francis House on a narrow frontage in Collins Street, was admired

for its “graceful proportions and chaste and quiet decoration.” The 1931 entry, the five storey Lyric

House in Collins Street, also on a narrow front, was described as “exhibiting an air of scholarship,

thoughtfulness, and completeness.” The 1934 winner, Buckley and Nunn’s Store on Bourke Street, of

the same scale, had a ‘modern’ facade treatment, incorporating colour and murals. Nonetheless, it too

showed “an appreciation of those subtle and elusive qualities, dignity and individuality.”48 (illustration

17) One wonders whether the jury architects were describing their buildings, or themselves and their

own values. This ‘gentlemanly’ anthropomorphism in the building critique is an appropriate

accompaniment to the increasingly regulated and ordered street-life which accompanied ‘progress’ in

 45 ‘Inartistic Buildings’, Argus, 20 February 1925, p.30, ‘Taste in Buildings - Seeking a Committee’, Argus, 13 December 1927, p.6. 46 ‘The RVIA Victorian Street Architecture medal’, JRVIA. V.27, No.3 (July 1929), p.60; 47 ‘Street Architecture’, Age, 24 August 1934, p.8; ‘Street Architecture Medal’, Age, 13 July 1937, p.13. The jury consisted of the

president of the RVIA, the chief architect of the State Public Works Department, the director of the National Gallery, the art inspector of the Education Department, and seven architects, selected each year. (‘Making “The City Beautiful”’, Argus, 28 November 1936).

48 ‘Making “The City Beautiful”’, Argus, 28 November 1936. There was wide awareness of the unsuitability of narrow fronts. RVIA President C. E. Serpell explained that “City sites with narrow frontages are not suitable for the construction of buildings of sufficient height to give floor areas which will produce revenue in proper relation to the value of the land.” But owners were consistently unwilling to amalgamate. (‘Architecture & Property - How Sites are Wasted - Narrow Frontages in City’, Argus, 15 June 1933, p.7).

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the city. The attention given to small projects indicates a feeling for the fine grain of the city, as much

as in the large and monumental.

The 1932 and 1933 medal winners, the AMP building on the corner of Collins and Market, the Port

Authority Building on Market Street, were of a strikingly different form and scale. They were maximum

height, stand alone buildings in palazzo style, on corner sites.49 The Port Authority Building was

described by the jury as “present[ing] a uniform completeness of effect when viewed from any point.”50

The deep shadows of its recessed piano nobile and overhanging cornice gave “a truly masculine feeling to

the facade.” Despite this strength of expression, it too was commended for its restraint, simplicity and

dignity. 51 A critique of the AMP building in the RVIA Journal in 1931 admired its reticence, restraint

and sincerity amidst “the current architectural stampede.” The critic understood that the building was

designed “to read from the angle of the normal street view rather than a frontal aspect.” As such, the

critic felt, it became a “unit of the street medley”.52 This notion of ‘street architecture’ was confined

neither to the unified street facade, nor to the contextual solution.

These awards have been viewed as a counterpoint to the drive for the free standing, non-contextual

modernist tower. Butler describes the aim of the award as promotion of “contextualism”.53 (Buildings

followed historic languages, not each other!) But there was considerable variety in the buildings chosen,

and free-standing palazzo types were included. The awards were not promoting a unified street facade

in the mode of architecture d’accompagnement which had made the streetscape of Paris possible. In fact the

unified street facade was seen by some as monotonous:

In some of the cities abroad, in parts of New York and Chicago, where they have a height limit of say 80 or 100 feet, the effect produced is of box-like structures, entirely devoid of interest, and to walk along some of the streets is just like walking between two high garden walls with holes in them.54

Some architects accorded the height limit major responsibility for the continuing emphasis upon

facades, as demonstrated by the Street Architecture medal, and for discouraging use of modern

American skyscraper facade treatments.

We remember that our city fathers impose on us limitations which bring our tallest structures within the limits of masonry construction, whereby the steel frame becomes an incident rather than the structural essence; an element that no longer clamours for expression. Faced with frontages that match the height, we recoil from the anachronism of a “skyscraper” interpretation vested in a mass not far removed from the proportion of a cube.55

 49 Both were completed in 1929. The award was originally for buildings completed in the previous three years. During the

Depression this was extended to compensate for lack of new entries. 50 ‘Making “The City Beautiful”’, Argus, 28 November 1936. 51 ‘Street Architecture - Port Authority Building Wins medal for 1933”, Age, 7 September 1933, p.11. 52 ‘The New A.M.P. Building, Melbourne”, JRVIA, V.29, No.4 (September 1931), p.82; ‘Street Architecture - Value of RVIA

Competition’, Age, 28 August 1934, p.15. 53 Graeme Butler, Twentieth Century Multi Storey Commercial Buildings in Melbourne: Historical and Architectural Context for 94-110

Queen Street, (Melbourne 1990), p.1-4. 54 Mr. C. L. Cummings, ‘Institute Question Night’, JRVIA, V.27, No.2 (May 1929), p.33. 55 ‘The New A.M.P. Building, Melbourne”, JRVIA, V.29, No.4 (September 1931), p.82.

