Melbourne Town Hall
90-130 Swanston Street
www.melbourne.vic.gov.au

Built: 1867-70
Architect: Joseph Reed and Frederick Barnes
Owner: City of Melbourne

Built between 1867 and 1870, Melbourne Town Hall rekindles the glory of Victoria's Gold Boom. Recent renovations have preserved its original grandeur and unique period features such as the impressive wood-panelled Council Chamber.

Open to MOH: Level 2 rooms including the Council Chamber, The Portico Room and balcony, The Melbourne Room, The Yarra Room and the Lord Mayor's office.
Times: 10am to 5pm
Access restrictions: Full access available

Another distinguished work by Reed and Barnes that celebrates its corner site with a campanile (this time in grand French Renaissance style), this is a resoundingly picturesque urban composition. The progressive additions of the Prince Alfred Tower (1869), temple-like portico (1887), the subsequent enlargement of the hall itself and the creation of the lower hall and extension along Collins Street (1925) have contributed to the building's scenographic form.

The exterior Tasmanian freestone facades sitting above a rusticated bluestone plinth are modulated by giant order Corinthian pilasters and attached Corinthian columns overlaid onto a richly modelled composition. The clock tower with its mansard roof and stacked classical composition houses clocks donated by the son of Melbourne's first mayor.

A magnificent collection of classically composed pavilions, the Melbourne Town Hall was to be the prototype for numerous suburban town halls that would be built in the late 1870s and 1880s.

Source: "A guide to Melbourne architecture", by Philip Goad, 1999, p. 41. The Watermark Press, Sydney.

Melbourne Town Hall

Melbourne Town Hall