St Paul's Cathedral
2 Swanston Street
www.stpaulscathedral.org.au

Built: 1880-91
Architect: William Butterfield & Joseph Reed
Owner: Melbourne Anglican Trust Corporation

Standing at the centre of the Anglican Church in Victoria is St Paul's Cathedral. This landmark building is unique among Melbourne's great 19th century public buildings as it is made from sandstone, rather than the city's dominant bluestone building material. Barrabool sandstone and Waurn Ponds limestone, with spires of Hawkesbury sandstone from Sydney suffuse the cathedral in a warm yellow-brown, rather than Melbourne's characteristic cold blue-grey.

Open to MOH: The Bell Tower, Bridge Gallery over Nave and Main Church
Times: Please note, St Paul's Cathedral will only be open 12:30pm to 5pm to minimise disruption to normal Sunday services.
Access restrictions: Full access to the Cathedral. Disabled access to the building via Flinders St. Families and children are welcome. Access to the bell tower will only occur with a member of Cathedral staff and will be limited to groups of six at a time. Children under 12 will not be permitted. As the access way is via tight spiral stairs access is limited to people who are of do not suffer from mobility restrictions, claustrophobia or vertigo.

Built to replace Charles Webb's St Paul's Church and located on the site of the first official church service in Melbourne in 1836, St Paul's Cathedral has continued the site's history as the centre of the Anglican Church in Victoria. Designed in 1878 by eminent English Gothic Revival architect William Butterfield (who never visited Australia and who also designed Adelaide's Anglican cathedral), St Paul's is one of his larger commissions, although it was not completed to his original design - the existing spires are not those of Butterfield.

He had envisaged an octagonal crossing tower and two saddle-backed west towers, which would have given an altogether different feeling - a more rugged, robust and some might say even primitive Gothic evocation. Instead, Sydney architect John Barr provided the conventional Gothic spires and in a different stone to Butterfield's bold contrasting textures of Waurns Pond and Barrabool sandstones (described as 'polytexture') which feature on the chequered western facade (in fact, south facade due to having to conform to Melbourne's street grid). Despite this, the interior is almost entirely Butterfield and is a triumph of Gothic Revival architecture inspired by the vibrant striped polychromy of Italian Gothic cathedral interiors.

Butterfield's philosophy of an increasing decorative hierarchy is realised at St Paul's. Encaustic tiled floors and wainscoting give way to marble and glass mosaics as one moves closer to the altar. The karri ceiling, while fine in workmanship and execution, was not part of the Butterfield design. He resigned from the commission in 1888 after a disagreement with the Cathedral Erection Board, but his work was continued in 1888 in an honorary capacity by Joseph Reed of Reed Henderson & Smart (later Reed, Smart & Tappin).

The adjacent four-storey Chapter House and Diocesan Offices were designed in the office of Joseph Reed and complement the cathedral design. While St Paul's Cathedral has a mixed architectural pedigree, its skyline of spires is a much-loved Melbourne landmark.

With the 1997 removal of the Gas and Fuel Buildings which had sat over the railyards, the adjacent Flinders Street streetscape was revealed to recapture a view of Melbourne as it had appeared from 1931 until the mid-1960s.

In the late 1990s, controversy raged over whether the proposed structures of Federation Square would partially obscure the spires and upper half of St Paul's west facade. Many people had forgotten that the cathedral had no spires at all for more than 30 years. The cathedral, like Melbourne at the end of the 1870s, was constantly evolving.

Source: "A guide to Melbourne architecture", by Philip Goad, 1999, p. 51. The Watermark Press, Sydney, with corrections.

St Pauls Cathedral

St Pauls Chapter