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Two conundrums were posed here. How could one, or should one, adopt the fashionable and

symbolically loaded skyscraper styles to relatively squat height limit buildings? Should one express the

framed structure in the mode of the Chicago School or of emerging modernist style, when the scale of

the building did not require the use of the technology being expressed?

Challenges to the first of these questions were mounted in the 1930s. The “anachronism” of a

skyscraper interpretation did not deter the architects of the Manchester Unity building of 1932, with its

references to the Woolworth building’s skyscraper Gothic and the Chicago Tribune Building. Though

the building did not receive any award, it soon became a city landmark (illustrations 18 & 22). The

vertical continuity of the columns rising into the tower, and dominant verticality of the facade elements

generally, made the division into stories less visible and fostered the skyscraper illusion, though this was

not a mini-skyscraper. The Art Deco style Century building of 1938, the Australian Catholic Assurance

(ACA) building of 1936, and a number of others using vertical elements in streamlined modern style,

worked in a similar way.56 The vertically emphasised buildings often lacked the clear cornice line of the

Beaux Arts and earlier styles, and this militated against the clear reading of the height limit available in

European cities. The Police Building of 1943 in Russell Street, on the other hand, was a mini-skyscraper

which relied on the lack of height in its neighbours for effect. This, and a number of other public

buildings now adopted the form and language of private office buildings - an indication of the public

sector’s increasing obeisance in the urban hierarchy to the needs of business.

The winning proposal in a design competition for a new building for the Chamber of Manufactures

Insurance Ltd on Flinders Street, occupied a very large site with a 132 foot frontage and 156 foot

depth. Though it was never built, the height limit proposal displayed some unusual features. In a

reversal of the usual light wells concealed at the back of buildings, the front facade was modelled with

three vertical bays above the continuous ground floor and mezzanine level, which “will cast deep

shadows , making it possible to see the building from a great distance.”57 The treatment also related it

to the scale of Melbourne’s common narrow facade buildings.

In 1940 building activity was at an eleven year high, in spite of the shock of the war. Some large

projects were shelved, but many substantial, and mostly ‘limit height’ projects were under way or about

to start in the major streets.58 Concentrations, or precincts, of tall buildings could be discerned by the

early 1940s, containing a broad range of ages and styles of building but a coherence of scale and full site

 56 The unusual set back of the two upper floors of the ACA may have been over height - it is uncertain whether this was

occupiable space. See Graeme Butler, Twentieth Century Multi Storey Commercial Buildings in Melbourne: Historical and Architectural Context for 94-110 Queen Street , (Melbourne 1990), p.1.13). A newspaper report after completion made no mention of such a deviation. (‘Building & Architecture - A.C.A. Offices’, Age, 8 December 1936, p.19).

57 ‘12-Story Building - Chamber of Manufactures - result of Competition’, Argus, 7 August 1930, p.5. The same architects, A. & K. Henderson, used a similar though lower scheme in Alcaston House, a residential and medical suite building on the corner of Collins Street and Spring Street. (JRVIA, V.29, No.6 (January 1932), p.149).

58 ‘City Building Programme - Much work in hand’, Age, 21 November 1939, p.4; ‘Vast Building Plans in All States - Not Retarded by War’, Age, 12 March 1940, p.8. 1920s buildings were said to ‘rise to the maximum permissible height’. The description changed to ‘building up to limit height’ in the early thirties. The first usage of ‘limit-height’ appears in 1938, and is in common use by 1939. (‘Limit Height Banking Chambers’, Herald, 16 August 1938, p.21; ‘Trustees Building Credit to Melbourne - Eleven Floors With All Stone Facade’, Herald, 23 May 1938, p.20.)

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coverage. If the good manneredness celebrated by the Street Architecture Medal indicated an

acceptance of a certain level of neighbourliness, then the acceptance of the height limit principle in the

formation of the Collins and Queen Street banking and financial precincts indicated reduced

competitiveness of expression and scale, in exchange for a combined statement of dignity.

Hetherington’s caption for Hillier’s photograph of the English, Scottish and Australian (ES&A) Bank’s

Royal Bank Building of 1940 (illustration 23, ES&A second from right) captures this dimension:

It is the kind of building Melbourne likes - conservative, handsome, solid, gracious, correct, yet never quite austere. It is also the kind of building Melbourne people like to do business with, because they feel their money will be safe there. It fits into dignified Collins Street as smoothly as machine-tooled piston into its cylinder - no mean achievement for a new building in a street of Collins Street’s character.59

Outside those precincts, however, the city was far less evenly developed. “Within this inner

commercial area, the percentage of all allotments upon which buildings reach the maximum permissible

height is quite low. In fact, the average height of buildings over the whole of this area is just under 40

feet. In the various city blocks the average building height ranges from 20 feet to a maximum average of

65 feet.”60

A succession of proposals for the very large Western Market site in Collins Street between Market

and William Street had been produced since 1925. The 1931 proposal by Councillor Nettlefold was for

a £5000,000 Civic Centre fronted by a garden square. The building was to be of around 30 stories in a

base and tower pattern similar to New York zoning setback models.61 Nettlefold’s proposal and a series

of more prosaic schemes for the site were not realised.62

If the limited height city was becoming identifiable, in parts, by the increasingly coherent street wall

at close quarters, its skyline was most identifiable from afar by its towers, domes, turrets, and spires.

John Hetherington waxed poetic about the city skyline: “It has a harmony and richness of contour, a

symmetry, in which domes, towers and spires blend in what appears to be a balanced masterpiece

created by design, rather than an arrangement determined by chance.” These features of the skyline

gave “… life and meaning to the grey wilderness of it, as leaping waves give life and meaning to the

wilderness of a grey sea, though waves are evanescent where these things are static, changeless.”63 The

“grey wilderness” of limit height buildings was becoming a more continuous matrix by the early forties,

 59 Rob Hillier & John Hetherington, Portrait of Melbourne, (Sydney c1950), p.26. 60 Report 16 January 1950, RVIA Correspondence on Building Regulations 1951-9, SLV MS.9454 Box#53 (b). Though these are

figures for 1950, practically no building had been undertaken in the inner city since 1942. 61 ‘Still another Vision Splendid for Western Market Site’, Sun, 7 August 1938. Nettlefold’s celebration of the symbolism of

ascendancy of the civic over the commercial was inspired by American models. He had visited Los Angeles in 1930. Although Los Angeles had a 150 foot limit, with a provision for ornamental towers similar to that in Melbourne, RVIA visitor Mr Edward Bilson noted that “There is a building, here … which is no less than 400 feet high, and, strangely enough, it happens to be the City Hall, the home of the governing bodies that fix the height limits. I was told that, in this instance, the by-laws had to be temporarily quashed in order to pass the plans of this new structure, and hastily repassed in order to prevent others following suit, for surely they would in this fast growing metropolis.” (‘Triumph of the Tower - Los Angeles and Melbourne Compared’, Herald, 24 September 1930, p.15). Interestingly, the scheme now on the site has strong similarities to Nettlefold’s scheme.

62 ‘Plaza on Former Market Site’, Age, 4 May 1935, p.15: ‘Civic Square Project - Western Market Site - Offices and Garage’, Argus , 16 July 1936, p.10 and sketch in Supplement.

63 Hillier & Hetherington, Portrait of Melbourne, p.23.

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and the spires no longer so much rose above, as became points of reference among that limit height

matrix.

Towers and domes on height limit buildings were frequently controversial elements. Architects

resented the too literal interpretation by the Council of the regulations on the unoccupied “towers,

domes, turrets or architectural ornaments” which were permitted above the limit. “The reading they

gave to ‘architectural ornaments’ is practically confined to an extended parapet.” When architect

McCutcheon had designed a short tower element to aesthetically balance the lift overrun on the other

side of one of his buildings, he was refused permission. Without a setback system, towers and domes

provided the only opportunity for expression in three dimensions. “This is one of those difficult

questions which must arise when we have a Building Act controlled by people who are aesthetically

laymen.”64

On the other side, the Council worried that the city might have “… too many towers conflicting in

their masses with other towers.”65 The towers of the Elizabeth street post office, and of the Town Hall,

tall in the nineteenth century, had lost their ascendancy. “The Elizabeth Street Post Office fights to

hold its head above the buildings that have beanstalked about it.”66 (The Myers facade could hardly be

described in those terms!) The rise of the Manchester Unity building’s Gothic tower to 78 feet above

the height limit, which “would overshadow the Town Hall Tower” (illustration 18) was approved by

Council in 1930. F. E. Dixon objected that “if a town planning act existed, [the tower] would not be

permitted. … The above will be the third tower built out of funds created to benefit widows and

orphans, a factor to which congestion makes its deadly contribution.”67 Despite Dixon’s imaginative

inter-weaving of social, planning and aesthetic issues was not enough to stop the tower, or its success as

a landmark.68 The city was not overwhelmed with towers. Of the limit height building towers, only the

T&G tower (at left of illustration 13) and the APA tower (illustration p.iii) were dominant in the long

view.69

The contribution to the skyline of the lofty spires of St. Paul’s and St. Patrick’s Cathedrals, which

were completed in the thirties, was widely appreciated. The RVIA congratulated the architect of St.

Paul’s spires: “The effect which has been formed by the spires and tower in relation to the skyline of

the metropolis is dignified and stirring.”70 There was less support for a 1934 proposal to erect a 440

foot steel tower “higher than the Sydney Bridge” near the southern side of Princes Bridge, and just

 64 ‘Institute Question Night’, JRVIA, V.27, No.2 (May 1929), p.33. 65 Ibid., p.33. 66 Caption to photograph looking west along Bourke Street, Hillier & Hetherington, Portrait of Melbourne, p.34. The tall and

relatively wide Myers facade of 1934 does most of the dwarfing. 67 ‘A Lofty City Tower’, Age, 5 September 1930, p.8.F. E. Dixon, ‘Manchester Unity Tower’ Letter to Editor, Age, 8 September

1930, p.17. 68 Alfred Phillips, ‘When 132ft. Was a Skyscraper’, Herald, 1 June 1968, p.29. 69 A single massive stepped tower on the Collins Street facade at 220 feet came with the 1939 additions to the T&G building.

(‘T&G Society’s Great Structure’, Age, 2 August 1939,); The more slender but taller APA tower was added when additions were made to one of the nineteenth century Prell buildings in 1930 (JRVIA, V.28, No.3 (July 1930), p.liv).

70 ‘Architecture & Property - Spires of St. Paul’s Cathedral’, Argus, 11 May 1933, p.5 (the Morehouse Spire is 300 feet high); ‘350 Ft. Tower Planned - Contract Work Let for St. Patrick’s’, Sun News Pictorial, 21 April 1937.

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outside the jurisdiction of the City of Melbourne. The tower was to be an observatory, broadcasting

station, beacon and tourist attraction all in one.71 The editor of the Herald gave no quarter:

A strong civic sense has hitherto been fairly successful in preventing the intrusion into our skyline of freakish, gimcrack or vulgar structures. …a bizarre monstrosity of a building on a site from which it would dominate the whole city and utterly destroy all the work of years of careful planning and design to beautify the southern entrance to Melbourne.… Such a structure would be foreign to the whole plan of Melbourne. It would stand above our quiet buildings and gardens like a Meccano nightmare.72

The editor defends those qualities of the “quiet” city which were a product of a “civic sense”, and

which were represented so frequently in skyline photographs. (illustrations 15, 20, 21, 25, 26) The

monumentality of the tower would be inimical to that sensibility.

Hillier and Hetherington’s photo essay of 1951 is a hymn to that quiet city, as this commentary

accompanying a vista from across the Yarra reflects:

Mirrored in the unrippled surface of the Yarra, as the river curves above Princes Bridge, Melbourne takes on a quality of magic which it, or any other city, loses when seen at close quarters. Its familiar towers acquire a remote and dreaming air, its erect spires some of the witchery of the turrets in drawings remembered from a childhood book of fairy tales.73 (illustrations 20, 21)

The skyline had by now acquired sufficient breadth, depth and consistency for portraits to follow a

more exploratory path. Jack Cato’s photographic essay of 1949 contains by contrast to Hillier and

Hetherington, some strikingly modern imagery. The panoramic view from the T&G tower, “Cubist

Designs on the Roof Tops” is a cunningly contrived abstraction in which the street and building

facades are concealed. The large expanses of unadorned planar flanks, flat asphalt roofs and functional

machinery are foreshortened, creating an orthographic effect. Buildings fill the frame, but there is no

human theatre of the street.74 (illustration 24) Sam Bass Warner Jr. noted a similar abstracted quality in

the city landscapes of the New York skyline photographers of the late 1930s.75 Where their images

made palatable art objects of the corporate towers, Cato’s image lends a disturbing endlessness and

inhumanity to the expanse of the skyscraperless limited city.

The post-war city

There was little building activity in the city between the end of the War and 1954, and the immediate

desire of architects to usher in a new era in building was thwarted by material shortages, and other

economic priorities. Planners, however, could still make plans.76 The City Council established its own

Planning committee in 1944. Under the auspices of the Town and Country Planning Association,

 71 ‘New City Tower’, Herald, 8 August 1934, p.22. 72 ‘Wishing a Monstrosity on Melbourne’, Editorial, Herald, 8 August 1934, p.8. One wonders whether Roy Grounds had heard of

it when designing his Arts Centre. 73 Hillier & Hetherington, Portrait of Melbourne, p.64. 74 Jack Cato, Melbourne Pictured By Jack Cato, (Melbourne 1949), pp.12-13. Though the work was published in 1949, the built form

of city had changed little since 1942. 75 Sam Bass Warner, 'The Management of Multiple Urban Images', in D. Fraser & A. Sutcliffe (Eds), The pursuit of Urban History ,

(London 1983), p.393. 76 Lewis, p.114.

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Morton prepared a plan to solve the traffic congestion problems of the inner city, which was frequently

tied in with consideration of the height limit, as in Clive Turnbull’s comment of 1948:

… the City Council steadfastly declines to increase the height limit of buildings. If people are not satisfied with approximately 13 storeys and a flagpole on the top they will have to go elsewhere. Skyscrapers would only increase the traffic problem; to solve the traffic problem by an adequate link-up of underground railways would perhaps be too simple. We are not in a hurry.77

The post war era saw increasing State control of both planning and Building Regulations. In 1949 the

State run Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works gained planning authority over the area within a

fifteen mile radius of the city. It retained this control until the 1950s, though the plans it prepared had

little impact on the city centre.78

The long sought after Uniform Building Regulations (UBR) were established under the Local

Government Act of 1946. While the regulations were controlled by the Public Works Department, a State

Building Regulations Committee (BRC) was set up as a referee system. The Committee was comprised

of a triumvirate of bureaucrats - Building Surveyor, Chief Public Works Architect and Health

Department Engineer. The height limit, and many of the other regulations in the UBR, were based on

those of the previous Melbourne City by-laws.

Both planning organisations and the RVIA were keen to effect an amalgamation of the regimes of

the UBR and MMWB, the separation of which, in their opinion, had deleterious consequences. The old

“arbitrary” height limits in the UBR were “illogical” and did little to control densities and limit

concentration and congestion. “The control of building density and the height restriction as contained

in the UBR are essentially town planning matters.”79 Conversely, the application of zoning as

formulated under the MMBW planning scheme, was an inadequate tool for assuring a quality

environment. In a paper discussing the question of design control in Melbourne, the Tasmanian Town

and Country Planning Commissioner N. G. Abercrombie stated the problem: “Zoning … is on the

whole a soulless affair. … Because of its essentially legal and prosaic character, it cannot inspire more

than mere flatness….”80 What was needed was consideration of all the important variables together, so

that “… full rein could be given to the three dimensional element in the city of the future.”81

Planners, architects, engineers and builders had been agitating for greater representation on BRC so

as to be able to influence the formulation of new regulations, and to allow broader terms for appeals.82

In its role as Referee the BRC was liberalising its application of the regulations, using its powers under

the Act to modify the UBR in individual cases. In July 1955 the BRC gave permission to Imperial

Chemical Industries (ICI) to erect a 230 foot, 19 storey office block on a site just off the edge of the

city grid. The building was to be the tallest in Australia, and would occupy just over 40% of the site.

 77 Clive Turnbull, The Melbourne Book, (1948), in Lewis, p.115. 78 Lewis p.115. 79 Jan 1950, SLV MS9454 Box#53 (b) RVIA Correspondence on Building Regulations 1951-9, 80 N. G. Abercrombie, ‘To Control or Not to Control’, RVIA Bulletin, (January - February 1956), pp.8-9. 81 Jan 1950 ,SLV MS9454 Box#53 (b) RVIA Correspondence on Building Regulations 1951-9 82 Letter from Public Works Department to RVIA, 30 July 1952; Letter RVIA Building Regulations Committee to RVIA Secretary,

18 November 1952; SLV MS9454 Box#53(b), RVIA Correspondence on Building Regulations 1951-9.

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Construction started in September 1956. This move was hailed as contributing to the dawn “of a new

era in Australian building”.83 Saunders thought that the finished building seemed to “… look back and

down upon the jostling buildings with some disdain.”84

In 1956 the Local Government Act was amended to include on the BRC representatives of the RVIA,

Australian Institute of Engineers, Master Builders Association and Municipal Association.85 Discussion

of revisions to the UBR had been initiated in 1954 with a government appointed expert panel and

submissions from the various institutes.86 The RVIA declared its commitment to the lifting of height

limits only if it bettered the city and improved amenities for the citizen. The change was not to be

directed towards increasing the area of buildings and thus increasing congestion. Rather, the hard

boundaries of the street were to be relaxed by setbacks at, or near, ground level to create open public

space in the form of gardens and courts, as well as parking, and widened vistas. Towers which achieved

this were to be encouraged by a system of premiums in allowable floor space for provision of off-street

parking, and for setbacks from all boundaries or from the front boundary. Taller buildings with a much

greater proportion of first class office space, receiving better light and natural ventilation, would be

made possible.

The structural integration of the height limits had given them a surprising resilience - they had been

sufficiently innocuous in their restrictive effect upon private enterprise to remain unaltered. Two of the

political tussles that had accompanied the formation of the limit system eventually contributed to its

demise. A referee system in which individual consideration could be given to special cases had been

maintained. The determining power of the City Council which had been attacked earlier in the century

by professionals and business, had been continuously reduced, through movement towards

metropolitan and state boards, committees and planning commissions. The administration of many

aspects of building regulations had been shifted to the BRC. Professional and business groups had

gained greater representation on these instrumentalities. When the need for towers had been engineered

by capital, the mechanisms were in place to remove the impediment of the height limit.

The BRC came part of the way toward implementing these changes in 1957, formalising the

modification to the application of height limit regulations to allow heights greater than 132 feet in

individual cases, depending upon floor space and light angles.87

While to some extent the ‘race to the skies’ had been initiated by the starting flag of the permit for

the ICI building, between 1955 and 1958 around twenty new office buildings, many of them ‘limit

 83 ‘New Building Era’, BLE, 25 July 1955. The Sydney authorities made similar concessions in the same year. Its first over-limit tower

would reach 265 feet. Construction started in September 1956. 84 David Saunders, 'Office Blocks in Melbourne', Architecture in Australia, (June 1959), p.91. 85 Letter PWD to RVIA 13 November 1956, SLV MS9454 Box#53(b), RVIA Correspondence on Building Regulations 1951-9. 86 BLE, 24 November 1954, p.73; 87 The abandonment of height limits in favour of the floor space index system had been recommended by the BRC to the

Minister of Public Works by August 1957. (‘Kindergarten Skyscrapers’, Architecture and Arts, August 1957, p.21). Sydney took similar action on its 150 foot limit in the same year (‘Report on Sydney’s Court Case Over Building Heights’, Architecture Today, March 1962, p.10)

THE LIMITED CITY

 

69

height’, were added to the city.88 Some of these simply involved the addition of new buildings with

modernist or international style facades to the streetscape ensemble. Some used only portions of

modern light-weight curtain walling in a more substantial facade treatment, others were completely

curtain walled in the new lightweight materials. In either case, these buildings slotted into the already

eclectic mixture in the streetscape, their flat unadorned cornice lines at times contributing to the limit

height continuity.

This is not to say that architects were happy with these constraints, or intended applying any kind of

contextualism. A declaration in Architecture and Arts shows the common sensibility: “The most

challenging problem of architects for city buildings today is the creation of an individual building in a

street where normal development demands each facade should abut its neighbour.”89 Their

presentation drawings often show adjacent buildings as shadowy or semi-transparent forms - as if they

wished them to vaporise and leave a tower form revealed. (illustration 28) The same group of facades

appears in a well known photograph by Mark Strizic and is now used as a signature of the limited

height city.90 (illustration 27) The definition of the street entrance was less successful. Often the curtain

wall was simply stopped at first floor level, with an inadequate ground storey height. Saunders found

this “a weak expression for that very important part in the building.”91

Postwar flats provided some of the models for isolated ‘modern’ office blocks.92 The new buildings

were more constrained by costs than their predecessors, and this accounted in large part for the

rejection of heavy masonry facades and adoption of glazed lightweight facades.93 As Saunders

observed, “Those bulky, essentially speculative buildings [of the past], appear to have practically no

parallels in today’s scene.”94 Gilbert Court on Collins street, though still limit height, designed in 1954,

was considered the first isolated building of glass office box form.95 The Humes Ltd building of 1957,

on the south-west corner of William and Little Bourke Streets, was “… of the ‘tower’ type , and is the

first glass house in the city providing natural light from all four sides.”96 Its tower section was set back

from the ground floor - giving the prestige of a limit height building, at reduced cost, and with more

high quality office space.97 Though the technologies of the new isolated modernist buildings were not

 88 Saunders, (1959), p.91. 89 ‘Work’, Architecture and Arts, No.59 (August-September 1958), p.69. 90 Mark Strizic & David Saunders, Melbourne: A Portrait, (Melbourne 1960), p.63. An almost identical scene appears in a photograph

by Wolfgang Sievers , Architecture and Arts, No.56 (April 1958), p.44. One critique claimed the two new buildings, Norwich Insurance and Union Insurance, “jar[red] badly when read in reality as one building”. (‘Work’, Architecture and Arts, No.59 (August-September 1958), p.69).

91 Saunders, (1959), p.93. 92 Architecture and Arts, No.59 (August-September 1958), p.67. Early renderings of the ICI building showed a solid masonry (or

concrete?) western facade. As built, this facade was covered with curtain walling matching the other facades to create the illusion of the ideal ‘glass house’.

93 ‘New Building Era’, BLE, 25 July 1955, p.18. 94 Saunders, (1959), p.91. 95 Lewis, p.125. 96 ‘Melbourne’s Building Boom’, Australian Builder, V.9, No.1 (January 1957), p.10. 97 ‘Office Building, Melbourne - By Bates, Smart & McCutcheon, Architects’, Architecture and Arts, No.44 (April, 1957), pp.22-3.

Saunders found this restriction of site usage a common economy. Several sites in the city centre lay vacant.

THE LIMITED CITY

 

70

particularly radical, the designs did break ground stylistically and symbolically, clearing the way for taller

structures in the same vein. (illustration 29)

Competitions for the treatment of very large development sites provided architects with the

opportunity for dominantly modernist experiments. The City Council held a competition for designs

for a development on the Western Market site in 1949. The three winning designs placed remarkably

similar International style blocks of limit height over the whole of the site.98 Three proposals for the

development of the Jolimont railway yards put forward in 1956-7 display a range of solutions but a

similar palette. The Grand Central Project of architect H. V. Taylor was a “Fringe Development” of all

of the south side of Flinders street from Spring Street to Swanston with a uniform row of limit height,

curtain walled blocks. Without the eclectic mix of age, style and texture the limit height street wall

certainly did become overwhelmingly monotonous.

The second proposal, put forward by Councillor J. Buchan, covered the whole width of the yards

from Swanston to Russell street with a parking structure, with a long five story block on Flinders, and

an isolated 19 storey tower facing Flinders Station. This proposal spanned old and new.99 The third

proposal was for a 450 foot high smoothly tapered hexagonal office tower, to compare with the

“Empire State Building and Sydney’s Harbour Bridge”.100 The proposal appeared in the same year as

Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘City in the sky - one mile high’ proposal for Chicago. (illustration 30)

The intention behind the drive to relax the height limits was to allow application of ‘logical’ town

planning rather than ‘arbitrary restrictions’. This constant labelling of restrictions as ‘arbitrary’ is an

interesting inversion. If any set of processes in the city was arbitrary, in the sense of not being related to

the logic of particular sites, it was the processes engendered by the unrestricted urbanisation of capital,

of which tall towers were an expression.101

 98 Melbourne Western Market Site Competition’, Architecture: Journal of RAIA, V.37, No.4 (October 1949), pp.104-7; ‘Market Site

Competition’, RVIA Bulletin (October 1949), pp.9-13. A decidedly bizarre proposal for the Western Market site was put forward by the Council’s ‘Post War Committee’ in 1944. The site, which had become ‘static like other aspects of Melbourne life’ was to recreated as a symbol for the revival of city spirit. A sketch plan prepared prior to a competition, showed a box-like limit-height building in streamlined ‘modern’ style covering the whole site. It was capped with helicopter landing pads and a hemispherical planetarium surmounted by a 100 foot beacon . “Now, with one big building as its aim, the Post-war Committee intends (by the grace of the City Council) to aim for a mighty structure which will out-Rock the famous Rockerfeller Centre in New York.” (F. Keith McKenzie, ‘Proposed New Building is a Spur to Melbourne’s Pride’, Argus, 29 may 1944, p.88.)

99 ‘Building Over Melbourne Railtracks - Ambitious Schemes for Flinders Street’, BLE, 25 June 1956, pp.28-9. 100 ‘Melbourne’s Jolimont Tower’, BLE, 24 April 1957, p.58. 101 Steven Pile, The Body and the City, (Baltimore 1996), p.223.

72  

       

 

The ICI building, on its site just off the city grid, was completed in November 1958. The

subsequent towers for Consolidated Zinc (Conzinc Riotinto Australia, CRA), and for Shell, were

located well within the grid. Local commentators David Saunders and Brian Lewis saw that, as in

America earlier in the century, prestige was really the main justification for this “race to the skies”.1

Locally based enterprises generally found conforming to the height limit pattern no great constraint.

Indeed, many buildings described as ‘limit height’ were constructed in the city well into the sixties. This

was still a most economical scale of building.

The large corporations which had brought into the city a great influx of overseas capital derived

from postwar economic expansion, sought the more potent symbolic bases that only the

monumentality of the tower could provide. They could also afford large enough sites. Barry Maitland

points to the new logic which was operating: “These are seen essentially as free-standing, independent

constructions, whose form is determined by the internal rules of their operation and of the marketing

of their image, rather than by any of the external rules of the collective form of the city.”2 The

monumentality of the tower depended upon its independence, yet that independence only had meaning

within the context of the rest of the city. The popular view across the Swan Street Bridge to the city was

dominated after 1960 by the Consolidated Zinc (CRA) tower, though the limited city with its spires and

T&G tower still retained some visual identity (illustration 31).

As distant relatives of the ‘lofty piles’, the new towers had again revolutionised the skyline of the

city. Yet because their scale (and often orientation) was so radically different, the ‘limited city’ became

newly situated as a substratum, with the opportunity to retain its integrity on levels other than the

domination of the skyline. Strizic’s photographic essay reflects the beginnings of this change. Frame-

filling modern facades create texture for the detailed human scale of the older city. The misty

streetscapes, city-over-the-river vistas, and hazy backgrounds of spires and towers are a celebration of a

recent past which has suddenly been fixed in a perpetual early misty morning. The modern curtain walls

sparkle in the clear light of day (illustrations 26 & 27).

The business composition of the city was changing. Only those with sufficient income or an

indispensable link to a facility in the city remained, while others moved to the suburbs. With these

departures many of the activities which had given meaning to public space were lost, or removed to the

 1 Saunders, 'Office Blocks in Melbourne', pp.87-8. 2 Barry Maitland, ‘Australian Urbanism: The Struggle for Urban Form’, Transition, No.27/28 (Summer Autumn 1989), p.156.

CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION

 

73

increasingly privatised interiors of the new buildings. Sites were remaining vacant because the owner

could not afford to develop. Owners of small plots clung to their valuable real estate, and the

amalgamation of sites was infrequent.3 The promised benefits from opening up the city to tall buildings

was tempered by new constraints. The progressive release from the restriction of a height limit imposed

by local, and later state government, resulted in another set of rules which obeyed the logic of the tower

and bigger business, but which were, if anything, less open to negotiation. In 1957 architect Neil

Clerehan thought he saw a new era for Melbourne’s centre:

There are already signs, (e.g., the lifting of height restrictions; plans to develop entire city blocks) that once again, as it did eighty years ago, the city is about to cease thinking of what is done overseas and start solving its own problem in its own way.4

But the city had already been solving its problem in its own way, as well as being influenced by what

was happening overseas.

The city has often been seen as a local effect reflecting only one aspect of a general history. Henri

Lefebvre believes that the transformations of cities are not sufficiently explained as outcomes of

changes in the social whole. He proposes an approach which in which the city is produced by its

inhabitants:

The city has a history; it is the work of a history, that is, of clearly defined people and groups who accomplish this oeuvre, in historical conditions. Conditions which simultaneously enable and limit possibilities, are never sufficient to explain what was born of them, in them, by them.5

The phenomena of the limited height city cannot be adequately explained merely in terms of the

conditions which enabled and limited its formation, including the urbanisation of capital, the changing

professions, and importation of international ideas. In negotiating the development of the limited city

the inhabitants were in a sense making a work of history. The material legacy of the limited city,

including its particular skyline and streetscape, can, and should be read as a part of that text.

 3 Saunders, p.91. 4 Neil Clerehan, RVIA Bulletin, (February - March 1957), p.25. 5 Henri Lefebvre, ‘The Specificity of the City’, in Eleonore Kofman & Elizabeth Lebas (Eds), Writings on Cities: Henri Lefebvre ,

(Cambridge Mass. 1996), pp.101-2.

74  

A. Newspapers

Argus Age Sun Herald Sun News Pictorial

B. Journals Australian Builders and Contractors News [ABCN] Building Engineering and Mining Journal [BEMJ] Australasian Decorator and Painter [ADP] Real Property Annual Proceedings of the Victorian Institute of Engineers [PVIE] Journal of Proceedings of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects [JPRVIA] Journal of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects Royal Victorian Institute of Architects Bulletin, 1949-1966 [RVIAB] Building Building:Lighting:Engineering [BLE] The Australian Builder Architecture and Arts Architecture Today Architecture in Australia

C. City of Melbourne City of Melbourne Council Proceedings [CMCP] City of Melbourne Council Meetings [CMCM] Town Clerk’s Correspondence Files [TCCF] Ood = Order of Day

D. Manuscript Royal Victorian Institute of Architects correspondence on building regulations, SLV MS9454 Box No.38-40 Press Cuttings, 1930-40 Box No.53 (a) Building Regulations 1915 – 26, (b) Building Regulations 1951-1959

E. State Parliament of Victoria Victorian Parliamentary Debates [VPD] Victorian Parliamentary Papers [VPP]

NEWSPAPERS &

JOURNALS  

 

75

 

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Bate, Weston, Essential But Unplanned: The Story of Melbourne’s Lanes, (Melbourne 1994).

Boyd, Robin, The Walls Around Us, (Sydney 1962).

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Dunstan, David, Governing the Metropolis, (Melbourne 1984).

Edmonds, Ken, ‘The Australia Building ‘“Skyscraper’“ 1889-1979?’, Architect, V.3, No.56 (1978), pp.11-13.

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